What topic would you choose if you had the luxury of writing forever? In this article, John Thelin provides his response: He would opt to write about the history of higher education in a way that relies on quantitative data. "Numbers, please!" is his research request in taking on a longitudinal study of colleges and universities over…

Issues concerning the collection and uses of data about college student retention are considered. Some of the documented findings about student retention in U.S. colleges is summarized, with attention to both national data and data for colleges belonging to the United Negro College Fund. Difficulties in obtaining useful retention data are…

Criticizes the large amount of often irrelevant, poorly designed, and poorly written quantitative journalism research. Notes that journalism education and mass communication education research published in scholarly journals is largely ignored by professional journalists, who find more value in the qualitative research reported in the journalism…

A University of Arizona undergraduate pharmacy course designed to develop student skills in evaluation of research has five parts: introduction to the scientific method; statistical techniques/data analysis review; research design; fundamentals of clinical studies; and practical applications. Prerequisites include biostatistics and drug…

This book is intended for a one-semester or one-term course in educational research. It is designed to enable students to become intelligent consumers of educational research and to introduce its basic principles to those who eventually may be involved in research in their work. The chapters are: (1) "Introduction to Research in Education"; (2)…

Using the 1995 National Research Council ratings of doctoral programs in 41 fields, a statistical methodology is offered for assessing how measures of program size, faculty seniority, faculty research productivity, and faculty productivity in producing doctoral degrees influenced raters' decisions. Then using data for one field, economics,…

A research program is suggested that integrates admissions procedures and methods of statistical analysis to study the first stage of the admissions selection process: the rating of applicants. A systematic procedure is described that provides an index of applicant "quality" in the light of institutional goals. (Author/MLW)

Presents results of a survey comparing British and U.S. political scientists' familiarity with different journals, evaluations of journal quality, and measures of journal impact. Concludes that British and U.S. subjects agree about quality but read different sets of journals. Reports the two groups' familiarity with different literature,…

Increased demands for colleges and universities to engage in outcomes assessment for accountability purposes have accelerated the need to bridge the gap between higher education practice and the fields of measurement, assessment, and evaluation. The "Handbook on Measurement, Assessment, and Evaluation in Higher Education" provides higher…

A survey of institutions concerning their reporting of data on the Higher Education General Information Survey and specifically examining the differences in definitions and calculations among reporting institutions, confirmed suspected problems of comparability of information. The impact of these differences on data interpretation is discussed.…

The communication of research findings among collegiate institutional researchers is considered in relation to the contribution of qualitative language in general, and catastrophe theory in particular. The qualitative language of catastrophe theory may help reduce the arbitrariness of description, through identification of qualitative features…

In 1993 over one hundred respondents submitted data in response to the National Science Foundation's annual survey of federal funds for research and development. Agencies reported their data as obligations and outlays incurred or expected to be incurred regardless of when they were appropriated. These tables present data for 33 agencies for fiscal…

Possible impacts of changing information technology on the role of the institutional researcher, who serves as a decision support intermediary, are examined. Attention is directed to measurement, human information processing, and decision support technology. It is noted that management information systems are dependent on measurement for data…

Analyzes the use of relevant international data to inform educational policy. Notes that such data can be used to extend research on school effects by incorporating comparative data, by evaluating the trade-offs involved in attempts to raise national achievement levels, and by broadening the range of international data. (MJP)

Analyzes a research project that utilizes a coherent conceptual model of art education research incorporating the demand for empirical rigor and providing for diverse interpretive frameworks. Briefly profiles the NUD*IST (Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing) software system that can organize and retrieve complex…