Basing the compensation of accounting professors on merit pay in order to encourage better teaching, research and service is controversial. This study uses data from a survey of the 852 accounting programs in the United States to empirically examine the influence of merit-based salary plans. Findings indicate a strong positive association between…

The prevalence of autism locally and globally is significant. The Autism Foundation of the Carolina's (AFC) recognized the need to fill a gap in services to families coping with autism, while educating future professionals about the condition and its effect on families. The purpose of the mixed-methods, participant-oriented, participatory study…

This project proposal designs an empirical based study to assess student and faculty satisfaction in graduate distance education counselling programs. The proposed study includes two satisfaction surveys and associated administrative protocols. The surveys were developed based on the Sloan Consortium definition of satisfaction (Moore, 2002; 2005)…

The general purpose of this five-year evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of Milwaukee's independent charter schools in promoting student achievement growth. Independent charter schools are authorized by nonschool-district entities and are considered "independent" because they are not a part of the Milwaukee Public School District…

Hinds Community College (HCC) engaged in a study that produced the transitional program. This program was in response to high rates of attrition of the college's freshmen classes because of poor academic performance. This dissertation evaluated the effectiveness of the transitional program's main component-the learning community created by placing…

The purpose of this dissertation was to discover the perceived effect that eliminating instructional coaches has had on teachers, professional development, and student achievement in one elementary school in the Southeastern Georgia School District. The methodology for this study was qualitative using a basic qualitative design. This study…

To meet the new and more rigorous college- and career-ready standards for student learning, all of today's students must have access to effective teaching--every day and in every classroom. As teachers and their school leaders are increasingly held accountable for implementing consistently effective teaching, calls for holding the programs that…

Since the first Circle of Trust retreat was offered in 2005, the Center for Courage & Renewal (CCR) and other individual facilitators across the United States, Canada, and Australia have continued to offer many cross-professional retreats, as they have proven extremely popular. They are designed for people from any profession who want to…

The fairplayer.manual is a school-based program to prevent bullying. The program consists of fifteen to seventeen consecutive ninety-minute lessons using cognitive-behavioral methods, methods targeting group norms and group dynamics, and discussions on moral dilemmas. Following a two-day training session, teachers, together with skilled…

Multisite trials can clarify the average impact of a new program and the heterogeneity of impacts across sites. Unfortunately, in many applications, compliance with treatment assignment is imperfect. For these applications, we propose an instrumental variable (IV) model with person-specific and site-specific random coefficients. Site-specific IV…

The provision of consistent high quality home- and community-based services to children with disabilities living in rural and frontier areas is a challenge. Distance, weather, geographic terrain (mountains, canyons), and shortages of pediatric early interventionists are among the challenges to ensuring appropriate and equitable services.…

Urban Alliance serves at-risk youth through its high school internship program, which provides training, mentoring, and work experience to high school seniors from distressed communities. The program aims to help youth move on to higher education or employment after graduation. The Urban Institute is conducting a six-year, randomized controlled…

This article uses the evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's (RWJF) Urban Health Initiative (UHI), a 10-year effort to improve health and safety outcomes in distressed cities, to demonstrate the strength of an evaluation design that integrates theory of change and quasi-experimental approaches, including the use of comparison cities.…

The homogenous projects-base concept is defined. Next, the necessary steps to create a homogenous projects-base are presented. A metric system is built, which then will be used for analyzing projects. The indicators which are meaningful for analyzing a homogenous projects-base are selected. The given hypothesis is experimentally verified. The…

Gambling has become increasingly popular among minors and is easily accessible to them. This is alarming since research has indicated that minors are more susceptible to gambling pathology than adults. Additionally, gambling has devastating effects on minors that gamble as well as their families and communities. The Illinois Institute for…