A large number of approaches have been proposed for estimating and testing the significance of indirect effects in mediation models. In this study, four sets of Monte Carlo simulations involving full latent variable structural equation models were run in order to contrast the effectiveness of the currently popular bias-corrected bootstrapping…

Early childhood education programs play an important role in child family-to-school transition. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10, the California Children and Families Act, which levied a 50-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes and other tobacco products to finance programs for children ages 0-5. In less than two decades, First 5…

The purpose of this study was to determine teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of the professional development that they received to implement the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching Model in South Dakota. The population for this study was K-12 teachers from 12 pilot schools selected by the Department of Education (DOE) in South…

In the social sciences, evaluating the effectiveness of a program or intervention often leads researchers to draw causal inferences from observational research designs. Bias in estimated causal effects becomes an obvious problem in such settings. This paper presents the Heckman Model as an approach sometimes applied to observational data for the…

In the social sciences, evaluating the effectiveness of a program or intervention often leads researchers to draw causal inferences from observational research designs. Bias in estimated causal effects becomes an obvious problem in such settings. This article presents the Heckman Model as an approach sometimes applied to observational data for the…

One of the most appropriate quasiexperimental approaches to compensatory education is the regression-discontinuity design. However, it remains underutilized, in part because of the need to clarify the link between the mathematical model and administrative decision-making. This paper explains the derivation of a program efficiency index congruent…