The paper shows how the methodology for a pedagogical experiment can be improved through including the pre-research stage. If the experiment has the form of a test procedure, an improvement of methodology can be achieved using for example the methods of statistical and didactic analysis of tests which are traditionally used in other areas, i.e.…

The motivation for this paper is the authors' recent work on several randomized control trials in which they found the primary result, which averaged across subgroups or sites, to be moderated by demographic or site characteristics. They are led to examine a distinction that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) makes between "confirmatory"…

During the past decade, the use of standardized benchmark measures to differentiate and individualize instruction for students received renewed attention from educators. Although teachers may use their own assessments (tests, quizzes, homework, problem sets) for monitoring learning, it is challenging for them to equate performance on classroom…

Throughout history human subject research has been plagued by researchers whose studies were riddled with danger and/or risk to their subjects. Indeed, one may cite numerous situations where human subjects were injured and/or killed in experiments that were designed with no thought or anticipation of risk to the subjects. As a result, the federal…

A specific form of nonrandom assignment to treatment groups, the "alternate ranks" design, was investigated. This design eliminates the possibility of a correlation between the covariate and the treatment, and rules out experimenter bias in assignment of subjects to groups. (Editor)

Some difficulties with field experimental research designs using groups of subjects are discussed. Special attention is given to the problem of interpreting the significant results and how the obtained results can be generalized. Single-subject designs are suggested as suitable alternatives and a few such designs are presented. (Author)

Among the many problems faced by family researchers in conducting experimental research in field settings is that posed by nonequivalent and intact treatment and control groups. Nonequivalence refers to the assignment of individuals to treatments on a nonrandom basis, thus generating treatment groups with different expected values on one or more…

The purpose of this study was to develop the Johnson-Neyman Procedure (JN-Procedure) appropriate to multiple groups and covariables, and demonstrate its use in the analysis of group differences. A sequence of significance tests which makes it possible to identify the most parsimonious analysis of group differences appropriate to a given set of…