This report presents the findings of a research study, conducted by the College of the Mainland (COM) as a subcontractor for Project FOLLOW-UP, designed to test the accuracy of random sampling and to measure non-response bias in mail surveys. In 1975, a computer-generated random sample of 500 students was drawn from a population of 1,256 students…

The literature on criterion referenced testing is full of discussions concerning whether classical measurement techniques are appropriate, whether variance is necessary, whether new indices of reliability are needed, and the like. What appears to be lacking, however, is a clear and simple discussion of why the problems occur. This paper suggests…

Georgia's Needs Assessment Package, which has many sample forms, includes a procedure which helps to identify short-range and long-range educational needs. This procedure utilizes community participation which broadens the decision-making base and serves to legitimatize actual decisions. It utilizes the opinions of professional educators,…

The study, prompted by a concern for the ineffectiveness of prison education programs to improve the educational level of inmates, was conducted for the purpose of investigating the effects of short term or extended tasks and financial incentives on the educational activity and achievement of the young prison inmates. The sample consisted of…

This study examines a set of hypotheses relating obsolescence to career patterns, professional activities, and certain aspects of the organizational climate in an attempt to discern the dynamics of obsolescence among graduate engineers in the United States. Based on a sample, two measures of technical obsolescence were used. One involved the…

The paper reviews the research on design and operation of research libraries sponsored by the Purdue University Libraries and the Purdue School of Industrial Engineering. The use of mathematical models in library operations research is discussed. Among the mathematical methods discussed are marginal analysis or cost minimization, computer…

The purpose of this study was to estimate the reliability of various measures of writing behavior using 500-word samples instead of 1000-word samples. The themes of 135 eighth graders on narrative and expository topics were collected for 6 weeks, one theme per week. Samples of at least 1000 words were obtained from each student, and the criteria…

Classroom Teacher Support System (CTSS) is a prototype system for computer-assisted construction and scoring of tests, using questions from a central data bank. The computer programs for CTSS were developed by International Business Machines Corporation for study in the Los Angeles City Unified School District in 1969 and 1970. In order to provide…

Incorporated in the media evaluation model developed by the Computer Based Project (Syracuse, N.Y.) is a procedure whereby independent samples are used to obtain baseline responses to cognitive question items. Items from two films are intermixed and presented after showing only one of the films; thus, the sample audience responds to questions from…

Test construction is not the strictly logical process that we might wish it to be. This is particularly true in a large on-going project such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Most of the really deep questions can only be answered by the exercise of well-informed human judgment. Criterion-referenced testing is still a term…

Empirical results are presented as regards the implementation of a latent-trait psychometric model by means of conditional maximum likelihood estimation. Items are scored polychotomously into varying numbers of nominal categories and the test and item characteristic curves and information functions are examined. It is concluded that scoring items…

Through utilization of effective sampling procedures, libraries may obtain substantial savings in terms of data collection costs. A theoretical statistical sampling model is presented and two types of random sampling techniques are empirically compared as to their effectiveness in estimating a library usage parameter. Implications are drawn for…

A computer-based Statistical Program to Assist in Teaching Statistics (SPATS) has been successfully developed to aid the teaching of statistics to undergraduates with business and economics majors. SPATS simplifies the problem of experimentally creating and analyzing a variety of populations and of selecting and analyzing different kinds of random…

In most behavioral science research very little attention is ever given to the probability of committing a Type II error, i.e., the probability of failing to reject a false null hypothesis. Recent publications by Cohen have led to insight on this topic for the fixed-effects analysis of variance and covariance. This paper provides social scientists…

The equivalency of item sampling and student sampling of attitudes of college students was investigated. A factor analysis of student-sampled data collected during Spring 1968, was compared with a factor analysis of item-sampled data collected each quarter from Fall 1968, through Winter 1970, at Mankato State College, using the Campus Environment…