A review of 80 case files of American Indians in Northern Arizona was undertaken to identify factors associated with clients who were found to be ineligible for rehabilitation services and clients who were successfully and unsuccessfully rehabilitated. The 11 dependent variables considered were severity of disability, physical or mental…

This study investigated the development of abstract mathematical thought and spatial relations of 13- and 14-year-old students who attended public schools in Australia, Japan, and the United States. Dependent variables included age, ability grouping, ethnicity, sex, mathematics attitudes, and mathematics classroom behaviors. Significant…

A study of school-age children was designed to: (1) identify hassles that children experience in their families, among peers, and at school; (2) determine the ability of hassles to predict unhealthy psychological and physical functioning; and (3) explore the effect of daily hassles on school behavior. A measure of children's daily stress that used…

This research examined the relationship between ethnicity and the psychological status and behavior of Jewish and non-Jewish caregivers in relation to the impaired elderly. It was hypothesized that Jewish caregivers would make significantly more use of formal services than non-Jewish (usually Christian) caregivers. Two separate data sets were…

To clarify numerous points of contention surrounding Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence theory, according to which individuals' media-influenced perception of their congruence or incongruence with dominant opinion determines their willingness to speak out in public, a study examined the relationship between opinion expression, perceived…

This study was developed to investigate differences between black and white freshmen (both men and women) entering engineering programs. Specifically the study determined the relationships between enjoyment of course studied, achievement in those courses, and persistence, as reported by black/white, male/female students entering the engineering…

This paper explores the common elements identified as context variables that may effect student evaluation of instruction, and presents literature from sociology, anthropology, and linguistics that offers renewed challenges to researchers in this area of data interpretation. The common context variables that are seen as effecting student…

Data were collected on 211 undergraduates who were followed by Learning Disabled Student Services (LDSS) at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst during the academic year 1988-1989. Additional data on educational backgrounds were collected for 80 members of the LDSS population, to define variables important in predicting college outcomes.…

Isolating risk factors associated with drug and alcohol use and abuse has been a major task for many researchers. A study was designed to determine whether longitudinal models of social conformity and drug and alcohol use would provide similar results for males and females. Data were obtained from 654 young adults (192 males, 492 females) who had…

This paper is part of a series of applied statistics monographs intended to provide supplementary reading for applied statistics students. In the present paper, derivations of the unbiased standard error of estimate for both the raw score and standard score linear models are presented. The derivations for raw score linear models are presented in…

The longitudinal Guttman simplex (LGS), a method of modeling stage sequences or levels over time, allows for individual differences in sequence progression or development. The LGS is particularly appropriate in modeling tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use stages with adolescent subjects where relationships among drugs and degree of involvement may…

A causal model of academic factors affecting undergraduate student persistence at a large, urban, commuter university was tested. The effects of academic variables on persistence from fall to spring semester were also assessed for transfer and native students. The model accounted for 49% of the total variance in persistence, while separate models…

A study of the relationship between Spanish and English writing proficiency had as subjects 344 native Spanish-speaking college freshmen, students of English as a second language (ESL), in five universities in Puerto Rico. A questionnaire and four writing tasks in English and Spanish were administered in ESL class, and student scores on…

A statistical and practical policy-oriented procedure for supporting or not supporting the use of student evaluations for faculty promotion decisions is described. The procedure is based on measures of teaching excellence. A comprehensive General Systems Theory type of flow diagram cross-classifies and causally relates all the relevant variables.…

This report for researchers in rural sociology develops a conceptual and analytic framework for evaluating policies or programs through interrelated models. Three models--structural analysis, control programming, and simulation--allow researchers to assess policy/program impact, determine why expected impacts did or did not occur, and modify…