This chapter describes the background and process for collecting postgraduation outcomes data at a 4-year not-for-profit private college. The strategies, analyses, and reporting of this data-collection effort are highlighted with the use of a case study.

People often make inferences with incomplete information. Previous research has led to a mixed picture of how people treat missing information. To explain these results, the authors follow the Brunswikian perspective on human inference and hypothesize that the mechanism's accuracy for treating missing information depends on how it is distributed…

Designed to minimize information overload in telecommunications systems, the formal model developed in this paper predicts the usefulness of a message based on the available message features, and may be used to rank messages by expected importance or economic worth. The assumptions of binary and two Poisson independent probabilistic distributions…

Text similarity measurements are used to determine relationships between natural-language texts and text excerpts. The resulting linked hypertext maps can be broken down into text segments and themes used to identify different text types and structures, leading to improved information access and utilization. Examples are provided for text…

A major effort of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems over the past few years has been the development of information Exchange Procedures (IEP) for a broad spectrum of colleges and universities. The motivation for this effort is the strong belief that the exchange and comparative analysis of data will lead to better…

Experiment dealt with selecting political candidates. Results provide some limited support for the hypothesized importance of matching information presentation formats to decision-making strategies. However, the most effective pattern of matching turned out to be in the opposite direction of the prediction. Discusses methodological issues. (PD)

The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance was examined in relation to consumer habits. (MM)

The Information Exchange Procedures (IEP) developed by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) are a set of standard definitions and procedures for collecting information about disciplines and student degree programs, outcomes of instructional programs, and general institutional characteristics. A fundamental purpose…

The efficient use of information depends on the way it is organized. Haphazard information may serve some useful purpose, but for a particular purpose, information needs to be processed into another structure which more easily fulfills that purpose. This booklet examines the concepts of information and information processing with the intention of…

This report describes the conceptual framework of a study examining the feasibility of developing, on a nationwide basis, a system of statistical indicators of educational knowledge outputs, dissemination structures, and knowledge utilization settings and outcomes, along with their contextual indicators. Using the notion of social indicators to…

STITE (Scientific and Technical Information Transfer for Education) is basically a system to interface between science information and the science learner. As such STITE acts as a link between STIC (Science and Technology Information Centers) and LIS (Learning Information Systems). In this third progress report it is concluded from a questionnaire…

Oversight information systems provide data to oversight agency managers that enable them to: (1) monitor the operations of agencies for which they are charged oversight responsibilities; (2) compare performance data against set performance criteria; and (3) identify exceptions that occur outside performance tolerance parameters. This research…

Discusses hypotheses which examine, for a nonprogramed decision, variables of (1) individual decision makers, (2) information upon which choices are based, and (3) structural features within which decision is made. Circumstances under which decision-making group (Ohio's librarians) selected an innovative alternative (incorporation of OCLC) are…

Presented is an analysis of nine agreements focused on three areas of common concern to dissemination specialists involved in the 1977 National Dissemination Forum: resources, linkage, research, evaluation and quality control. FORUM participants represented the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC of the National Institute of Education…

This report describes and analyzes statistical indicators of educational knowledge production and dissemination capability, presenting data at both the state and regional levels of aggregation. Three factors underlie 12 statistical indicators: a document production and access factor, a human-based linkage and exemplary practices factor, and a…