Analysis of works in American literature from the Modern Language Association International Bibliography (1981) in regard to form, class of materials, language, subject, and age found more references to books than journal articles, and age dispersion was broad. Comparisons are made to other similar studies in sciences and humanities. (Author/EM)

A sampling subspace in hypothesis testing where Type II error is made for completely illogical reasons from the standpoint of probability is described. The case of unequal probabilities of populations or conditions is also considered. (Author/BS)

The use of and emphasis on statistical significance testing has pervaded educational and behavioral research for many decades in spite of criticism by prominent researchers in this field. Much of the controversy is caused by lack of understanding or misinterpretations. This paper reviews criticisms of statistical significance testing and discusses…

Meehl's taxometric method was developed to distinguish categorical and continuous constructs. However, taxometric output can be difficult to interpret because expected results for realistic data conditions and differing procedural implementations have not been derived analytically or studied through rigorous simulations. By applying bootstrap…

Sampling error refers to variability that is unique to the sample. If the sample is the entire population, then there is no sampling error. A related point is that sampling error is a function of sample size, as a hypothetical example illustrates. As the sample statistics more and more closely approximate the population parameters, the sampling…

Central limit theorem (CLT) is considered an important topic in statistics, because it serves as the basis for subsequent learning in other crucial concepts such as hypothesis testing and power analysis. There is an increasing popularity in using dynamic computer software for illustrating CLT. Graphical displays do not necessarily clear up…

This paper explains the underlying assumptions of the sampling distribution and its role in significance testing. To compute statistical significance, estimates of population parameters must be obtained so that only one sampling distribution is defined. A sampling distribution is the underlying distribution of a statistic. Sampling distributions…

A computer program randomly sampled ordered pairs of scores from known populations that departed from bivariate normal form and calculated correlation coefficients from sample values. Hypotheses were tested (1) that population correlations are zero using the t statistic; and (2) that population correlations have non-zero values using the r to z…

Using the characteristic curve method for dichotomously scored test items, the sampling distributions of equating coefficients were examined. Simulations indicate that for the equating conditions studied, the sampling distributions of the equating coefficients appear to have acceptable characteristics, suggesting confidence in the values obtained…

An approximate statistical test is derived for the hypothesis that the intraclass reliability coefficients associated with two measurement procedures are equal. Control of Type 1 error is investigated by comparing empirical sampling distributions of the test statistic with its derived theoretical distribution. A numerical illustration is…

RESGEN is a computer program designed to generate simulated latent trait distributions and then dichotomous or polytomous item responses based on item response models. The latent trait distributions can be univariate or multivariate normal, log-normal, uniform, or gamma. The item response models utilized in this program may have characteristics…

The present investigation developed power curves for two parametric and two nonparametric procedures for testing the equality of population variances. Both normal and non-normal distributions were considered for the two group design with equal and unequal sample frequencies. The results indicated that when population distributions differed only in…

Examines relationships among the parameters of the Zipf size-frequency distribution as well as its sampling properties. Highlights include its importance in bibliometrics, tables for the sampling distribution of the maximal value of a finite Zipf distribution, and an approximation formula for confidence intervals. (Author/LRW)

Sophisticated simulations using computer graphics can lead to students deducing virtually all conditions of the Central Limit Theorem. Eight graphs illustrate the discussion. (MNS)

Model-based methods for estimating the population mean in stratified clustered sampling are described. The importance of adjusting the weights is assessed by an approach considering the sampling variation of the adjusted weights and its (variance) components. The resulting estimators are more efficient than the jackknife estimators for a variety…