«Every year, hundreds of donors give more money than is allowed by state law that has
highest limits of any state capping donation size;
scores of candidates fail to disclose large contributions received
in the run - up to Election Day; thousands of filings obfuscate the identity of donors or the purpose of expenditures through the
inclusion of incomplete or incorrect information; and dozens of incumbent lawmakers spend campaign funds for what reasonable people would unanimously agree are non-campaign reasons,» the report found.
As the numbers of students
scoring in the very
high ranges of APTS were, naturally, significantly smaller than those
scoring in the mid and low ranges, the sample size was expanded by the
inclusion of highly gifted students who had been tested at GERRIC's clinic, which specializes
in the assessment of intellectually gifted children and adolescents.
Many of the scales demonstrated weak psychometrics
in at least one of the following ways: (a) lack of psychometric data [i.e., reliability and / or validity; e.g., HFQ, MASC, PBS, Social Adjustment Scale - Self - Report (SAS - SR) and all perceived self - esteem and self - concept scales], (b) items that fall on more than one subscale (e.g., CBCL - 1991 version), (c) low alpha coefficients (e.g., below.60) for some subscales, which calls into question the utility of using these subscales
in research and clinical work (e.g., HFQ, MMPI - A, CBCL - 1991 version, BASC, PSPCSAYC), (d)
high correlations between subscales (e.g., PANAS - C), (e) lack of clarity regarding clinically - relevant cut - off
scores, yielding
high false positive and false negative rates (e.g., CES - D, CDI) and an inability to distinguish between minor (i.e., subclinical) and major (i.e., clinical) «cases» of a disorder (e.g., depression; CDI, BDI), (f) lack of correspondence between items and DSM criteria (e.g., CBCL - 1991 version, CDI, BDI, CES - D, (g) a factor structure that lacks clarity across studies (e.g., PSPCSAYC, CASI; although the factor structure is often difficult to assess
in studies of pediatric populations, given the small sample sizes), (h) low inter-rater reliability for interview and observational methods (e.g., CGAS), (i) low correlations between respondents such as child, parent, teacher [e.g., BASC, PSPCSAYC, CSI, FSSC - R, SCARED, Connors Ratings Scales - Revised (CRS - R)-RSB-, (j) the
inclusion of somatic or physical symptom items on mental health subscales (e.g., CBCL), which is a problem when conducting studies of children with pediatric physical conditions because physical symptoms may be a feature of the condition rather than an indicator of a mental health problem, (k)
high correlations with measures of social desirability, which is particularly problematic for the self - related rating scales and for child - report scales more generally, and (l) content validity problems (e.g., the RCMAS is a measure of anxiety, but contains items that tap mood, attention, peer interactions, and impulsivity).