This testimony summarizes in four propositions results from a review of recent estimates of the net federal, state, or local costs of immigration and is designed to explore why these cost estimates vary so widely and how to develop more credible cost estimates. First, the testimony proposes that various studies of the cost of immigration agree…

Because public schools do not randomly assign students and teachers across schools (a methodological utopia), multilevel evaluation methods which account for student and school contextual and practice variables in their natural settings provide the most rigorous means for showing empirically what is actually happening in school classrooms.…

Intended for students and for researchers who conduct interviews as part of case studies or as ethnography, this book provides a comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of qualitative interviewing. It shows researchers how to design research based on interview data; to stimulate conversation; to absorb what is being said;…

Counseling psychology is a relatively new field that is gaining autonomy and respect. Unfortunately, research efforts in the field may lack an appropriate research design. This paper considers some of the more common types of research design and the associated threats to their validity. An example of each design type is drawn from the counseling…

Based on models created by social reality researchers, a study used a modification of a Solomon four group design to investigate the influence of symbolic reality (exposure to the film "JFK") on a student audience's subjective reality (knowledge of the assassination of President Kennedy, political mistrust and belief in the existence of…

This paper describes collegial model approaches to the interactions between rehabilitation researchers and individuals with disabilities or their family members. The approaches, called participatory research and participatory action research, grew out of a 1989 conference sponsored by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation…

The development of curriculum frameworks for mathematics and science was an essential first step in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The frameworks have served as guides for the design of the achievement testing component of TIMSS, and as the foundation upon which the curriculum analysis component of the study is…

Only a limited number of single-subject studies exist in the literacy field, despite the upsurge of such studies in a wide variety of disciplines. The phrase "single-subject" refers not so much to the number of subjects, but to the way the data are analyzed: each subject's responses are examined individually; they are not averaged with…

A test of statistical significance is a procedure for determining how likely a result is assuming a null hypothesis to be true with randomization and a sample of size n (the given size in the study). Randomization, which refers to random sampling and random assignment, is important because it ensures the independence of observations, but it does…

This volume, the first of three on sponsored research administration, focuses on pre-award activities such as research development, proposal development, budget development, review and submission of proposals, negotiation and award, and compliance issues. Research administration, or sponsored project administration, is work that supports the…

This digest reviews the basic building blocks of a structured interview, points out some of the pitfalls in interviewing, and suggests ways for researchers to avoid these difficulties to produce questions that have the best possibility of generating reliable and accurate data on the topics of interest. The data collection instrument is a document…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

This paper, a result of a series of meetings of researchers, discusses critical issues related to the conduct of high-quality intervention research in special education using experimental and quasi-experimental designs that compare outcomes for different groups of students. It stresses the need to balance design components that satisfy laboratory…

Uses of quantitative research for studying the relationship between school leadership and educational reform are discussed in this paper. Perceived inadequacies of quantitative methods are that such methods are inadequate for dealing with real-life complex phenomena, and that they require degrees of control that cannot be realistically achieved.…

This exploratory study examined the college search processes of 25 non-traditional adult students at two central New York State community colleges. Using a modified time-line interview, a method developed in communication and information sciences, the researchers found that the college student's choice process was significantly different for the…