Factor analysis is a versatile class of psychometric techniques used by researchers to provide insight into the psychological dimensions (factors) that may account for the relationships among variables in a given dataset. The primary goal of a factor analysis is to determine a more parsimonious set of variables (i.e., fewer than the number of…

We developed a criterion-referenced student rating of instruction (SRI) to facilitate formative assessment of teaching. It involves four dimensions of teaching quality that are grounded in current instructional design principles: Organization and structure, Assessment and feedback, Personal interactions, and Academic rigor. Using item response…

Despite our best efforts as evaluators, program implementation failures abound. A wide variety of valuable methodologies have been adopted to explain and evaluate the "why" of these failures. Yet, typically these methodologies have been employed concurrently (e.g., project monitoring) or to the post-hoc assessment of program activities.…

In light of the emergence of statistical analysis techniques based on data mining in education sciences, and the potential they offer to detect non-trivial information in large databases, this paper presents a procedure used to detect factors linked to academic achievement in large-scale assessments. The study is based on a non-experimental,…

Background: Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience high rates of physical and mental health problems; yet their health care is often inadequate. Information about their characteristics and health services needs is critical for planning efficient and equitable services. A logical source of such information is…

This article offers new directions in measuring racial isolation in schools. The most widely used measurement approach is to examine the mean on the distribution of school percentage non-White across non-White students (the isolation rate) or the percentage of non-White students in schools with large shares of non-Whites (e.g., 90% or more) at a…

In this article, the authors clarify and provide additional tests of the key elements of their age-period-cohort analysis of non-marital birth rates in this March 2009 issue of "Social Forces." Where Steve Martin, in his commentary, has suggested specific alternative specifications or interpretations of their findings, the authors have…

Often quantitative data in the social sciences have only ordinal justification. Problems of interpretation can arise when least squares multiple regression (LSMR) is used with ordinal data. Two ordinal alternatives are discussed, dominance-based ordinal multiple regression (DOMR) and proportional odds multiple regression. The Q[superscript 2]…

Common elements identified as context variables that may affect student evaluation of instruction are explored, and the literature on student ratings of teacher effectiveness is reviewed. Sociocultural context variables (gender, race, ethnicity, and social class variables) are discussed in terms of stereotyping and prejudice found with…