Reform efforts in statistics education emphasize the need for students to develop statistical thinking. Critical to this goal is a solid understanding of design in the process of collecting data, evaluating evidence, and drawing conclusions. We collected survey responses from over 700 college students at the start of an introductory statistics…

This publication describes the methods and procedures used for the 2008/18 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:08/18). The B&B graduates, who completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree during the 2007-08 academic year, were first surveyed as part of the 2008 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:08), and then…

This article provides an overview of research methodologies and designs, sample techniques and approaches, research ethics, and strategies for assisting students with research in the new normal. Each strategy offers some advantages and disadvantages. In times of global health emergencies, virtual surveys surpassed traditional methods. Replacing…

This report describes the design, methods, and results of the 2016/20 Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:16/20) conducted by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). It is the second follow-up with a cohort of bachelor's degree recipients originally identified during the 2015-16 National…

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…

This article tackles the question whether it is a viable strategy to conduct online surveys among university students in developing countries. By documenting the methodology of the National Service Scheme Survey conducted in Ghana, we set out to answer three questions: (1) How can a sample of university students be obtained? (2) How can students…

The effect of using tests in test preparation courses has been subject to debate. While some scholars such as Yang and Badger (2015) believe it is a cause of positive washback effect, others argue that this issue is tentative and context-bound (Green, 2007). Therefore, this study investigated the effect of using Mock tests in International English…

Studies of the effects of class attendance on class performance typically are quasi-experimental because students choose whether or not to attend class; that is, the samples are self-selecting. The lack of random assignment prevents one from establishing a causal relationship between attendance and performance. Relating attendance to performance…

Students with disabilities experience poorer post-school outcomes compared with their peers without disabilities. Existing experimental literature on "what works" for improving these outcomes is rare; however, a rapidly growing body of research investigates correlational relationships between experiences in school and post-school…

Survey sampling is fundamentally an applied field. The goal in this book is to put an array of tools at the fingertips of practitioners by explaining approaches long used by survey statisticians, illustrating how existing software can be used to solve survey problems, and developing some specialized software where needed. This book serves at least…

The present study attempted to replicate the finding (Frase, 1973) that different organizations of a passage produce different levels of recall and also to determine if relevant learning might be less subject to these organizational effects than incidential learning. (Author)

The 2004/06 Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:04/06), conducted for the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), collected information about the education and employment experiences of students in the two years following their first enrollment in postsecondary education. The primary…

To establish a comprehensive national database on postsecondary student financial aid, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted the 1987 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Objectives were to: (1) determine the costs of postsecondary education for aided and non-aided students; (2) evaluate how students finance their…

The literature and typical approaches to reducing attrition among college students are critiqued, and a strategy for the identification of different interventions likely to have positive effects on retention rates of different student subgroups is proposed. It is claimed that a small sample approach to empirical testing of the combinations of…

This report describes the methods and procedures used for the 1996 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:96). NPSAS:96, which surveyed over 830 postsecondary education institutions and over 34,000 students and parents, included important changes from previous NPSAS studies conducted in 1987, 1990, and 1993 in its sample design and data…