Extension professionals often assess community needs to determine programs and target audiences. Data can be collected through surveys, focus group and individual interviews, meta-analysis, systematic observation, and other methods. Knowledge gaps are identified, and programs are designed to resolve the deficiencies. However, do Extension…

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…

Discusses three topics related to interpretation of discriminant analyses (DA's): (1) partial F ratios and partial Wilks's lambdas for predictor variables in standard, step-down, and stepwise DA's; (2) relation of goals of classification to definition/evaluation of classification rules; and (3) significance tests for total hit rates in internal…