This paper presents the Agresti & Coull "Adjusted Wald" method for computing confidence intervals and margins of error for common proportion estimates. The presented method is easily implementable by business students and practitioners and provides more accurate estimates of proportions particularly in extreme samples and small…

This discussion constructs a survey data quality strategy for institutional researchers in higher education in light of total survey error theory. It starts with describing the characteristics of institutional research and identifying the gaps in literature regarding survey data quality issues in institutional research and then introduces the…

This paper intends to construct a survey data quality strategy for institutional researchers in higher education in light of total survey error theory. It starts with describing the characteristics of institutional research and identifying the gaps in literature regarding survey data quality issues in institutional research. Then it is followed by…

Weighting and variance estimation are two statistical issues involved in survey data analysis for large-scale assessment programs such as the Higher Education Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy Assessment. Because survey data are always acquired by probability sampling, to draw unbiased or almost unbiased inferences for the…

This activity makes students a part of an investigation that determines the frequency of a particular plant variety in a simulated population. Provides an opportunity for students to observe the inherent variability of estimates, observe the relationship between sample size and sampling error, and consider aspects of research design. (Author/SAH)

Given a loss function, an asymptotic method for optimal test design for a specified target population of examinees is presented. Also, of more practical use, given an existing unidimensional test and target population, a way is presented to find the loss function for which the test is optimal. (NSF)

The purpose of this survey was to identify the statistics texts most frequently used by psychology departments and to see if a typical survey of textbooks used by a partial sample of psychology departments would be accurate in describing the entire sample of departments. Partial returns resulted in a meaningful error. (RM)

Describes an activity designed to introduce concepts of randomness and standard deviation. (CP)

BRRVAR, which uses the Balanced Repeated Replication approach, was designed for use with the Statistical Analysis System (SAS). It was created for the National Center for Education Statistics, to enlarge their capacity to estimate and analyze sampling errors for statistics generated from educational surveys with complex sampling designs. BRRVAR…

This report is about the problem of making transition or enrollment rate gains comparable. It is shown that measures based on the proportions themselves, i.e. the difference between proportions, the proportion ratio and the residual gain ratio do not make the gains comparable. Instead a non-linear transformation has to be done. Two such…

The 1991 Survey of Recent College Graduates (RCG:91) is the sixth study in a series begun in 1976. The series provides data on the occupational and educational outcomes of recent bachelor's and master's graduates one year after graduation. The survey was conducted by Westat, Inc. in a two-stage sample involving 400 institutions of higher education…

This self-instructional manual for psychological assessment focuses on the following topics: (1) general statistics, (2) central tendency, (3) random, continuous, and discrete variables, (4) variability, (5) measuring variability, (6) sampling, (7) derived scores, (8) covariation, (9) reliability and validity, and (10) standard error of…

With the help of widely available microcomputers, it is possible to demonstrate certain statistical phenomena which students of statistics are usually expected to take on faith. Two demonstrations are described. In the first demonstration, three common types of sampling (simple random, biased, and stratified-random) are used to compare statistics…

Presents a general framework for designing sampling programs that ensure cost effectiveness, and managed errors kept within known and acceptable limits. (LZ)

Effect sizes have been increasingly emphasized in research as more researchers have recognized that: (1) all parametric analyses (t-tests, analyses of variance, etc.) are correlational; (2) effect sizes have played an important role in meta-analytic work; and (3) statistical significance testing is limited in its capacity to inform scientific…