The purpose of this study was to explore the present status of efforts to assess student-learning outcomes within the bachelor's degree granting institutions of the campuses in one system of public higher education. Further, the purpose of this study was also to understand what challenges and criticisms academic leaders report about the call to…

After a brief introduction and discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of questionnaires, this publication explains how to develop a questionnaire. Each of the five parts of a questionnaire (heading, procedural statements, items, comment space, and procedures for return) are discussed, with concrete examples. Guidelines for pre-test/tryout…

Before vocational instructional products are adopted for statewide dissemination in South Carolina, they must undergo a field test. An effective field test design incorporates collection of data about the instructional products, the students, and the teachers who use the products. The design of a control group and an experimental group compares…

This report describes the methodology and findings of the NSOPF:04 field test that took place during the 2002?03 academic year. The NSOPF:04 field test was used to plan, implement, and evaluate methodological procedures, instruments, and systems proposed for use in the full-scale study scheduled for the 2003-04 academic year. The field test was…

This report describes and evaluates the methods and procedures used for the field test of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:2000/01). The B&B:2000/01 field test included important changes from previous B&B surveys (conducted in 1994 and 1997) in its sample design and collection of data. The introductory chapter…

The last decade has seen the emergence in the policy arena of a new form of qualitative research, one intended to strenghten its ability to generalize while preserving in-depth description. These multisite qualitative studies address the same research question using similar data collection and analysis procedures in a number of settings. To gain…

In comparison with traditional experimental design, which is concerned with what happened, a case study approach is more appropriate for answering the question of why or how something happened. As an alternative complementary-vocational-education-evaluation approach, the case study attempts to describe and analyze some program in comprehensive…

A project was undertaken to explore the prospects of conducting employer followup surveys concerning the graduates of a selected vocational program and to devise a procedure that would categorize the small number of employers to be sampled in such a way that useful data for possible program change could be obtained and analyzed. During the…

This report presents the field tests plan including site selection for the Basic Skill Development Through Vocational Education Project. (The project's purpose is to develop Resource and Teacher Guides to provide vocational and occupational education teachers with information about ways of incorporating basic skills instruction into occupational…

Along with the rapid expansion over the past decade of Head Start, a program providing comprehensive early childhood development services to low-income children, their families, and their communities, has come the demand for rigorous research to demonstrate program effectiveness. This report describes the proposed design of a national study of the…

The Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B:93) tracks the experiences of a cohort of recent college graduates, those who received the baccalaureate degree during the 1992-93 academic year and were first interviewed as part of the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. The experiences of this group in the areas of academic…

This document is a guide to the use of alternative assessments (surveys, interviews, observation measures, and performance samples) in a family literacy project. This resource guide focuses on using alternative approaches to identify learners' needs, determine learners' ongoing progress in meeting project objectives, ascertain overall success of…

The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is a comprehensive nationwide study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics to determine how students and their families pay for postsecondary education and to describe some demographic and other characteristics of those enrolled. The study is based on a nationally…