What textbooks offer and what teachers teach: an analysis of the Dutch reading comprehension curriculum.

Unlabelled: In the Netherlands, the quality of the reading curriculum is currently under debate because of disappointing results on national and international assessments of students' reading skills and motivation. In a mixed-method study, we analyzed the content of Dutch textbooks for reading comprehension instruction (i.e.

Poor understanding of allergen labelling by allergic and non-allergic consumers.

Background: Understanding consumers' interpretation of allergy information is crucial for effective food safety policies. We evaluated consumer understanding of allergy information on foods in controlled, experimental studies.

Method: Using 18 packaged foods, we evaluated consumer understanding of information about allergens in two experiments: First, a comparison of foods with no stated allergen versus allergen as a stated ingredient versus a precautionary allergen label (PAL); second, a comparison of three common variants of PAL.

Experimental studies to improve the reliability and validity of regulatory judgments on health care in the Netherlands: a randomized controlled trial and before and after case study.

Rationale, Aims And Objectives: We examined the effect of two interventions on both the reliability and validity of regulatory judgments: adjusting the regulatory instrument and attending a consensus meeting.

Method: We adjusted the regulatory instrument. With a randomized controlled trial (RCT) we examined the effect of the adjustments we made to the instrument.

The effect of observational learning on students' performance, processes, and motivation in two creative domains.

Background: Previous research has shown that observation can be effective for learning in various domains, for example, argumentative writing and mathematics. The question in this paper is whether observational learning can also be beneficial when learning to perform creative tasks in visual and verbal arts.

Aims: We hypothesized that observation has a positive effect on performance, process, and motivation.

The influence of input on connective acquisition: a growth curve analysis of English because and German weil.

The current study used growth curve analysis to study the role of input during the acquisition of the English causal connective because and its German counterpart weil. The corpora of five German and five English children and their adult caretakers (age range 0;10-4;3) were analyzed for the amount as well as for the type of connective use - imitated, elicited, and independent. The growth curves showed that children's elicited use developed faster than their independent use; imitations were rare.

Reducing interrater variability and improving health care: a meta-analytical review.

Objectives: In the scientific literature about reliability, the main approach to increasing reliability seems to involve increasing the number of observers and improving the instrument used. Other aspects for improving reliability - like the training of raters - seem to receive less notice. It is worth asking whether this technical approach could be complemented by training the user of the instrument.

Evaluating instruments for regulation of health care in the Netherlands.

Objectives: Reliable and valid judgments are necessary for regulatory authorities to merit confidence from care institutions and society and preserve authority. Moreover, limited reliability and validity of regulatory judgments increase the risk of limited improvement of the quality of health care. The goal of the study is to obtain insight in (dis) advantages of different regulatory instruments for regulation of health care.

The effects of adapting a writing course to students' writing strategies.

Background: When writing a text, students are required to do several things simultaneously. They have to plan, translate and review, which involve demanding cognitive processes. In order to handle this complexity, writers need to develop a writing strategy.

Stability and discriminative power of the Young Schema-Questionnaire in a Dutch clinical versus non-clinical population.

In this study the temporal stability and general discriminative and classifying ability of the Young Schema-Questionnaire (YSQ) was examined in a clinical and non-clinical sample. To be able to cross-validate on the variables, two parallel subtests, drawn from the YSQ item pool, were utilized. Results suggest adequate rank order stability.

Teachers' task demands, students' test expectations, and actual test content.

Background: Previous studies on instructional importance show that individual students and their teachers differ in the topics that they consider important in the context of an upcoming teacher-made test.

Aims: This study aimed to examine whether such differences between students' test expectations and teachers' intended task demands can be explained by the actual test content.

Samples: Participants were history teachers (N=19) and their 11th-grade students (N=388).

The dimensionality of speaking and writing: a multilevel factor analysis of situational, task and school effects.

Background: This article addresses the question whether communication apprehension (CA) should be regarded as a unidimensional or alternatively as a multidimensional construct. The answer is not only interesting from a theoretical point of view. There might also be practical implications for the treatment of CA.