Durkheim's nineteenth-century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century, however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the…

The increasing availability of massive volumes of scientific data requires new synthetic analysis techniques to explore and identify interesting patterns that are otherwise not apparent. For biodiversity studies, a "data-driven" approach is necessary because of the complexity of ecological systems, particularly when viewed at large spatial and…

This "Practitioner's Guide to Growth Models," commissioned by the Technical Issues in Large-Scale Assessment (TILSA) and Accountability Systems & Reporting (ASR), collaboratives of the "Council of Chief State School Officers," describes different ways to calculate student academic growth and to make judgments about the…

The data collected in higher education research are not always quantitative or continuous. Statistical methods using the log-linear model provide the institutional researcher with a powerful set of tools for addressing research questions when data are categorical. (Author/MSE)