In this essay, the authors argue that linked-course learning communities serve students at nonresidential metropolitan public universities by increasing their academic achievement, reducing their attrition, and engaging them in the project of public education. They use a winter 2004 research project to argue that linked courses create supportive…

Modeling the process by which participants are selected into groups, rather than adjusting for preexisting group differences, provides the basis for several new approaches to the analysis of data from nonrandomized studies. Econometric approaches, the propensity scores approach, and the relative assignment variable approach to the modeling of…

This paper describes several common types of research studies in special education transition literature and the threats to their validity. It then describes how the evidential base may be broadened, how diverse sources of evidence can be combined to strengthen causal inferences, and the role of judgment within quasi-experimentation. The paper…