Causal attributions for success and failure among athletes: Validation of the Croatian version of the revised Causal dimension scale (CDS-II)

Background and Study Aim. Researchers since the late 1970s have been interested in finding out the reasons attributed to outcomes. To facilitate attribution research in Croatia we translated and validated The Revised Causal Dimension Scale (CDS-II) and examined its invariance when attributing most and least successful competition performances. Materials and methods. To achieve our stated aim, 384 kinesiology students completed the translated CDS-II. To test the latent structure of the questionnaire, we used CFA and tested two alternative models (orthogonal solution and model with correlated latent variables). Additionally, we examined the CDS-II invariance when attributing the most and the least successful competition performance in sport using longitudinal CFA. The reliability was tested using Cronbach alpha coefficients. Lastly, we tested differences in latent means between most and least successful performance using pairwise t-test. Results. Similar to the originally published findings, CFA indicated the CDS-II structure with correlated latent variables had an adequate and better fit than the orthogonal solution in both situations. Furthermore, we confirmed configural, metric and scalar invariance, as well as partial strict invariance since one item’s residuals differed significantly from the others. Cronbach alpha coefficients were adequate across both situations. Lastly, athletes attributed their most successful performances to more internal, stable and controllable reasons than their least successful performances. Conclusions. We confirmed that the Croatian version of the CDS-II has adequate psychometric properties and is therefore suitable for research in sport situations.

Fuzzy Decision-Making Soft Model for Family Financial Planning in The Post COVID-19 World

With COVID-19 making headlines around the world, it is normal to feel uncertain about many aspects of life right now, including family financial planning and wealth management. With the increase in family wealth and the size of organizations, there is a comparable increase in their assets. There is considerable demand for professionals to manage these assets and coordinate investment activities in order to maintain growth. The issue arises of how to increase a wealth management bank’s competitive advantages by segmenting a set of the selection criteria for a wealth management bank to effectively manage personal wealth. The results showed that the management’s learning and growth perspective was the most important causal dimension of wealth management bank selection. This paper also draws on the research results for managerial practice implications.

Meaning and Meaning Making in Arabic: Moving from Semantics to Pragmatics to Ka:rmatics

Ka:rmik Linguistic theory is one of the most revolutionary theories in linguistics which aims to describe language from a causal perspective of WHY giving rise to WHAT through HOW: “As you are, so you think; as you think, so you speak (or act)” (Bhuvaneswar). In an adapted form, it can be modified as: As you are, so you think; as you think, so you mean. In his extension of semantics to ka:rmatics in dealing with proverb-meaning, Bhuvaneswar (2012) has shown a new dimension of meaning and meaning-making, namely, the causal dimension of creation, change, and transformation of meaning in language. According to Bhuvaneswar, if semantics deals with sentence meaning and pragmatics with utterance meaning, ka:rmatics (i.e., experiential pragmatics) explores experiential meaning via dispositional meaning of contextual meaning (pragmatics) of sentential meaning (semantics). What this amounts to is a causal understanding of meaning as it is created, changed, and transformed as languages are evolved and developed: Language is as it is (i.e., lingual meaning is as it is) because of what it is (dispositionally) intended to do (i.e., to mean) what it does (i.e., means). In this paper, an attempt has been made by selecting two sentences used in real life Yemeni Arabic to show how meaning is derived. In the process, it will be shown how semantics becomes pragmatics and pragmatics becomes ka:rmatics.

Attribution Theory: Measurement Foundations for an Emerging Research Area Within Applied Linguistics

This measurement study is a report on the adaptation of a measure for attribution theory, the Causal Dimension II Scale (CDS II), into the Japanese SLA context. The contribution of this study is three-fold. First, it partially addresses deployment of the instrument in the SLA domain for the first time without attention having been paid to evidence for its capacity to generate unidimensional scores in this domain. Second, it makes an initial contribution to putting use of the instrument in the Japanese context for both research and practice on an evidence-based footing. Third, it assists with resetting the initial research interest in attribution-theory constructs within SLA from their potential influence on learning in the classroom to the necessary and prior issue of their adequate measurement. Results from this study were interpreted as indicating that model fit for scores on the adapted instrument was satisfactory rather than meritorious, but not negative. 本研究は、帰属理論の心理測定用具Causal Dimension Scale II（CDS II）を日本の第二言語習得（SLA）環境に適合させる試みについて報告する。この研究では以下の3点の成果が得られた。第1に、この領域における一次元のスコアを生成するための能力に対する証拠に注意を払うことなく、本研究が日本において初めて SLA におけるこの測定用具を使用したことを指摘した。第2に、本研究が、証拠に基づく展開の基礎とすべく、この測定用具を研究及び実践の両方において日本の文脈で用いた初の貢献となることを述べた。第3に、本研究が、SLA における帰属理論研究において、教室内学習への影響の可能性から適切な測定ということまで、必要かつ重要な問題へのリセットにつながることを指摘した。本研究から、CDS IIが日本のSLA環境に十分適合することを示した。

Abordagens ao estudo, rendimento académico e atribuições causais do desempenho em estudantes do ensino superior

Com o objectivo de contribuir para o estudo do rendimento académico no ensino superior e tendo como quadro de referência os trabalhos de Entwistle (1997) e de McAuley, Duncan e Russell (1992), procurámos esclarecer as relações entre as abordagens ao estudo, as atribuições causais, o rendimento académico e a percepção subjectiva do rendimento académico. Os dados foram recolhidos junto de 558 alunos, pertencentes a seis instituições de ensino superior e as medidas utilizadas foram a Causal Dimension Scale II (McAuley, Duncan & Russel, 1992), o inventário Approaches and Study Skills Inventory for Students (Entwistle, 1997), tendo sido construído, para o rendimento académico, um indicador com base nas classificações obtidas. Procedimentos de modelação por equações estruturais permitiram concluir que as abordagens ao estudo constituem o factor mais importante do rendimento académico dos alunos, observando-se, igualmente, uma forte relação entre as abordagens ao estudo e as atribuições causais.