The traditional dichotomies of urban and rural may no longer be valid. Investigating whether or not there are socially significant areal units to redefine rural and urban areas, the report described one attempt to delineate such units and to test them for sociological utility. Counties were placed in homogeneous social units based upon the…

For individuals who have complex communication needs and for the interventionists who work with them, the collection of empirically derived data that support the use of an intervention approach is critical. The purposes of this study were to continue building an empirically derived base of support for, and to compare the relative effectiveness of…

Systematic observation is a foundational skill teachers use in order to document children's reading development and plan developmentally appropriate instruction. However, a variety of challenges make it difficult for teacher educators to help preservice teachers develop systematic observation skills. The purpose of this study is to tell two…

This study examined the external impacts and monitoring patterns of student assessment information on institutions, based on institutional type and control in seven areas: student applications or acceptance rates, allocation or share of state funding, evaluations from regional accrediting agency, private fund-raising results, success on grant…

Administrators, attorneys, and graduate students who are interested in law and education or in research methods will find this book useful. Rarely do researchers combine several methods for examining legal issues in education from multiple perspectives. Here four authors offer four different research methods that can be used in combination. Each…

Researchers studying monitoring accuracy currently use two different indexes to estimate accuracy: relative accuracy and absolute accuracy. The authors compared the distributional properties of two measures of monitoring accuracy using Monte Carlo procedures that fit within these categories. They manipulated the accuracy of judgments (i.e., chance…

COMPUTER PROGRAMS AND OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS WERE REPORTED FOR USE IN PROCESSING DATA ON TEACHER ROLES. INCLUDED IN THE OVERALL DATA-PROCESSING METHOD WERE--(1) A PROGRAM FOR TABULATING CONTINGENCY TABLES FROM DATA ON PUNCHED CARDS, (2) A PROGRAM FOR SELECTING AND COMBINING ROWS AND CALCULATING MANN-WHITNEY MEASURES OF SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES…

Model checking is a crucial part of any statistical analysis. As educators tie models for testing to cognitive theory of the domains, there is a natural tendency to represent participant proficiencies with latent variables representing the presence or absence of the knowledge, skills, and proficiencies to be tested (Mislevy, Almond, Yan, &…

Literature suggests that developing a community of learners is the key to a successful online-learning experience. In this study, the instructor of a multimedia authoring course adopted a synchronous communication tool (Yahoo Messenger) to interact with learners orally on a weekly basis and, thereby, to establish a sense among the learners that…

Many consider rich argumentation to be the core of quality discussions and view it as a vehicle to solving problems and clarifying content. This study examined the influence of a discussion leader intervention on the quality of online argumentation and interactivity. Subjects were 44 undergraduate students who participated in online discussions on…

This study focused on two methodological issues by testing for discriminant validity in a multitrait-multimethod matrix which contrasted the set of estimates obtained from two methods and the "regression weights" derived from each subject's estimates from the second method. In order to change the conceptions of social behavior held by persons from…

One of the motivations frequently cited by Sen and Nussbaum for moving away from a utility metric towards a capabilities framework is a concern about adaptive preferences or conditioned expectations. If utility is related to the satisfaction of aspirations or expectations, and if these are affected by the individual's previous experience of…

A framework for understanding methodological practices from the perspectives of internal validity, external validity, statistical control validity, and construct validity is presented. One hundred doctoral dissertations completed between 1980 and 1988 at a single urban public university were analyzed for various methodological practices and types…

A mixed methods approach was used to identify factors that influence the underrepresentation of Latinos in the domain of science. The researcher investigated the role of family influences, academic preparation, and personal motivations to determine science-related career choices by Latinos. Binary logistic regression analyses were conducted using…

PREVIOUS RESEARCH HAD SHOWN THAT SIMULATION COULD BE SUBSTITUTED FOR THREE OF SIX HOURS OF ACTUAL DRIVING INSTRUCTION, A CONCENTRATED COURSE OF INSTRUCTION COULD BE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN ONE OF SEVERAL WEEKS OR MONTHS, AND USE OF SIMULATOR MOVIES WITHOUT THE EQUIPMENT HAD VALUE. IN THIS STUDY, DATA ON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA…