The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evaluates research studies that look at the effectiveness of education programs, products, practices, and policies, which the WWC calls "interventions." Many studies of education interventions make claims about impacts on students' outcomes. Some studies have designs that enable readers to make causal…

As bibliometric indicators are objective, reliable, and cost-effective measures of peer-reviewed research outputs, they are expected to play an increasingly important role in research assessment/management. Recently, a bibliometric approach was developed and integrated within the evaluation framework of research funded by the National Cancer…

Designed to provide teachers in early childhood education and other interested educators with criteria for evaluating the quality of plot, characterization, and style in picture story books, this instrument uses a set of eight criteria for evaluating these literary elements. Each criterion is followed by statements that illustrate different ways…

The materials in this paper were drawn from an action caucus called to seek common criteria for the presentation and judging of oral interpretation and forensic tournaments. The first section of the paper consists of presentations made by participants. Topics covered in these presentations are (1) consistency in judging, (2) the role of oral…

The relative worth of any evaluation instrument depends on user needs and the material being evaluated. Potential users of a good computer assisted instruction (CAI) instrument include purchasers, authors, reviewers, and publishers of CAI materials. Although each user has unique needs, a good instrument will serve both to educate and discriminate,…

The Joint Dissemination Review Panel (JDRP), part of the U.S. Department of Education, is one of the most important federal mechanisms for recognizing quality in education. Although it has reviewed close to 700 projects in its 15-year history, the JDRP is still not widely known in the field of evaluation. This paper analyzes the JDRP process and…

Designed to provide guidance in selecting the appropriate microcomputer-based word processing program, this document discusses the key characteristics of word processing software, including formatting, editing, merging, and printing. Possible capabilities of word processing features are identified, i.e., indent, tab, center, creation of footnotes,…

Differences in sets of criteria for evaluating microcomputer software are discussed. They are set against the results of three studies in which teachers in the United Kingdom evaluated five programs which were used in reading or English lessons. A comparison of the checklist criteria with the case study data was made using Stake's (1967) matrix of…

A framework to aid in estimating the impact from educational research and development (R&D) products was developed at the National Center for Research in Vocational Education at the Ohio State University. The dimensions of the framework (product development, distribution, implementation, utilization and effects) are explained in detail. The…

Curriculum suppliers, state departments of education, and home school leaders, are the sources used to estimate that between 248,500 and 353,500 school-aged children (K-12) were educated at home in the 1990-91 school year. This paper explains how this estimate was derived. It provides information on process, possible bias, alternate survey…

The technique developed in this research paper for analyzing the information in charts and graphs is designed to reveal design flaws in the display that may prevent them from conveying information effectively. This analytic scheme requires isolating four types of constituents in a display and specifying their structure and interrelations at the…

Evaluating the effectiveness of career guidance programs is a complex process, and few comprehensive models for evaluating such programs exist. Evaluation of career guidance programs has been hampered by the myth that program outcomes are uniform and monolithic. Findings from studies of attribute treatment interactions have revealed only a few…

Designed to assist evaluators in selecting the appropriate software for the generation of various data collection instruments, this guide discusses such key program characteristics as text entry, item storage and manipulation, item retrieval, and printing. Some characteristics of a good instrument generation program are discussed; these include…

An optimal evaluation system should have five features if it is to both stimulate academic work and lead to fair decisions: clear expectations, feedback on performance, formative evaluation, summative evaluation, and differential rewards. Women and minorities were asked about their experiences in relation to these features. None had received…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the reasons for resistance to evaluation and the factors that affect adoption of new procedures, while focusing on a model for guiding the planning of evaluation implementation strategies. The process of adoption of an innovation occurs in three stages: orientation, where the user identifies benefits;…