Because of the perceived lack of youth physical fitness and/or concerns for increased obesity, physical education teachers are interested in youth fitness and physical activity levels. Statewide mandates are being developed that require school-based teachers to complete physical fitness testing. Data from the nationally representative School…

The purpose of this study is to examine whether teachers' perceptions of educational value discontinuity are predictive of the psychological antecedents of academic performance (e.g., academic engagement and academic self-efficacy) during middle school. Educational value discontinuity is defined as the difference between teachers' actual…

Risk-taking behavior includes alcohol and drug use, delinquency, acts of aggression, sexual activity, and so on. Many studies have explored the relationship between adolescents and risk-taking behavior; however, only a few studies have examined this link in adolescents with learning disabilities (LD) or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder…

Production-function analysis, a correlation-based analysis, has been used for years to evaluate whether resources deposited into the educational process yielded a definitive result. For example, it has been used in several state cases as a measure of equity in educational funding. This paper is of the opinion that correlation-based analyses are…

The assumption that as teacher empowerment increases in restructuring schools teacher job satisfaction will increase was explored in a study using a large sample of classroom teachers working in schools initiating self-designed restructuring efforts. Study participants were 10,544 classroom teachers working in 307 Venture Capital Schools funded to…

This study examined the roles which note-taking method (either pencil and paper or an online computer notepad) and style (verbatim, paraphrasing, etc.) play in retention and depth of processing during computer-delivered instruction. Participants were 112 junior and senior undergraduates from a southern Minnesota university whose major was computer…

In Fall 1994, the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD), in California, conducted a study to determine the validity of the Mathematics Diagnostic Testing Project (MDTP) placement test. The MDTP provides tests at four levels (i.e., algebra readiness, elementary algebra, intermediate algebra, and pre-calculus) and is used in the District for…

Drug use and delinquency share many common antecedents: early antisocial behavior, difficulties in school, impaired family relationships, delinquent or drug-using peers, and rebelliousness. But these common factors could underlie a cluster of problem behaviors or lead to distinctly different behavioral manifestations. Using data from 1,363 West…

The context of teaching has changed dramatically in the wake of two national waves of educational reform. This dissertation examined the relationship between elementary principals' use of transformational leadership strategies as determined by teacher reports and the presence of social-organizational factors within the schools. The five…

This study guide presents lessons on hand calculating various statistics: Central Tendency and Dispersion; Tips on Data Presentation; Two-Tailed and One-Tailed Tests of Significance; Error Types; Standard Scores; Non-Parametric Tests such as Chi-square, Spearman Rho, Sign Test, Wilcoxon Matched Pairs, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis, and Rank Sums;…

Psychosocial correlates of exposure to violence are explored to gain insight into how adolescents are affected in areas of school-based adjustment, and also whether specific groups of youth are affected more than others. Data were gathered as part of a study on academic adjustment across two groups of adolescents: one from a Northeastern…

It is argued that, given the importance and the increased use of multivariate techniques such as factor analysis and canonical correlation, students need to be made aware of multivariate methods and the appropriate ways in which they can be applied. As a general linear model that subsumes all other parametric measures, canonical correlation…

At Tallahassee Community College (TCC), a full-time equivalent (FTE) based ratio was used as the basis for comparing the college's staff allocations with those of other community colleges in the state. The development of a statewide personnel database by the Florida State Board of Community Colleges provided the means for investigating this ratio.…

The use of stepwise regression has been criticized for both interpretive misunderstandings and statistical aberrations. A major statistical problem with stepwise regression and other procedures that involve multiple significance tests is the inflation of the Type I error rate. General approaches to control the family-wise error rate such as the…

A crucial, but often forgotten, role of educational assessment is to enhance students' learning. This author advocates that an assessment program designed for student learning differs from assessment for accountability in purpose, test format, measurement type, number, and spread of tests, use of test results, and amount of interval between…