The history of forecasting in dentistry is explored with a focus on several major forecasting techniques, briefly examining the basic assumptions, data requirements, and strengths and weaknesses of each. Three perspectives held by forecasters are isolated: health status, social need, and economic. (Author/MLW)

The ability of the new Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) to predict performance of first-year medical students at the University of North Carolina was studied. Its incremental validity, determined by computing the additional variance in performance explainable by the MCAT after the effects of other admissions variables were taken into account,…

The Beery-Butkenica Developmental Test and the Caldwell Test were the best predictors. Combining the academic performance with visual-motor integration results at age seven years yielded 89 percent accuracy of prediction at age nine years. The false-positive rate represents the problem of mislabeling children as school failures. (Author)

An investigation of Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) retest scores indicates that limited retest improvement may result when initial scores are fairly low or below what might be predicted based on grade point averages. However, when initial scores approach the national, standardized MCAT mean, or are above what might be predicted, significant…

A study of 44 graduate students from a private university was designed to determine the contribution of academic factors to the prediction of graduate school grade point average (GPA). Undergraduate GPA makes a significant contribution to predicting graduate GPA. None of the verbal tests were predictive. (Author)

Records of students in an honors program at Marquette University revealed that the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test verbal and mathematics scores were moderately predictive for all honors students. Only the mathematics score was predictive of program success for women. (Author/JKS)

The use of formal (resources and consultants) and informal (interaction among faculty) communication networks, and extrinsic (encouragement of administrators) and intrinsic (personal satisfaction) rewards are examined for their relative ability to predict college faculty use of instructional innovations. Formal networks prove to be the best…

The validity of ACT Assessment scores and high school averages for predicting the academic success in college of high school juniors, seniors, and juniors and seniors as a group is reported. Substantial differences in the magnitude of the multiple correlations for these three groups were found. (Author)

The idea that national policy planning is enriched by wide public participation is taking hold. One example is the establishment of the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, which helps legislators assess the impact of proposed bills on the future and the probable impact of the future on current legislative programs. (LBH)

This case study addressed the meanings two preservice teachers ascribed to four expert strategies used in reciprocal teaching (questioning, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting) and four learning principles upon which reciprocal teaching is built (cognitive apprenticeship, scaffolding, zone of proximal development, and proleptic teaching).…

Cognitive abilities that predicted growth in response to a 12-week training program in phonological awareness were investigated in 100 kindergarten children. Findings suggested that growth in analytic awareness was predicted by invented spelling and general verbal ability, while growth in synthetic awareness was predicted by a combination of…

Whether family structure variables and family functioning variables predict the amount of intimate time adolescents spend with family members and peers was studied with 299 Australian adolescents. Findings show the influence of age and sex on the amount of time adolescents spend with family or peers. (SLD)

Three experiments explored the conditions under which inductive inferences about people were made by children and adults. Results indicated that children often predicted that people would behave differently in the future than they did in the past. Younger children limited predictions of consistency to non-psychological events. Older children…

Studied self-efficacy perceptions of 202 Korean female high school students at 3 levels of specificity in English and mathematics. Problem-specific, task-specific, and subject-specific self-efficacy beliefs all formed separate factors in both subject areas, but the three self-efficacy factors were too highly correlated to contribute independently…

The development of a multiple regression equation for predicting an optometry grade point average and a discriminative function designed to distinguish between students likely and unlikely to have academic difficulty is described. Variables used include grades, test scores, undergraduate college competitiveness, and a measure of academic…