In recent years, improving the quantitative methods used to assess the effect of college, and particular college experiences, on student outcomes has received increased attention (e.g., Mayhew et al., 2016). In "How College Affects Students," Mayhew et al. (2016) highlighted the importance of issues of practical vs. statistical…

Internationally, the political appetite for educational measurement capable of capturing a metric of value for money and effectiveness has momentum. While most would agree with the need to assess costs relevant to quality to help support better governmental policy decisions about public spending, poorly understood measurement comes with unintended…

Information Integration Theory (IIT) is concerned with how people combine information into an overall judgment. A method is hereby presented to perform Functional Measurement (FM) experiments, the methodological counterpart of IIT, on the Web. In a comparison of Web-based FM experiments, face-to-face experiments, and computer-based experiments in…

Most assessment arguments are about measurement. When is it better to use direct versus indirect measures of student learning? Is one standardized test of critical thinking better than another? Is applying rubrics to student work better than using standardized tests? How valid are self-reported measures of learning? Although these arguments are…

In this article, we argue that educational technology research has spent too long trapped in a paradigm of simplistic comparisons, wherein normal science consists of evaluating a technology-based intervention by contrasting it with some established set of educational practices. Our argument is different in significant ways from the claim that…

While peer review is a common practice in college composition courses, there is little consistency in approach and effectiveness within the field, owing in part to the dearth of empirical research that investigates peer-review processes. This study is designed to shed light on what a peer reviewer actually reads and attends to while providing…

Examines the effect on observer agreement when reliability measurement is switched from an overt system to two successive systems of covert measurement. Subjects were 17 undergraduate psychology students. (BD)

This article provides a broad overview of the definition of web-based surveys examining some of the benefits and burdens related to using the Web for data collection. It draws upon the experience of two years of data collection on 10 university campuses demonstrating that there are noticeable differences in the speed with which web-based surveys…

Methodological problems in the traditional measurement of college environment are discussed, including the choice of relevant variables and indicators, the different levels or spheres within an institution, and the relationship between student perceptions and evaluation. An alternative model is proposed and supported with data from a longitudinal…

The vast amount of research conducted on student persistence over the past thirty years is indicative of the continuing and evolving interest in retention of students. Framed through multiple perspectives, this retention research is driven by the fact that more students leave institutions without graduating, year after year. Much more than an…

A two-step procedure is described and used to revise a multidimensional inventory in its developmental stages. First, the latent factors influencing the observed variables on the inventory are determined and justified using the following five methods: Kaiser's criterion, root staring, examination of difference values, examination of root mean…

Examined whether couples could accurately report on asymmetrical interaction patterns and whether particular patterns were associated with relationship distress. Undergraduate couples (N=55) completed a questionnaire describing interaction patterns. Agreement on pattern occurrence between couples was low but significantly greater than chance.…

The utility of combining confirmatory factor analysis and second-order methods is illustrated in a study of responses of 487 undergraduate and graduate students to the love instrument of C. Hendrick and S. Hendrick. Second-order confirmatory methods allow the researcher to explore complex realities more thoroughly. (SLD)

Three studies were conducted to test the beliefs that respondents' lack of opinions on public issues offer a realistic explanation for the inconsistencies of opinion measurement and that public opinion researchers may err by forcing respondents to express opinions they really do not hold. The first study, a survey of 612 adults, asked the subjects…