Secondary data analysis in educational research has been an established research method for many years. Yet, few publications outline the "how to" of undertaking the process. This paper presents an analysis framework suitable for undertaking secondary data analysis within the field of education. The framework is a modification and an…

This brief provides a definition of an integrated data system, identifies who would benefit from the information provided by an integrated data system, and examines the challenges and costs associated with data integration, as well as potential benefits to creating an integrated data system. [The Center for the Integration of IDEA Data (CIID) is…

"Citizen science" gives students a unique opportunity to engage with their own research, as well as data collected by other citizen scientists. Often, citizen science projects focus on students collecting and submitting data for scientists, which can sometimes limit opportunities to engage in the entire scientific process. This article…

Corpora have given rise to a wide range of lexicographic resources aimed at helping novice users of academic English with their writing. This includes academic vocabulary lists, a variety of textbooks, and even a bespoke academic English dictionary. However, writers may not be familiar with these resources or may not be sufficiently aware of the…

Linguists are sometimes confronted with choices concerning language names. For example, one and the same language may be referred to as Persian or Farsi. This short paper discusses some principles that one might use for making decisions when there are variant forms in use, or when one feels that none of the existing names is appropriate. The…

Advanced Competition Simulations (ACS), a massive multiplayer online (MMO) strategy gaming company, has petabytes of customer data at their data center in Brentwood, Tennessee that could assist executives with decision making, but they currently do not have business intelligence software or a business intelligence and analytics (BIA) team. As is…

The recommendations in this brief create a framework for using data effectively to make instructional decisions. The availability of student-level data for educators has pushed forward the movement to strengthen the role of data to guide instruction and improve student learning. While improvements in technology and assessments, as well as recent…

Integrated data systems are often used to inform decision making at the top tiers of local or state government. Policymakers use analyses based on large numbers of integrated data system (IDS) records (from which personal identifying information has been removed) to understand the overlap between cases that receive services from different systems…

Large organisations, such as universities or financial institutions, generally have access to substantial volumes of data from various "transactional" sources, such as customer service records, email, or student management systems. There is an ever-increasing demand on these large organisations to make rapid, relevant and efficient…

Usage statistics are an important metric for making decisions on serials. Although the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries have been collecting usage statistics, the statistics had not frequently been used to make decisions and had not been included in collection development policy. After undergoing a collection assessment, the…

The ubiquity and familiarity of the world wide web means that students regularly turn to it as a source of information. In doing so, they "are said to rely heavily on simple search engines, such as Google to find what they want." Researchers have also investigated how students use search engines, concluding that "the young web users tended to…

Evidence-based practice and data-driven decision making (DDDM) are two approaches to accountability that have been promoted in the school literature. In spite of the push to promote these approaches in schools, barriers to their widespread, appropriate, and effective use have limited their impact on practice and student outcomes. This article…

Data-driven decision making, popularized in the 1980s and 1990s, is evolving into a vastly more sophisticated concept known as big data that relies on software approaches generally referred to as analytics. Big data and analytics for instructional applications are in their infancy and will take a few years to mature, although their presence is…

In recent years, researchers and practitioners in the behavioral sciences have profited from a growing literature on delay discounting. The purpose of this article is to provide readers with a brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Office Excel 2010 and Excel for Mac 2011 to analyze discounting data to yield parameters for both the hyperbolic…

Information technology approaches to delivering diagnostic clinical decision support (CDS) are the subject of the papers to follow in the proceedings. These will address the history of CDS and present day approaches (Miller), evaluation of diagnostic CDS methods (Friedman), and the role of clinical documentation in supporting diagnostic decision…