The value of qualitative assessment approaches has been underestimated primarily because they are often juxtaposed against long-standing quantitative traditions and the widely accepted premise that the best research produces generalizable and statistically significant findings. Institutional researchers avoid qualitative methods for at least three…

Increased demands for colleges and universities to engage in outcomes assessment for accountability purposes have accelerated the need to bridge the gap between higher education practice and the fields of measurement, assessment, and evaluation. The "Handbook on Measurement, Assessment, and Evaluation in Higher Education" provides higher…

In this book, which applies the state of the art in qualitative research to special education, qualitative research is used as a generic term for investigative methodologies described variously as ethnographic, naturalistic, anthropological, field research, or participant-observer research. Chapter 1 introduces and defines qualitative research and…