Background: The incidence of psychological, physical, and sexual violence in intimate dating relationships has a significant impact on young people. These issues are of great concern to researchers, educators, and administrators who strive to help youth be happy and healthy. This review focused on prevention and intervention efforts implemented in…

This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public, private, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded (BIE) K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The public school…

This paper reviews the literature on methods for dealing with missing data, discusses four commonly used methods, and illustrates these approaches with a small hypothetical data set. Most studies contain some missing data, and the reasons data are missing are many and varied. Four commonly used methods have been identified in the literature: (1)…

The 2000 US presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush has been the most intriguing and controversial in American history. Using the Florida ballot data, Wu showed that the 2000 election result could have been reversed had the "butterfly ballot effect" been eliminated. Through a combinatorial approach, Harger concluded that…

In many arenas, the demand for data has outstripped the availability of good data and has increased the tendency to grab for whatever numbers are being circulated in the literature. As a result, when someone says: "This is the best data available," it is essential to remember that "best" does not always mean good. This caution is particularly…

This report contains analyses of key aspects of the scope, quality, and vitality of the Nation's science and engineering enterprise and global science and technology. The report presents information on science, mathematics, and engineering education at all levels; the scientific and engineering workforce; U.S. and international and development…

This paper acknowledges that research on school dropouts presents problems in the definitions and computation of dropout indices. It considers a variety of methods for computing dropout rates, using dropout rates which are real and which were available at the end of the 1986-1987 school year. Fall enrollment, average daily membership, and total…

This paper examines how controlling statistically for baseline covariates (especially pretests) improves the precision of studies that randomize schools to measure the impacts of educational interventions on student achievement. Part I of the paper introduces the concepts, issues, and options involved. Parts II and III present empirical findings…

The booklet presents a report on the operation and use of person numbering (PN) systems for vital and health statistics in Israel and Scandinavia. A PN system involves assigning a different number to each individual within a given society and using that number for commercial, governmental, and military identification. The purpose of the report is…

This paper presents results of a review of mail survey response literature and provides recommendations for the application of some response-enhancing techniques to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) of the National Center for Education Statistics. The SASS is an integrated set of surveys sponsored by the NCES and conducted by the Bureau of…

This presentation is an informal discussion of a questionnaire context effect which led to an erroneous conclusion in analysis of data from the Monitoring the Future project; an annual survey of high school seniors that has occurred since 1975, and that focuses heavily on their drug use and attitudes about drugs. In 1980, the researchers reported…

Instructional research is synthesized, using categories specific and functional enough to provide guidance for classroom practice. The opening chapter presents a theory for conducting a theory-based meta-analysis of the research on instruction, outlining a theory that involves four elements of human information processing: the self-system, the…

The Cognitive Science Laboratory of the University of Southern California has conducted a series of studies on the experimental effects of motivation on a low-stakes (to the student) standardized test. This report summarizes these studies and their results. The test in question is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A series of…

Fifty-eight studies relating to the "knowledge gap" hypothesis (a theory that correlates public knowledge to educational level and mass media exposure) are examined in this report. In the opening sections, the theory is defined, and the early information diffusion studies and public opinion polls that led to its formulation in 1970 are…