Random encouragement designs are randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that test interventions aimed at increasing participation in a program or activity whose take up is not universal. In these RCTs, instead of randomizing individuals or clusters directly into treatment and control groups to participate in a program or activity, the randomization…

Educational institutions abruptly implemented online higher education to cope with sanitary distance restrictions in 2020, causing an increment in student failure. This negative impact attracts the analyses of online higher education as a critical issue for educational systems. The early identification of students at risk is a strategy to cope…

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and orthogonal regression (OR) address different questions and make different assumptions about errors. The OLS regression of Y on X yields predictions of a dependent variable (Y) contingent on an independent variable (X) and minimizes the sum of squared errors of prediction. It assumes that the independent…

Several programs of research have sought to assess the replicability of scientific findings in different fields, including economics and psychology. These programs attempt to replicate several findings and use the results to say something about large-scale patterns of replicability in a field. However, little work has been done to understand the…

In this article, a numerical method integrated with statistical data simulation technique is introduced to solve a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations with multiple random variable coefficients. The utilization of Monte Carlo simulation with central divided difference formula of finite difference (FD) method is repeated n times to…

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a growing literature bemoaning the level of quantitative methods provision within the U.K. Higher Education sector, noting its negative impact upon the subsequent skills of graduates and their preparedness for the workplace. The present paper documents and evaluates an attempt to counter these issues…

In this paper, we investigate two purported problems with Bayesian Knowledge Tracing (BKT), a popular statistical model of student learning: "identifiability" and "semantic model degeneracy." In 2007, Beck and Chang stated that BKT is susceptible to an "identifiability problem"--various models with different…

The field of econometrics largely started with time series analysis because many early datasets were time-series macroeconomic data. As the field developed, more cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets were collected, which today dominate the majority of academic empirical research. In nonacademic (private sector, central bank, and governmental)…

Studies of skill development often describe a process of cumulative advantage, in which small differences in initial skill compound over time, leading to increasing skill gaps between those with an initial advantage and those without. We offer evidence of a similar phenomenon accounting for differential patterns of research skill development in…

This article reports how statistical analyses of PhD thesis records can reveal future research capacities for disciplines beyond their primary fields. The previous research showed that most theses contributed to and/or used methodologies from more than one discipline. In Australia, there was a concern for declining mathematical teaching and…

Musso et al. (2013) predict students' academic achievement with high accuracy one year in advance from cognitive and demographic variables, using artificial neural networks (ANNs). They conclude that ANNs have high potential for theoretical and practical improvements in learning sciences. ANNs are powerful statistical modelling tools but they can…

To answer "what works?" questions about policy interventions based on an experimental design, Peck (2003) proposes to use baseline characteristics to symmetrically divide treatment and control group members into subgroups defined by endogenously determined postrandom assignment events. Symmetric prediction of these subgroups in both…

The goal of the current study was to examine the role of brooding rumination in children at risk for depression. We found that children of mothers with a history of major depression exhibited higher levels of brooding rumination than did children of mothers with no depression history. Examining potential mechanisms of this risk, we found no…

Riley's Stuttering Severity Instrument (SSI) is widely used. The manuals allow SSI assessments to be made in different ways (e.g. from digital recordings or whilst listening to speech live). Digital recordings allow segments to be selected and listened to, whereas the entire recording has to be judged when listened to live. Comparison was made…

Children are ubiquitous imitators, but how do they decide which actions to imitate? One possibility is that children rationally combine multiple sources of information about which actions are necessary to cause a particular outcome. For instance, children might learn from contingencies between action sequences and outcomes across repeated…