Many public university systems rely on their own institutional research (IR) offices, in addition to the IR offices from their member institutions, to help conduct the work of the university system. In this chapter, the author illustrates the type of work conducted by system-level IR offices using a nontraditional data source that can be used to…

Schools are a central interface between evolution and culture. They are the contexts in which children learn the evolutionarily novel abilities and knowledge needed to function as adults in modern societies. Evolutionary educational psychology is the study of how an evolved bias in children's learning and motivational systems influences their…

This study set out to examine children's notions of the malleability of their academic competencies and the relations of these notions to the child's grade-level and gender and the parent's educational level. In interviews of a total of 103 boys and girls of the third and the sixth grade, children of academically and vocationally educated parents…

Some previous findings support the notion that there is a relation between temperamental characteristics of school children and the classroom management decisions of their teachers. Teachers' perceptions of children are known to influence their classroom behavior. This study specifically explored how teachers may overestimate or underestimate the…

Given that the examinee knows the answer to item i if and only if he knows the answer to both item g and item h, a "conjunctive" item response model is found such that items g, h, and i all have the same mathematical form of response function. Since such items may occur in practice, it is desirable that item response models satisfy this…

This study traces the controversy over the classification of children according to their ability from its origins in the development of the mental testing movement after 1916. The campaign to organize the schools largely on the basis of standardized tests of intelligence drew substantial support after 1920 from the development of research bureaus…

In this study college student subjects were grouped into four categories: (1) users of marijuana, (2) users of alcohol, (3) users of both, and (4) abstainers. It was concluded that the group using both marijuana and alcohol had the highest academic aptitude; however when compared with other groups, experienced a lower degree of academic…

Three aspects of sex bias in ability tests are discussed. The first two areas of concern are the surface qualities of test items (surface, in the sense that these qualities may be seen by inspection and do not require empirical data), and the equating of male and female score distributions through item analysis and item selection techniques. The…

This paper briefly summarizes four years of research on career decisions in a large sample (997) of high-ability women. The research focused on career choice and career choice change in these young women during the time when these decisions were being made. A variety of background questions were included in the survey instrument, including family…

Research in this effort attempted to review evidence of the construct validity of certain measures of intellectual potential for Canadian native pupils, and to examine the relative predictive validity, over a four-year period, of several measures of general intellectual ability for a sample of Metis pupils at Faust, Alberta, and 2 samples of…

A review of research on characteristics of junior college students permits certain generalizations. Since present tests show that they score lower academically than 4-year college students (although individuals may do equally well), their special abilities and aptitudes need further study. Though they tend to come from families of low…

Research carried out on El Salvador's Educational Reform project in the first school year that used instructional television (February-November, 1969) is summarized in this report. Focusing on the 32 pilot classes using television, together with 16 other classes without television, chapters include the administrative history of the Reform, studies…

In a study of how teacher reinforce learners it was hypothesized that teachers' sanctioning behavior will vary in a given teaching task depending on 1) their tendency to be anxious (their need to avoid failure), 2) their perception of the competence of the student, and 3) the difficulty of the material to be mastered. Forty undergraduate teacher…

The following topics concerning the American College Test (ACT) are treated, with an emphasis on the use of the ACT at Ohlone College: (1) an explanation of what ACT scores are, how they are interpreted, and where the ACT 'fits' in the spectrum of educational tests; (2) factors that can influence ACT scores; (3) the use of the ACT in the…

Studies of college students have documented a minimal relationship between academic and nonacademic accomplishments and between academic achievement and creative abilities. However, a higher relationship has been shown between productive thinking and nonacademic accomplishments. In this study such relationships are assessed in 2 college…