Recommendations resulting from the Council of Chief State School Officers' Education Data Improvement Project are summarized. This joint effort by the states and Federal government attempts to improve the quality and timeliness of data collected, analyzed, and reported by the United States Department of Education's Center for Statistics. The goals…

Issues concerning the collection and uses of data about college student retention are considered. Some of the documented findings about student retention in U.S. colleges is summarized, with attention to both national data and data for colleges belonging to the United Negro College Fund. Difficulties in obtaining useful retention data are…

The manual provides vocational educators with information and guidelines regarding the design and use of questionnaires and interviews for gathering data and the construction, tabulation, and analysis of both open ended and forced response survey instruments. The first of nine chapters deals with surveys as a data collection technique, discusses…

Base expectancy tables developed by the California Youth Authority apply to total population of male wards released on parole by the state. Subpopulations of relatively homogeneous make-up offered the possibility of developing base expectancy tables of greater predictive ability. Multiple regression analysis showed the overall advantages and…

The fifth of a series of brief reports on the study of mental retardation in a Canadian province covers a period of approximately one year (September, 1969, through November, 1970). The period under review is primarily one of data gathering with the emphasis on the adequacy of the sampling procedure, follow up of incomplete interviews, and tapping…

Some of the requirements and consequences of rigorous and valid educational evaluation research are explored in terms of problems in achieving two types of external validity, population and ecological. The former refers to the generalizability of inferences to subjects not included in a study, while the latter is concerned with the…

The objectives of this study were to determine the sources from which low-income families generally receive information about nutrition, to determine the extent to which the participants acquired knowledge of nutrition principles as taught through a newsletter, and also to find out their attitude towards the publication as a medium of nutritional…

Discusses recent protest concerning the conduct of survey research. (SL)

This report contains the 2002 revised statistical standards and guidelines for the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the principal statistical agency within the U.S. Department of Education. The primary goal is to provide high quality, reliable, useful, and informative statistical information to public policy decision-makers and to…

Procedures to be applicable in situations in which large numbers of individuals are tested or in situations where multiple measures are taken. (Author/CB)

Discusses the methodological requirements for valid inferences from school-effectiveness research studies, which include long-term longitudinal data and proper statistical modelling of hierarchical data structures. Explains problems with using simple performance indicators to measure school effectiveness. Outlines appropriate multilevel…

Overviews the development of corpus linguistics, reviews the use of corpora in modern lexicography, and presents central issues in ongoing work aimed at broadening the scope of lexicographical use of corpus data. Focuses on how the field has developed in relation to the production of new monolingual English dictionaries by major British…

Data on survey methodology employed in follow-up surveys of graduates was collected, via questionnaire, from 226 teacher education programs. Response rates correlated significantly with number of attempts to reach graduates. Other variables included questionnaire length, postage provisions, use of incentives, response deadline, and personalization…

Highlights the old but important debate about the difference between statistical significance and the practical or educational value of research findings. Argues for proper reporting of quantitative research using meta-analysis methods developed in the 1970s. Contains 53 references. (DDR)

Data in social and behavioral sciences are often hierarchically organized. Special statistical procedures that take into account the dependence of such observations have been developed. Among procedures for 2-level covariance structure analysis, Muthen's maximum likelihood (MUML) has the advantage of easier computation and faster convergence. When…