The data collection program of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should be designed for maximum reliability, validity, and manageability for all involved organizations. An adequate number of school districts should be sampled to produce useful data. Data should be more comparable between states if proper sampling techniques are…

Developed as part of a three-year project funded by the Library Services and Construction Act (LSCA), this manual is designed to present librarians in the State of California with an alternative, "sense-making" approach to assessing the information needs of patrons and potential patrons and to assessing accountability, i.e., whether…

The Quality Circle project is a problem-solving concept requiring the interaction of a variety of organizational skills. Circle members work together, becoming involved in problem-solving processes. They make decisions and take action based upon the data they collect. The reliablity of those data is crucial to the circle's success. Presented in…

The main purposes of this survey were to: (1) assess the perceptions and attitudes of students about whether boys or girls spend more time working with computers; (2) explore whether individual students at school prefer working alone or with someone else; (3) explore the possibility that girls who have access to home computers also have older…

This inquiry was conducted to examine influences on perceptions of survey subjects regarding ideographic characteristics of the subjects, incentives to enhance mail returns, and multiple requests for information. A mail survey sent to 297 former education students from a large university produced responses from 48.3% of the sample. The ideographic…

Five comparisons were made relative to the quality of estimates of ability parameters and item calibrations obtained from the one-parameter and three-parameter logistic models. The results indicate: (1) The three-parameter model fit the test data better in all cases than did the one-parameter model. For simulation data sets, multi-factor data were…

In discussion of assessment and its applicability to the needs of the Spanish-speaking student population, four types of assessments are presented in the context of the educationally significant testing needed in this area. The focus of this paper is on the use of comprehensive assessment to measure the repertoire of language resources that the…

The pretest-posttest design referred to as Design 2 by Campbell and Stanley (1963) is commonly used in educational research and evaluation. The tenability of the assumption of a zero population difference commonly used with this design is questioned. A nonzero population estimate based on the mean difference observed in test-retest reliability…

Data collected by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) in its 1980 Needs Assessment Project was reduced to eight marker variables for use in subsequent individual state factor analyses. These variables concern (1) high need family situations; (2) effective career education/guidance; (3) increased school capacity for working with families;…

This manual is designed to help bibliographers, librarians, and other materials selectors plan and conduct systematic collection evaluations using both collection centered and client centered techniques. Topics covered in five chapters are: (1) planning the assessment; (2) collection-centered techniques, comprising the compilation of statistics,…

This handbook describes the procedures used to administer and analyze the results of the 1978-79 national music assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It also describes changes in procedures between the first NAEP music assessment conducted in 1971-72 and the 1978-79 assessment. Each assessment surveyed the music…

This document reports the pilot test of the two components of the Child and Family Mental Health (CFMH) Evaluation Project -- the impact evaluation component and the in-depth evaluation component. (The impact evaluation is designed to determine the effects of the two primary prevention models of service and activities on the CFMH Head Start…

The primary sample for Year 11 of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was selected in March 1979, and was preceded by an 18-month planning effort. During the planning period, research concentrated in five specific areas: sampling frame construction, stratification criteria, efficiency study review, techniques and computer…

In order to assess the methodological merit of the published research in educational administration based on surveys, the authors analyzed data from a random sample of 24 survey studies published in the "Education Administration Quarterly" and the "Journal of Educational Administration." Each article was evaluated according to…