The popularity of online surveys has increased the prominence of using weights that capture units' probabilities of inclusion for claims of representativeness. Yet, much uncertainty remains regarding how these weights should be employed in analysis of survey experiments: Should they be used or ignored? If they are used, which estimators are…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

This study was designed as a reconsideration of the weights used in evaluative decisions made with regard to research proposals submitted for funding at a major state university. The specific objective of the study was to determine whether the actual weights for components used in the evaluation of the proposals differed from a priori weights…

Although college faculty may hesitate to evaluate each others' teaching, it is a sensible alternative to evaluation by students or by administrators. Peer evaluations are not only useful for improving teaching, but also affect promotion and tenure decisions. When faculty are rated by observation, repeated visits and rater training are required in…

A study investigated the effectiveness of a weighting procedure for adjusting survey results to correct for nonresponse bias. Using data from a Cooperative Institutional Research Program followup survey, results indicate that the procedure is highly effective in univariate distributions; its effectiveness in adjusting correlation and regression…

Much previously published material for estimating the reliability of classification has been based on the assumption that a test consists of a known number of equally weighted items. The test score is the number of those items answered correctly. These methods cannot be used with classifications based on weighted composite scores, especially if…

This paper illustrates the transformation of a raw data matrix into a matrix of associations, and then into a factor matrix. Factor analysis attempts to distill the most important relationships among a set of variables, thereby permitting some theoretical simplification. In this heuristic data, a correlation matrix was derived to display…

Ways to improve data comparability among national college faculty surveys are discussed. The surveys and some of their attributes are identified. Faculty sizes are estimated and weights for faculty in selected disciplines and institutions calculated. Weights were designed specifically for surveys conducted in 1969, 1975, 1980, and 1988.…

The evaluation team of the Lincoln Public Schools (Nebraska) used the multi-attribution utility technology (MAUT) approach to prioritize potential evaluation projects. The priorities were used to allocate resources to the district's most important projects, and to eliminate or scale down less important projects. The problem was caused initially…

Linear and equipercentile equating conversions were developed for two forms of the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) quantitative test and the verbal-plus-quantitative test. From a very large sample of students taking the GRE in October 1981, subpopulations were selected with respect to race, sex, field of study, and level of performance (defined…

Since the mean score for a sample composed of several subgroups can be viewed as the sum of the mean of each subgroup weighted by the proportional size of the subgroup, then the mean change in a time period--in this case, from 1972 to 1980--is the sum of the differences between the means for each subgroup, with each mean weighted by its…