Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus on challenges faced by longitudinal quantitative analyses of school improvement processes and offers a systematic literature review of current papers that use longitudinal analyses. In this context, the authors assessed designs and methods that are used to analyze the relation between school…

This review contributes to the growing body of global autism spectrum disorder literature by examining the use of screening instruments in low- and middle-income countries with respect to study design and methodology, instrument adaptation and performance, and collaboration with community stakeholders in research. A systematic review was conducted…

Reporting standards and critical appraisal tools serve as beacons for researchers, reviewers, and research consumers. Parallel to existing guidelines for researchers to report and evaluate group-comparison studies, single-case experimental (SCE) researchers are in need of guidelines for reporting and evaluating SCE studies. A systematic search was…

Beginning in 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on an ambitious grant- making strategy to improve education outcomes primarily in the city of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Known as The Education Initiative, this effort focused on three priority grant areas: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. In…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a basis for judging the adequacy of evaluation plans or, as they are commonly called, evaluation designs. The authors assume that using the procedures suggested in this paper to determine the adequacy of evaluation designs in advance of actually conducting evaluations will lead to better evaluation designs,…

This article is a response to the growing criticisms of the British Educational Research Association (BERA) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) ethical guidelines on anonymity and pseudonymity as default positions for participants in qualitative educational research. It discusses and responds to those criticisms under four…

Background: The philosophical underpinnings of evaluation guidelines set forth by a funding agency can sometimes seem inconsistent with that of the intervention. Purpose: Our purpose is to introduce questions pertaining to the contrast between the instructional program's underlying philosophical beliefs and assumptions and those underlying our…

Good evaluation requires that evaluation efforts themselves be evaluated. Many things can and often do go wrong in evaluation work. Accordingly, it is necessary to check evaluations for problems such as bias, technical error, administrative difficulties, and misuse. Such checks are needed both to improve ongoing evaluation activities and to assess…

P. R. Killeen's (2005a) probability of replication ("p[subscript rep]") of an experimental result is the fiducial Bayesian predictive probability of finding a same-sign effect in a replication of an experiment. "p[subscript rep]" is now routinely reported in "Psychological Science" and has also begun to appear in…

This article describes a research-driven heuristic for the scholarly evaluation of teaching and learning interventions, which is systematic, collaborative, and discipline focused. We offer this guide to educational developers and other instructional support staff who are tracking the impact of interventions in teaching and learning with academic…

In this chapter, the author proposes a model for assessing institutional effectiveness. The Volkwein model for assessing institutional effectiveness consists of five parts that summarize the steps for assessing institutions, programs, faculty, and students. The first step in the model distinguishes the dual purposes of institutional effectiveness:…

Evaluative statements from alumni have legitimacy with both internal and external stakeholders. Thus, alumni studies can provide valuable evidence of institutional effectiveness and lend themselves to both locally designed and commercial survey instruments for data collection. Under ideal conditions, the results of alumni studies equip faculty and…

E-learning in the European Higher Education Area has stampeded its way to the foreground of the Quality Assurance (QA) forum, and has become a key issue among quality assurance agencies and institutions in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Because internet-based learning is currently such a relevant topic, there is a dire need for the…

A research design is used to find out how effective a given piece of research has been. This short course in the fundamentals of research design is intended to bring together a few typical examples and a few generally accepted principles of research in a practical kit. After a brief introduction on how to progress from data that is uncountable to…

Human resource development (HRD) practitioners are adding storytelling to their box of tactical and strategic tools. This qualitative research study investigates how HRD practitioners in for-profit settings apply storytelling as a means of advancing organizational goals. The primary focus of practitioners is on instrumental application of stories…