As a practitioner who has worked with youngsters with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for the past 30 years, the author has done her best to stay current with the research literature on ADHD, particularly intervention research. However, she was always bothered by one nagging thought. Sure, there is good research to show effective…

A realistic applied chemical engineering experimental design and statistical analysis project is documented in this article. This project has been implemented as part of the professional development and applied statistics courses at Villanova University over the past five years. The novel aspects of this project are that the students are given a…

In practice, the inclusion of correlated residuals in latent-variable models is often regarded as a statistical sleight of hand, if not an outright form of cheating. Consequently, researchers have tended to allow only as many correlated residuals in their models as are needed to obtain a good fit to the data. The current article demonstrates that…

In basic science research, student researchers are often challenged with not only the technical portion of the research design but also the team dynamic. Understanding how a student prefers to learn can provide an advantage for mentors to better meet these challenges. In this article, the authors describe the experience of working with student…

Gender differences in speed of perceptual comparison, of picture-plane mental rotation, and in switching costs between trials that do and do not require mental rotation, were investigated as a function of stimulus material with a total sample size of N=360. Alphanumeric characters, PMA symbols, animal drawings, polygons and 3D cube figures were…

"Theory as Method: Small Theories of Treatments," by Mark W. Lipsey, is one of the most influential and highly cited articles to appear in "New Directions for Evaluation." It articulated an approach in which methods for studying causation depend, in large part, on what is known about the theory underlying the program. Lipsey discussed the benefits…

People with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) have difficulties in recalling recently experienced events, which is dependent upon intact functioning of several aspects of "self awareness". The current study examined impaired episodic recall in ASD and its relationship to specific impairments in aspects of "self awareness". Between-group…

Critical thinking (CT), or the ability to engage in purposeful, self-regulatory judgment, is widely recognized as an important, even essential, skill. This article describes an ongoing meta-analysis that summarizes the available empirical evidence on the impact of instruction on the development and enhancement of critical thinking skills and…

The purpose of this study was to explore the association between persistence at the University of Dallas, a private liberal arts university, and participation in a study abroad program. Students who participate in the study abroad program at the University of Dallas spend one semester (typically during the sophomore year) at the Rome campus of the…

The conduct of fieldwork is an adventure, a voyage into the unknown. The author has several times had the opportunity to reflect on his fieldwork, which was most often conducted among remote Indigenous groups, initially in Australia and then wider afield in Thailand, the Philippines, and Africa. He is struck by the significant amount of time,…

The purpose of this article is to illustrate how theory and particularly the theoretical perspective of social constructionism can influence the ways in which scholars conduct qualitative research studies in the area of family systems. The authors argue for the importance of theory in qualitative research projects and promote researchers' clear…

The authors examine one of the earliest systematic forms of qualitative inquiry to identify some of the boundaries needed in grounded theory designs to provide a small corner of clarity in the discourse about what is acceptable science from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) perspective. Beginning with an overview of grounded theory research as…

This article analyses some typical consequences of a specific research policy on experimental research in biology. The policy is conducted by a national funding agency--the Swiss National Science Foundation--through a particular programme, the "National Centres of Competence in Research" which is designed to promote both "scientific…

The problem of bias in qualitative research particularly is still debated in methodology texts and there is a lack of agreement on how much researcher influence is acceptable, whether or not it needs to be "controlled", and how it might be accounted for. Denzin (1994) refers to this as the "interpretive crisis" (p. 501). I…

Method development and assessment, central components of carrying out chemical research, require problem-solving skills. This article describes a pedagogical approach for teaching these skills through the adaptation of published experiments and application of group-meeting style discussions to the curriculum of an undergraduate instrumental…