This is the final issue in 2015 and this will also be the last issue under the name of The Australian Educational and Developmental Psychologist. After consultation with the Associate Editors, the College of Educational and Developmental Psychologists, Cambridge University Press and with approval from the Australian Psychological Society (APS) it was agreed to change the name to The Educational and Developmental Psychologist. This change will take place from the 1st of January 2016 and is an attempt to improve the quantity, quality, and range of submissions to the journal. The journal will still be clearly embossed with the College and the APS logo and will continue to proudly promote high quality Australian psychological research. The change will hopefully attract more submissions from countries in North America and across Europe. It has been clear that some researchers would not consider publishing in small journals, which are obviously outside of their geographical area, so the name change is an attempt to give a more global appearance to the journal.
The name change, which was approved around six months ago, is timely, as Thomson-Reuters Web of Science in their T-R Emerging Citation Index has recently acknowledged the high quality of the journal by listing it in this brand new index. This new index is designed to identify smaller, but regionally significant and of high quality, journals which are not currently indexed by T-R but will be continually considered for an Impact Factor. The journal is already listed in every important index and the T-R inclusion is an important step in the continuing upward trajectory of the journal. It is hoped that the combination of the name change and the new T-R listing will ensure that the reputation of the journal will be enhanced even further in 2016 and beyond.
The articles in this issue have a diverse range of studies, all of which are relevant across different domains of practice. Hunter and colleagues have standardised the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale for use in the Australian context. This tool will facilitate useful interventions and help psychologists recognise adolescents who may require assistance in improving their wellbeing. In the second article, Costello and Roodenberg explore issues around acquiescence response bias, where subjects agree with survey questions without engaging with the content. The authors explore higher education achievement and acquiescence in relation to the Big Five and they explore differences between the higher and lower education groups. In the third article, Thomson and Colleagues attempt to increase wellbeing among parent groups by testing whether attending a social emotional parenting programme would improve coping and wellbeing in the target group. The authors noted positive results in the parent groups. Doherty-Bigara and Gilmore, in the fourth article, report the results of the development of Dimensions of Mastery Motivation Questionnaire. This type of scale is quite often used with school-aged participants whereas this scale is being employed with an adult population. The authors report strong internal consistency, test-retest reliability and concurrent validity. In the final article Briggs and Bartholomaeus report findings of their scoping study, which attempts to understand how school psychologists and counsellors can play an active role in supporting transgender students whilst in school settings.
