The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) was asked by Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Directors Australia to consider, in a discussion paper for their conference held on the Gold Coast in September 2009, how a "tertiary education" sector impacts on the way people think about research and statistics. While a…

Statistical clustering is critical in designing scalable image retrieval systems. This paper presents a scalable algorithm for indexing and retrieving images based on region segmentation. The method uses statistical clustering on region features and IRM (Integrated Region Matching), a measure developed to evaluate overall similarity between images…

The Nonprofit Program Classification System being developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) provides a way to enrich the information available on nonprofits and utilize the newly available NCCS/PRI National Nonprofit Organization database from the IRS Forms 990 filed annually by charities. It provides a method to organize…

Following a brief discussion on the concept of teacher incentives, several types of teacher incentive research are described in relation to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) of the National Center for Education Statistics. Original national data from SASS relating to teacher incentive pay programs are reported. The three types of studies of…

Preliminary findings of this research effort provide support for the hypothesis that existing databases maintained by federal agencies for administrative or monitoring purposes can serve as useful data sources in special education policy research. The research explored the relationships among a number of state-level special education, fiscal, and…

A research project underway at the University of Arizona is described, and the usefulness of the national data system of the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) to institutional researchers, as well as some drawbacks of the system, are considered. The need for institutions to have data on enrollment, budgets, and faculty/students…

This report provides comparisons among the social indicator reports of seven countries including Canada, France, Great Britain, Japan, Norway, the United States, and West Germany. The purpose of social indicator research in each country is to provide a means for developing more adequate answers to the questions over present and emerging social…

The Vocational Education Data System (VEDS) data base was created as a result of the Vocational Education Amendments of 1976. VEDS statistics were to be collected in the form of state-aggregate data (that is, state-level data is submitted by each state, based upon records and data collected by the state for this and other purposes); and VEDS data,…

Information from the U.S. Government is appearing with increasing frequency on the Internet. In many cases, the Internet is the only place to locate important government information. Virtually all agencies maintain their own web pages, which include linked statistical data, news releases, and other full-text publications. In the future, more data…

The development and implementation of a planning and institutional research subsystem by Grambling State University (GSU) are described. Three components of the subsystem are as follows: the Grambling Institutional Data System (GRIDS), simulation and forecasting models, and the management reporting system. The way that GSU has improved the…

The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) is a large-scale longitudinal survey effort. The current data tapes contain base-year (1972) survey data integrated with first follow-up (1973) survey data. The base-year data consist of responses to a Student Questionnaire, the results of an ability test, and information from…

The development and implementation of an information system concerning full-time faculty are described. The system originated as a direct result of the need to complete the full-time faculty salaries, tenure, and fringe benefits section of the annual Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) report. This approach uses computer analysis…