This dissertation consists of three manuscripts. The manuscripts contribute to a budding "methodological reform" currently taking place in quantitative second-language (L2) research. In the first manuscript, the researcher describes an empirical investigation on the application of two well-known effect size estimators, eta-squared (eta…

Abstract Preschoolers' cognitive abilities were assessed each year as part of the Head Start Program requirements. The Head Start PK-4 Center evaluated preschoolers' cognition by administering the Learning Accomplishment Profile-Diagnostic (LAP-D), as a pretest and posttest measure. The LAP-D study used archival data collected from the 2009-2010…

Previous literature suggests that academic achievement and self-concept among adolescents in the general education population are positively related (e.g., Huang, 2011). For students with disabilities, however, the correlation between academic achievement and self-concept is sometimes negative and non-significant (Daniel & King, 1995; Feiwell,…

There is growing use of business intelligence (BI) for better management decisions in industry. However, empirical studies on BI are still scarce in academic research. This research investigates BI from an organizational agility perspective. Organizational agility is the ability to sense and respond to market opportunities and threats with speed,…

Spatial or temporal data mining tasks are performed in the context of the relevant space, defined by a spatial neighborhood, and the relevant time period, defined by a specific time interval. Furthermore, when mining large spatio-temporal datasets, interesting patterns typically emerge where the dataset is most dynamic. This dissertation is…

Researchers that investigate the media's coverage of health have historically relied on keyword searches to retrieve relevant health news coverage, and manual content analysis methods to categorize and score health news text. These methods are problematic. Manual content analysis methods are labor intensive, time consuming, and inherently…

The question of whether or not linguistic sounds might convey inherent meaning has never conclusively been resolved. This is an empirical study weighing evidence for and against the existence of phonosemantics, also known as sound symbolism or iconism. Contrary to well established principles such as the arbitrary nature of the sign and the double…

The recognition of second language (L2) development as a dynamic process has led to different claims about how language development unfolds, what represents a learner's linguistic system (i.e., interlanguage) at a certain point in time, and how that system changes over time (Verspoor, de Bot, & Lowie, 2011). Responding to de Bot and…