Background: Optimism and pessimism are positive and negative expectations linked with well-being in adults. Research on the importance of optimism and pessimism in children is limited by the lack of a developmentally appropriate measure of children's expectations. Method: Based upon the Life Orientation Test-Revised (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges,…

This Statistics in Brief analyzes parents' reports of school practices to provide information to families, using data from the 2003 Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey and the 1996 Parent and Family Involvement in Education and Civic Involvement Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program. Parent reports of school…

The "Learning Trail" is an innovative application of peer-mediated instruction designed to enhance student learning in large practical classes. The strategy specifically seeks to improve participants' attention to details of protocol that are often difficult to observe during teacher-centered demonstrations to large groups. Students…

Based on data from the High School and Beyond Study, a longitudinal study of high school sophomores and seniors, this report summarizes some of the study's findings on the differences between Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks and whites in school delay, aspirations, test scores, language usage, and socioeconomic status. Tabular data indicate that:…

Provided in this document are the text of H.R. 4971, a record of testimony offered in a congressional hearing, and a wide variety of supplemental materials. H.R. 4971 is a bill to amend the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 1974 to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 1985 through 1989 and for other purposes. Numerous…

Conventional accounting systems provide no indication as to what conditions and events lead to reported outcomes, since they traditionally do not include measurements of the human organization and its relationship to events at the outcome stage. Human resources accounting is used to measure these additional types of data. This research is…

The status of the high school class of 1972, as it was two years after graduation in October 1974, is described in terms of questionnaire survey responses. Students from 1,153 high schools participated and 20,872 students responded to the questionnaire out of the total group of 23,451. The development, administration, and reliability of the survey…

This is the second of four volumes reporting phase 2 of a two-phase project to examine the competency-based vocational teacher education movement and analyze the current state of the art (phase 1), and to assess the implications for preservice, inservice, and leadership level professional development programs in career and occupational education…

The approach characterizing this study of bias in tests of educational achievement is stated to be reflective and philosophical rather than experimental and statistical. Its concern is with operationally definable areas of learning and indicators of achievement rather than with the hypothetical latent traits that are presumed by some to influence…

The purpose of this project was to develop a non-verbal self-administering values inventory appropriate for children grades one to three. Children from five ethnic groups were administered a 60-item picture inventory designed to measure dimensions of value based on needs. Factor analyses of the resulting item inter-correlations for the total…

This book contains a collection of principles, methods, and strategies useful in the planning, design, and evaluation of studies in education and the behavioral sciences. It is not a technical, detailed study, but an overview, a summary of alternatives, an exhibit of models, and a listing of strengths and weaknesses, useful as a checking and…

To improve selection and training at both Bachelor's and Master's levels, an evaluation study of the alumni of the College of Education was undertaken. Alumni were sent questionnaires to ascertain their feelings about their training, and a rating scale was sent to the principals of schools where alumni were teaching (see TM 001 301 for sample).…

Describes a study of medical students that was conducted to evaluate measures of performance on factual searches of INQUIRER, a full-text database in microbiology. Measures relating to recall, precision, search term overlap, and efficiency are discussed; reliability and construct validity are considered; and implications for future research are…

Responses to Life Satisfaction Scale for Problem Youth (LSSPY) items were examined in a sample of 193 substance abusing and conduct disordered adolescents. In responding to the LSSPY, youth endorse their percentage of happiness (0 to 100%) in twelve domains (i.e., friendships, family, school, employment/work, fun activities, appearance, sex…

This study investigated construct validity and factorial invariance of a performance assessment of reading comprehension and writing proficiency through a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) structure using confirmatory factor analysis. The performance assessment was administered to 1,023 fifth and sixth graders. Interrater reliability was examined for…