Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Publication
    Screening drug, alcohol and substance abuse the Psychometric measures
    Urinalysis was used in previous studies among higher institution students (n=16252) in Malaysia to answer the question of whether university students are involved in drug abuse. However, the use of urinalysis had faced some problems. The problems were related to human rights issues and the cost to perform the urinalysis was expensive and quite impossible to be implemented to a large population of university students. To overcome this problem, this study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of psychometric measures in screening drug, alcohol and substance abuse. The Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory A2 (SASSI-A2) was used for this purpose. SASSI-A2 is a brief screening tool designed to identify individuals who have a high probability of having a substance use disorder, including both substance abuse and substance dependence. SASSI-A2 comprises of 72 items that are rated on a two point scale with response; true and false. SASSI-A2 was translated into Malay language and it was refined through a back-translation technique and focus group approach. Psychometric testing was undertaken on a sample of 750 university students from five public universities in Malaysia. All participants were aged between 19 and 20 years. Internal consistency coefficients were calculated for the total scale and its subscales. Chronbach's alpha obtained for SASSI-A2 was 0.72. This relatively high level of Chronbach's alpha showed relatively high level of reliability. The results demonstrated that the whole SASSI-A2 meets the fundamental measurement properties and can discriminate groups of higher institution students from high to low on the substance dependency variable. The accuracy of the test has been found to be unaffected by gender, ethnicity, age and years of education. Although more rigorous validation studies are needed, it is recommended that SASSI-A2 be considered for usage to higher institution students populations when a brief, objective, and accurate screening tool for chemical dependency is needed.
  • Publication
    Perception of teacher on cooperative learning
    The participation of students in the process of learning is one of the keys to ensure effective learning outcomes either in terms of knowledge or skill. However, teacher-centred teaching methods which have been practiced in this country after so long avert students to fully engage in the learning process especially in a classroom. Various attempts have been made by the government to emphasize student’s development in term of communication, creativity and innovation through the of process learning in class. It requires school to implement student-centred teaching methods such as cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is a teaching method that requires teachers not only interacts with the students but also with other teaching aids such as audio, video and computer. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify teachers' perception on the implementation of cooperative learning in the teaching and learning process in class. 25 teachers were selected as respondents. Mixed methods were used in this study, where the instrument of questionnaires and interviews were used to collect the data. Quantitative data analysis was made using descriptive statistics of frequency, mean and percentage. While, qualitative data analysis was based on the recommendations of the Miles & Huberman (1994). The findings showed teachers have a positive attitude toward cooperative learning and they are ready and feel confident to practice it. However, the constraints are classroom control, time and limited teaching aids