The clustered observational study (COS) design is the observational study counterpart to the clustered randomized trial. In a COS, a treatment is assigned to intact groups, and all units within the group are exposed to the treatment. However, the treatment is non-randomly assigned. COSs are common in both education and health services research. In…

In education research, small samples are common because of financial limitations, logistical challenges, or exploratory studies. With small samples, statistical principles on which researchers rely do not hold, leading to trust issues with model estimates and possible replication issues when scaling up. Researchers are generally aware of such…

Education planning provides the policy maker and the decision maker a logical framework in which to develop and implement education policy. At the international level, education planning is often confounded by both internal and external complexities, making the development of education policy difficult. This research presents a discrete event…

Use of multivariate analysis (e.g., multivariate analysis of variance) is common when normally distributed outcomes are collected in intervention research. However, when mixed responses--a set of normal and binary outcomes--are collected, standard multivariate analyses are no longer suitable. While mixed responses are often obtained in…

The article proposes a self-study system which suggests web links to learners. The suggestions depend upon the learner's chosen competences selected from a competence structure for a particular knowledge domain. Three experiments were conducted, where the first compared the perceived usefulness and value of the links generated by different…

This study investigated the longitudinal development of L2 vocabulary by 17 individual adult L2 learners in an English as a second language (ESL) instructed context over one academic year, combining a longitudinal case study design with two cross-sectional comparisons in order to enhance (a) detailed documentation addressing the idiosyncrasy of L2…

This report examines theoretical and empirical issues related to the statistical power of impact estimates under clustered regression discontinuity (RD) designs. The theory is grounded in the causal inference and HLM modeling literature, and the empirical work focuses on commonly-used designs in education research to test intervention effects on…

The paper reviews a construct validation framework for research on the selection and evaluation of residents. The application of the proposed methodology to surgery residents is described. The need to measure non-cognitive and neuropsychological factors in addition to cognitive knowledge and technical ability is emphasized. (Author/MLW)

This article describes the evolution of Raymond B. Cattell's data box (covariation chart), a synoptic conception of psychological data, from its introduction in 1946. Analytical techniques and related methodologies developed from this model by Cattell and other psychological researchers are discussed. (BS)

The technique of multivariate analysis is particularly suited to educational needs assessment research because it allows for the summarization of data across any number of learners or components of educational need to produce a single numerical index of need for each skill examined. In the needs assessment process, educational or training need is…

A two-stage procedure for the analysis of pretest-posttest data was developed and illustrated. Data were reanalyzed from a quasi-experimental evaluation that assessed the effects of an intervention program to teach elementary school children aged 10 to 12 years to watch violence on television more carefully/critically. The treatment group…