Given the importance of education and the growing public demand for improving education quality under tight budget constraints, there has been an emerging movement to call for research-informed decisions in educational resource allocation. Despite the abundance of rigorous studies on the effectiveness, cost, and implementation of educational…

This paper examines the decisions and motivations of graduate students in cultural anthropology when defining the field sites and topics of their final projects. The decisions among students at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia are contrasted with those at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. A review of recent final projects…

Researchers in geography education have access to a wide range of research methods, spanning the quantitative-qualitative continuum. However, the choice of which methods to employ in one's research has a direct impact on the subsequent quality of the research findings and should therefore be carefully considered. This paper briefly explores the…

Community college students typically have access to a large selection of courses and programs, and therefore the student transcripts at any one college or college system tend to be very diverse. As a result, it is difficult for faculty, administrators, and researchers to understand the course-taking patterns of students in order to determine what…

Most institutions of higher education allow students to drop or add courses in the first 2-3 weeks of each term (D&A). Arguing that course cancellation is not merely an administrative issue involving enrollment trends but represents complex decision making processes taken by students, this study investigated antecedents and correlates of course…

This article familiarizes readers with how to analyze personnel selection decisions in employment discrimination litigation. First, the authors outline some of the basic legal principles that serve as the basis for analyses related to claims of discriminatory employment practices. Second, they describe how to conduct a scientific investigation of…

This paper described four experiments designed to provide insight into the mechanisms used to resolve difficult choices. (Author/RK)

Critiques the assessment of computer-assisted career guidance systems by Sampson et al. (CE 521 972), stating that the conceptual framework was sound and well developed and criteria were based on recognized experts. Limitations of the study are the assumption of equivalent effectiveness and the use of a checklist for comparing the systems. (SK)

This study compared media selection decisions novice instructional developers make when using an intuitive selection approach versus Reiser and Gagne's formal selection procedure. Formal selection procedure use results in media selection choices matching those of experienced developers, and more selection factors are considered when novices…

This paper reports on a project designed to examine how typical students of business and engineering went about choosing and being chosen by the organization for which they were going to work. (Author)

User's information needs and the tasks they face change over the stages of a research project. In previous research by Peiling Wang, a cognitive model of users' document selection behavior for their research projects was developed. This study looks at the general applicability of Wang's model to subsequent decision-making about items selected…

This guide to the economic analysis of media use in education reviews the evidence on the costs and benefits of educational media and provides a methodology for future decision-making. It includes chapters on establishing a framework for media choice, evaluating the effectiveness of media use, and analyzing costs. The empirical evidence from past…

Illustrates simple, inexpensive procedures for involving readers in decisions about which comics and light features to include in a newspaper. (RL)

A consumer research technique, conjoint analysis, was used to assess the relative importance of several factors in 104 fourth-year medical students' selection of specialty. Conjoint analysis appears to be a useful method for investigating the complex process of specialty selection. (SLD)

In choosing statistics texts for social science students, both the matter and the mode of presentation must be considered. Selecting a statistics text is not as straightforward as selecting a text in the student's major field. Five instruments were developed to explore aspects of selection of statistics texts. These are: (1) a student survey for…