Causal asymmetry is a situation where the causal factors under study are more suitable for explaining the outcome than its absence (or vice versa); they do not explain both equally well. In such a situation, presence of a cause leads to presence of the effect, but absence of the cause may not lead to absence of the effect. A conceptual discussion…

The study of causal mechanisms interests scholars across the social sciences. Case studies can be a valuable tool in developing knowledge and hypotheses about how causal mechanisms function. The usefulness of case studies in the search for causal mechanisms depends on effective case selection, and there are few existing guidelines for selecting…

On the one hand, a growing amount of research discusses support for improving online collaborative learning quality, and many indicators are focused to assess its success. On the other hand, thinkLets for designing reputable and valuable collaborative processes have been developed for more than ten years. However, few studies try to apply…

There are usually limited user evaluation of resources on a recommender system, which caused an extremely sparse user rating matrix, and this greatly reduce the accuracy of personalized recommendation, especially for new users or new items. This paper presents a recommendation method based on rating prediction using causal association rules.…

To assess the value of individual students' subscores on the Major Field Test in Business (MFT Business), I examined the test's internal structure with factor analysis and structural equation model methods, and analyzed the subscore reliabilities using the augmented scores method. Analyses of the internal structure suggested that the MFT Business…

There are two mainstream curricula for international school students at the junior high level: the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) and the Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE). The former was developed in the mid-1990s and is currently being relaunched in a 21st-century approach.…

Educators continue to have difficulty reforming English curricula in ways that better serve the needs of second language learners. This difficulty is perpetuated, in part, by the inability to predict how such changes will affect morphosyntactic development. To date, ESL research has failed to effectively ascertain how multiple causes influence the…

Background: The connection between childhood violence exposure and antisocial behavior in adolescence has received much attention and has important implications for understanding and preventing criminal behavior. However, there are a limited number of well-designed prospective studies that can suggest a causal relationship, and little is known…

This paper examines the cost effectiveness of educating boarding and day secondary students in Kisumu district in Kenya. The research designs used in this study were descriptive survey and casual comparative designs. The population consisted of five head teachers, 140 form four teachers and 609 form four students. Saturated and systematic random…

Background: Recent studies suggest that the association between maternal age at childbearing (MAC) and children's disruptive behaviors is the result of family factors that are confounded with both variables, rather than a casual effect of environmental factors specifically related to MAC. These studies, however, relied on restricted samples and…

The purpose of the study reported on in this paper was to identify and compare instructors' and students' perceptions of Team-Based Learning (TBL). Participants were 270 instructors and 288 fourth year students from the faculties of Industrial Education at six universities in Bangkok. The data were analyzed using factor analysis and structural…

In this article welfare systems and support networks are empirically analyzed to determine which generate the highest level of subjective well-being among retired persons. Propositions derived from support network theories and national welfare system typologies have been analyzed using causal models that indicate the influence of the various…

An analytical approach was employed to compare sensitivity of causal effect estimates with different assumptions on treatment noncompliance and non-response behaviors. The core of this approach is to fully clarify bias mechanisms of considered models and to connect these models based on common parameters. Focusing on intention-to-treat analysis,…

The terms "causal-comparative" and "correlational" are dated and misleading and suggest a false dichotomy in research. Textbook authors should stop misleading educational research students and researchers in training with the notion that causal-comparative research provides better evidence for causality than correlational research. They should…

This study investigates the causal coherence of deaf students' written narratives and the relation between students' use of causal structures in narrative writing and their linguistic skills. The written narratives of 17 deaf high school students were compared with those of 2 groups of hearing writers: 17 high school students and 16 second…