The present analysis is a reframing of an earlier study conducted by the author to compensate for perceived deficiencies in previous studies on police decisions in sexual assault complaints. Specifically, qualitative comparative analysis was employed at the micro-social level to reveal justification scenarios, employed by investigating…

Opponents of school choice argue that private schools are not "accountable" because they are not subject to detailed oversight by a regulatory bureaucracy. They claim private school employees can be expected to engage in abusive and criminal behavior more frequently. School choice supporters respond that parents hold private schools…

Data mining of IPEDS data is used to develop models that calculate predicted graduation rates for two- and four-year institutions. (Contains 7 tables and 5 figures.)

Previous works in English have revealed that disfluencies follow regular patterns and that incorporating them into the language model of a speech recognizer leads to lower perplexities and sometimes to a better performance. Although work on disfluency modeling has been applied outside the English community (e.g., in Japanese), as far as we know…

This project examined the use of quantitative statistical models to bridge the gap between commonly available university data and knowledge for decision making. A method using a multivariate statistical model is discussed in the context of academic quality in higher education. A "problem-oriented" data base designed to study quality and…

Recently, to encourage secondary analysis, the federal government has begun to arrange for public policy data to be documented, archived and released to the public. The purpose of this document is to provide government project officers with guidelines for archiving government-sponsored data files. The guidelines represent a model for…

This paper summarizes and discusses recent research in computer assisted instruction, specifically in the subject areas of reading comprehension and skills, composition, and organizational communication and information utilization. A "grounded theory" approach based on educational needs is proposed for future research. There are 26 references and…

Revised to reflect changes in both DIALOG and ERIC, this second edition of a self-improvement manual for online searchers who wish to refine their skills presents three basic approaches to searching and provides illustrations from DIALOG's ERIC ONTAP database. The manual is divided into two parts: an 8-step model of the total search process which…

Arguments presented against securing computer programs by copyright are centered on the question of whether computer programs qualify under the U.S. Constitutional meaning as "works of authorship," which may be protected by copyright. The possibility that the protection of computer programs by copyright might have an undesirable impact…

This report examines a series of general models that represent the process of merging records from separate files when it becomes essential to inhibit identifiability of records in at least one of the files. Models are illustrated symbolically by flow diagrams, and examples of each variation are taken from the social sciences. These variations…

Four observations about computers and education are offered. 1) By 1972, development of new computer systems had fallen off, and several systems developed in the mid-1960's had been terminated. The decline was particularly intense in computer-based vocational guidance systems and in computer-assisted instruction projects. The only area showing…

Presents a model for the evaluation of database management systems software from the viewpoint of librarians and information specialists. The properties of data management systems, database management systems, and text retrieval systems are outlined and compared. (10 references) (CLB)

The Hepatitis Knowledge Base (text of prototype information system) was used for modifying and testing "A Navigator of Natural Language Organized (Textual) Data" (ANNOD), a retrieval system which combines probabilistic, linguistic, and empirical means to rank individual paragraphs of full text for similarity to natural language queries…

The National Academy of Sciences suggests models for biomedical research which include a biology-wide information system with computerized database accessible from a multitude of dimensions. Links could help discover whether toxic chemicals have effects similar to hormones. Commonalities from molecules to ecosystems might restructure available…

This report provides preliminary findings and a summary of study activities for Stage I of a project that examined public library Internet services that could impact the Digital Divide. The first section discusses the E-rate program and the Digital Divide, including closing the gap in the Digital Divide and public library Internet connectivity and…