Education decisionmakers need access to the best evidence about the effectiveness of education interventions, including practices, products, programs, and policies. It can be difficult, time consuming, and costly to access and draw conclusions from relevant studies about the effectiveness of interventions. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC)…

Bullying is one of the most challenging issues facing students and schools worldwide. The disastrous consequences for victims and offenders are experienced daily by teachers and students and documented by numerous studies. The demand for evidence-based practice (EBP) in schools' anti-bullying work has increased in the last decade, consequently…

Community-based research (CBR) is an increasingly familiar approach to addressing social challenges. Nonetheless, the role it plays in attaining community impact is unclear and largely unstudied. Here the authors discuss an emerging framework aimed toward fostering community impact through university and community civic engagement. They describe…

Written by a social worker for social work students, this is a nuts and bolts guide to statistics that presents complex calculations and concepts in clear, easy-to-understand language. It includes numerous examples, data sets, and issues that students will encounter in social work practice. The first section introduces basic concepts and terms to…

This article presents propensity score matching as a method to implement randomized conditions to analyze service effects using nonexperimental data. Most social work research is challenged to implement randomized clinical trials, whereas administrative and survey data are often available and can provide valuable information about services…

Program directors and evaluators need to address the important program accountability question of attribution of outcomes. This discussion is a beginning. Starting with some basics, such as the meaning of the program, approaches to program theory development, and the nature of attribution, the paper suggests three types of attribution. An…

Explores the role of theory in strengthening causal interpretations in nonexperimental research. Evaluators must conduct theory-driven research, concentrating on "small theory," in that the focus is on the explanation of processes specific to the program being evaluated. Theory-guided treatment research must be programmatic and…

Two chapters of this issue consider critical multiplism as a research strategy with links to meta analysis and generalizability theory. The unifying perspective it can provide for quantitative and qualitative evaluation is discussed. The third chapter explores meta analysis as a way to improve causal inferences in nonexperimental data. (SLD)

Education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike are committed to identifying interventions that teach students more effectively. Increased emphasis on evaluation and accountability has increased desire for sound evaluations of these interventions; and at the same time, school-level data have become increasingly available. This article…

In spite of many inherent problems, impact evaluation should remain an integral part of program evaluation, both because impact evaluation brings its budget justification with it, and because its focus on causal hypotheses is an essential part of evaluation. Methodology based on the author's body of work is reviewed. (SLD)

Remedial or developmental courses are the most common policy instruments used to assist underprepared postsecondary students who are not ready for college-level coursework. However, despite its important role in higher education and its substantial costs, there is little rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of college remediation on the outcomes…