This digest offers tips on designing questionnaires and on avoiding common design errors. The following useful suggestions are offered: (1) keep the questionnaire brief and concise; (2) get feedback on the initial list of questions developed; (3) locate personal or confidential questions at the end of the questionnaire; (4) put categories in…

Argues against the indiscriminate use of the term "ethnography" and offers various criteria that have been suggested as distinguishing the ethnographic investigation. (HOD)

Fred N. Kerlinger has been hailed as having contributed to the transformation of the way that behavioral scientists and educators read research reports, design and execute research, and draw conclusions about research. In 1960 he introduced the notion that educational research is fraught with mythology. Three of the research myths that he…

This digest reviews the basic building blocks of a structured interview, points out some of the pitfalls in interviewing, and suggests ways for researchers to avoid these difficulties to produce questions that have the best possibility of generating reliable and accurate data on the topics of interest. The data collection instrument is a document…

This Digest argues that management factors are central to youth program successes and failures and that these factor have been ignored in research on youth programs. Instead, the Digest notes that research and evaluation of programs have focused on the following: (1) whether the right audience is served; (2) whether to make incremental…

Studies of job satisfaction among community college faculty use a variety of theoretical constructs and measure widely different dimensions of satisfaction. Research on the effects of working conditions on faculty attitudes has shown consistently that interaction with students and peers and privacy within the classroom are major sources of…

The perception is that most studies on distance education or the use of technology are poorly designed or prone to incomplete analyses. This is true of the simple comparison study, where student outcomes are compared to those of students in a traditional course. Such studies are the basis for the often cited conclusion that there is no significant…

Part of a volume which explores current issues in service delivery to infants and toddlers (ages birth to 3) with handicapping conditions, this chapter presents program evaluation as a comprehensive process comprising three phases: input, process, and output. Three program evaluation models are summarized: Tyler's objective model, Scriven's…

A study conducted by the School District of Philadelphia and that city's Federal Reserve Bank, entitled "What Works in Reading," was used as a case study to determine what factors influence the translation of research findings into educational policy. The Philadelphia study, which examined variables associated with achievement growth in…

The research literature provides important guidance to counselors working to keep abreast of the latest thinking regarding best practices and recently developed counseling tools. The purpose of this digest is to highlight a few errors that seem to recur within the literature, and to provide some helpful references that further explore these…

Cites and provides abstracts for seven ERIC documents from the junior colleges collection dealing with graduate follow-up studies, their procedures and use. (AYC)

Abuses and misuses of statistics are frequent. This digest attempts to warn against these in three broad classes of pitfalls: sources of bias, errors of methodology, and misinterpretation of results. Sources of bias are conditions or circumstances that affect the external validity of statistical results. In order for a researcher to make…

The original impetus for this monograph was a grant from the New Jersey Basic Skills Council of the New Jersey Department of Higher Education to evaluate two college basic skills remedial programs (one in a four-year state college, one in a two-year community college) and to produce a handbook for conducting such evaluations. This monograph is…

Community colleges generally conduct little research. Further, there is no generally accepted national research agenda for community colleges, no consistently funded national agency charged with studying the institutions as unique entities, and few educational researchers directing their attention toward them. The research that is undertaken on…

Practical information is provided, in a question and answer format, for community college officials who are planning to conduct a community needs assessment. A brief discussion of the usefulness of needs assessment surveys to the college planning process is followed by descriptions of eight steps to be followed in planning and conducting a survey:…