Practical guidance is offered to masters and doctoral students on planning, developing, completing, and defending theses and dissertations. The objective is to meet the specific needs of students doing research in education and in the social and behavioral sciences, including psychology, social work management, health sciences, and communication.…

A study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of interactive video in teaching study skills and to discover: (1) the overall attitudes of students toward computer-directed instruction (CDI) as compared to traditional teaching methods; (2) whether two groups, instructed via CDI and traditional methods, differed significantly in knowledge of…

Procedures and selected results of the 1985 Ontario Graduate Employment Survey are examined. The survey, which is sent to graduates of the 15 Ontario universities, is designed to provide information on the postgraduate educational and labor market experiences of the 1985 graduates within 1 year after graduation. The fieldwork procedures employed…

To examine the role of elaborations in learning a procedural skill (i.e., using a personal computer) from an instructional text, 88 members of the Carnegie-Mellon University community (students, faculty, and staff members) participated in two experiments. Experimental sessions consisted of a reading period followed by a task performance period in…

Designed to follow up a 1981-82 study which established base line information on microcomputers and their use for K-12 schools in Louisiana and two subsequent annual surveys, this report presents information for the 1984-85 school year. After a brief introduction describing the population surveyed and instruments used, survey findings are…

This report contains accounts of studies, about scales to be used in the "A Study of Schooling" research project, undertaken to derive indices for constructs presumed to be measureable by composites of items. The report is introduced by a discussion on the rationale for selecting the research methodology used and an explanation of the…

Observational studies of marital interaction have become increasingly popular in recent years, resulting from trends in family research including a movement towards the measurement of behavior rather than attitudes. In fact, there is now a proliferation of coding systems, but no "user's guide" for the researcher. This paper overviews the…

This qualitative study sought information about the content, nature, and diversity of teachers' beliefs and principles. Selected studies involving the beliefs of teachers in the areas of curriculum theory and innovation, decision making and thinking, and improving teaching are discussed and analyzed. A discussion of the study's methodology points…

A study explored characteristics, backgrounds, and social contextual influences which affect the movement of female students into teacher education programs during college. Using a nationally representative longitudinal sample of college students during the period 1972 through 1976, patterns of movement to and from education were described, and…

A set of weighting factors on student credit hour production by discipline was developed so that instructional productivity could be equitably compared across disparate disciplines and within disciplines. The new statistical methodology was applied to 3 years of teaching load data from 21 major public universities (the Southern University Group…

Part of a continuing series intended for use by reading professionals interested in understanding and improving the reading of adolescents, this report contains five articles dealing with a variety of subjects. Specific topics discussed in the articles include (1) remedial readers' comprehension during silent and oral reading, (2) recall and…

Direct approaches to attitude measurement make it easy for subjects to give socially desirable responses which may affect the outcome. A regression analysis method called policy capturing was used to study prejudicial attitudes in college students and to obtain estimates of the variance accounted for by predictors associated with sex. Students…

A major problem in mainstreaming and implementation of Public Law 94-142 has been in establishing evaluation criteria to determine appropriate learning environment placement. Providing appropriate education in the least restrictive environment is primarily the classroom teacher's responsibility, requiring decision-making based on these questions:…

A cross-national analysis reveals that women's status in contemporary society must be considered as a multidimensional phenomenon and that no one isolated factor best explains women's overall position. Using data from "The Handbook of International Data on Women" (Boulding and others, 1976), and from United Nations documents, a model to reflect…

To suggest future research directions in the assessment area, a review was conducted of literature concerning teachers' classroom communication. Focusing first on the large body of research identifying behaviors or skills that lead to perceptions of teaching effectiveness and increased learning, the review then examined a smaller group of studies…