PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE GIFTED STUDENTS’ PERSONAL VALUES QUESTIONNAIRE

The purpose of presented research is the finalization of the gifted students’ personal values questionnaire development. This work carried out in four stages: 1) approbation of the preliminary version of the questionnaire, 2) the response scale elaboration with acceptable discrimination, 3) development of internal consistent, factor and content valid scales, designing test norms, 4) assessing the instrument retest reliability and the criterion validity. Three hundred eighty-six university students answered the questionnaire at all stages of the study. Based on factor and content analysis six measuring scales were constructed: productive creative activity values, orientation on intensive emotional experience, orientation on social recognition, value uncertainty, orientation on profession, value of comfortable living. The data confirm the questionnaire final version compliance with other standard psychometric requirements: no answer to the items was chosen more often than 55%, the distribution of raw scale scores is normal, Cronbach's Alpha closes to 0.70, corrected item-total correlation is above 0.20, retest reliability coefficient is not below 0.70. The instrument is recommended for individual assessment and research purpose in students' population. Further research prospects are related to questionnaire validity determination in relation to other external criteria of giftedness and to the accumulation and reflection of experience in using the tool.

Cultural traits and productive transformation: Colombia in international perspective

Drawing from the consideration of cultural values as an explanatory factor of economic development, this article correlates the cultural traits reported by Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension model with the results in terms of industrialization for Colombia and selected cultural clusters. By contrasting industrialization-oriented policy choices with the evolution of export composition and industrial competitiveness indicators, we conclude that guided by a short-term, materialistic, nepotistic, and intolerant to uncertainty orientation, Colombian economic authorities and elites have helped in the prolongation of an underdeveloped industrial structure by favoring closed groups through extractive institutions, while Asia, instead of adopting ‘western values’, has drawn upon a long-term orientation to implement risky but sound, coordinated, and convergent social and economic policies in order to industrialize.

Uncertainty orientation in Chinese children: Relations with school and psychological adjustment

The purpose of this study was to examine uncertainty orientation and its relations with school and psychological adjustment in Chinese children. A sample of elementary school children in P.R. China, aged 10 to 12 years, participated in the study. Data concerning uncertainty orientation, academic performance and socio-emotional adjustment were obtained from multiple sources including projective assessments, teacher ratings and self-reports. It was found that children in grade 6 had higher scores on uncertainty orientation than those in grades 4 and 5. Uncertainty orientation was positively associated with school-related competence, academic achievement and self-perceptions of competence, and negatively associated with learning problems and loneliness. The results suggest that uncertainty orientation is an adaptive characteristic in Chinese children.