A great deal of emphasis in higher education is centered on questions such as, "Why do students leave college and how can we get them to stay?" Although researchers have pointed to the import of "sense of belonging" in departure decisions, a measure of students' subjective sense of affiliation and identification with the university community has not been developed. The following is an empirical measure of "sense of belonging" which sheds light on factors that contribute to retention. Gaining greater clarity regarding factors important to the development of "sense of belonging" can help institutional policy planners evaluate the effectiveness of retention programs on their campuses, design more effective intervention strategies, and identify students at risk for departure.According to the American College Testing Program (1999), approximately one-quarter of all new college students do not return for their sophomore year. Aside from the personal and practical consequences related to persistence in college, student tuition and fees make up a sizable proportion of higher education revenue. Consequently, student retention continues to be a major concern of college administrators and a great deal of emphasis in higher education is centered 227 Ó 2002, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

Body-image dissatisfaction is not uncommon and can adversely affect individuals' psychosocial functioning and quality of life. Various oft-cited surveys and a meta-analysis implicate a worsening of body image over the past several decades, especially among women and possibly among men. The present cross-sectional study examined changes in multiple facets of body image among 3,127 college students from 1983 through 2001; the same standardized assessment was used in 22 studies conducted within the same university. Results confirmed non-Black women's increasing body-image dissatisfaction until the early or mid-1990s, after which significant improvements occurred in terms of overall body-image evaluation and overweight preoccupation among both non-Black and Black women, despite heavier body weights. A reduction over time in women's investment in their appearance was also evident. Men's body image was relatively stable during the 19-year period. Explanations, limitations, and implications of the findings are discussed.

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The current evaluation literature tends to conceptualize evaluator roles as a single, overarching orientation toward an evaluation, an orientation largely driven by evaluation methods, models, or stakeholder orientations. Roles identified range from a social transformer or a neutral social scientist to that of an educator or even a power merchant. We argue that these single, broadly construed role orientations do not reflect the multiple roles evaluators actually assume as they complete the activities encompassing an external evaluation. In contrast to the current literature, this article suggests that typical evaluation activities create functional demands on evaluators, and that evaluators respond to these demands through a limited number of specified evaluator roles. This depiction of a set of specific multiple evaluator roles, generated in response to particular evaluation activities and their associated demands, has implications regarding how evaluation is conceptualized, practiced, and studied. This article concludes with a discussion of these implications.

This article describes a secondary analysis of a brief reading comprehension rate measure, percent comprehension questions correct per minute spent reading (%C/M). This measure includes reading speed (seconds to read) in the denominator and percentage of comprehension questions answered correctly in the numerator. Participants were 22 4th-, 29 5th-, and 37 10th-grade students. Results showed that reading speed accounted for much of the variance in Broad Reading Cluster scores and subtest scores of the Woodcock -Johnson III Tests of Achievement across all grade levels. Converting reading speed to the rate measure %C/M increased Broad Reading Cluster variance accounted for in the 4th-and 5th-grade sample, but decreased the Broad Reading Cluster variance accounted for in the 10th-grade sample. Discussion focuses on the importance of reading speed and the failure to enhance validity of a brief rate measure in more skilled readers by incorporating a direct measure of comprehension. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.