This resource has been written specifically for higher education practitioners who are interested in improving students' learning experiences through the process of researching their own practice. We use the term 'higher education practitioners' to describe all who work in universities and who have a stake in students' learning experiences.…

Quality measures were originally developed for research aimed at describing the settings that children spend time in and identifying the characteristics of these environments that contribute to children's development. They were also developed to guide improvements in practice. Increasingly, however, measures of quality are being used for further…

This article is the third contribution to a research methods series dedicated to getting good results from survey research. In this series, "good results" is a stenographic term used to define surveys that yield accurate and meaningful information that decision makers can use with confidence when conducting program evaluation and policy assessment…

Reviews three special-purpose forecasting methods (population-ratio techniques, Bell Telephone method, method of analogy, and multiple-factor method) and three methods of universal applicability (the cohort-survival, percentage- survival, and law-of-growth methods) to help administrators grasp enrollment forecasting technicalities. A comparison…

A study of the reliability of oral tests in a medical school illustrates the use of a balanced incomplete block design, chosen when not all participating examiners can rate each examinee, for experimental research. (MSE)

This book is a guide to categorizing, measuring, testing, and assessing aspects of language, and is intended for language teachers, speech therapists and other language-related practitioners, and researchers, in conjunction with other resources on research methods and statistics. The first part is a discussion of basic terminology and the varied…

To study the stability of students' writing performances across occasions, four essays were obtained from each of 107 college students. These were scored with an analytic system that counts errors in 18 categories. Score reliability, computed by summing the 18 categories, was .36 for a single essay and .68 for the set of four essays. Score…

School counselors need to understand survey methodology even if they do not use it as research practitioners. Counselors can be better consumers of survey research by noting response rates, sampling techniques, reliability and validity in research articles. (JAC)

Extensive research efforts in the past decade have measured academic proficiency and progress in both theory and practice of large-scale writing assessment. The following major situational variables were identified in these investigations: (1) topic variables such as writing prompts, subject matter, mode of discourse, length, and rhetorical…

Although higher education institutions dislike rankings published in the mass media, they like the attention the rankings create and prefer to be included rather than excluded. Common criticisms of the methodology include emphasis on inappropriate criteria, unfair comparison of private and public institutions, faulty assumptions, inaccurate data,…

This book offers a resource guide for qualitative researchers in education, discussing data collection techniques, data analysis, reporting, and the issues of validity, reliability, and ethics. Part 1 reviews the nature and design of qualitative research; it discusses various types of qualitative research (including case studies), and how to…

A study assessed the applicability of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) procedures' Performance-Against-Standard form for use in personnel evaluation by the Ohio Cooperative Extension Service. The study also compared relevant test construction approaches identified in the literature to those used in the AIR study in attempting to confirm…

It is argued that research testing the reliability and validity of college and university reputational studies should be conducted, a concern not raised by consumers and publishers. Two studies of "America's Best Colleges," published by "U.S. News and World Report," raise questions about the guide's validity and suggest that…

In statistical terms, transfer rates require two components: a numerator that represents community college students who transfer and a denominator that approximates the pool of potential transfer students. The California Task Force adopted a set of criteria to judge the appropriateness of prospective pairs of numerators and denominators. Its form…

Debate grows over the validity and reliability of college and university rankings, which judge rather than describe institutions, as the public's willingness to accept them increases. While many institutional characteristics can be measured, measurement methods need improvement. One solution is to publish the peer studies that the institutions…