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…

Mixed-Method studies have emerged from the paradigm wars between qualitative and quantitative research approaches to become a widely used mode of inquiry. Depending on choices made across four dimensions, mixed-methods can provide an investigator with many design choices which involve a range of sequential and concurrent strategies. Defining…

To enhance their competitive advantage in the marketplace, many business leaders develop market orientation strategies designed to increase customer engagement. These market orientation strategies include improvement in service delivery, relationship management, customer satisfaction, and quality control methods. There is a lack of understanding…

After more than two decades of external quality assurance, there is an increasing interest in questions concerning the impact and effects of this activity. Following an external evaluation of NOKUT--the Norwegian quality assurance agency, this article studies the impact of external quality assurance in detail by analysing quantitative and…

The marching trend of the new economic order has generated a new capsule of SIX SIGMA as a unified approach to process excellence. The tests reveal that it has transformed some of the most successful companies in the world like Motorola, GE etc. It is activated as an approach to aiming at the target by changing the culture of a company, involving…

Introduction: Deficiencies in physician competence play an important role in medical errors and poor-quality health care. National trends toward implementation of continuous assessment of physicians hold potential for significant impact on patient care because minor deficiencies can be identified before patient safety is threatened. However, the…

Purpose: The quality of an education system or a comparative international assessment refers more and more to quantitative parameters, i.e. "educational indicators." The paper aims to analyse the structure of several educational indicators and indicator systems and answer the question "What can educational indicators achieve?"…

Within the fields of human performance technology (HPT), human resources management (HRM), and management in general, performance measurement is not only foundational but considered necessary at all phases in the process of HPT. In HPT in particular, there is substantial advice literature on what measurement is, why it is essential, and (at a…

Describes a method for evaluating faculty workload (measured by time spent in teaching, research, and service) by using process control charts with supplementary run rules that can identify potential overload or underload. (SK)

Purpose: The United Kingdom (UK) has recently published secondary education value added measures. This paper examines whether the approach used could also offer a possible method for measuring value added in higher education (HE). Design/methodology/approach: Previous attempts to measure HE value added in the UK, such as comparative value added…

Purpose: Despite the abundance of research on quality management there is no universal consensus on how best to measure quality in higher education. This paper undertakes a critical evaluation of the different methods used to assess the quality of provision in higher education departments in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on relevant…

A subset of Statistical Process Control (SPC) methodology known as Control Charting is introduced. SPC methodology is a collection of graphical and inferential statistics techniques used to study the progress of phenomena over time. The types of control charts covered are the null X (mean), R (Range), X (individual observations), MR (moving…

The Prince George's County (Maryland) school system has developed a database warehouse system as an evaluation data support tool for fulfilling the system's information demands. This paper described the Research and Evaluation Assimilation Database (READ) warehouse support system and considers the requirements for data used in evaluation and how…

Demonstrates how alumni research can be designed to focus program assessment on student outcomes and be responsive to program goals, administrators' policy concerns, faculty instructional values, and professional practice standards. Based on study of 347 teacher education master's degree recipients, the paper presents a conceptual framework and…

Interest in Total Quality Management (TQM) at institutions of higher education has been stressed in recent years as an important area of activity for institutional researchers. Two previous AIR Forum papers have presented some of the statistical and graphical methods used for TQM. This paper, the third in the series, first discusses some of the…