Knowing and understanding the principles and tenets underlying dissemination, utilization, and impact collection facilitate the "how." Dissemination is a communication process involving interactional relationships among individuals. Involvement of multiple agencies gives rise to networking. Disseminating is also a major facet of planned…

This paper provides a description of the Program Manager Workshop, a skill-based management training workshop for managers of group homes. The workshop is an extension of the Teaching-Family Model of Community Based Care, a model used in residential treatment homes for persons experiencing problems such as delinquency, retardation, mental illness,…

The problem of change in Canadian teacher education was studied, and the effectiveness of survey feedback, an organization development intervention, was tested in twelve Canadian teacher education institutions. Based on a review of the literature on change and teacher education, the argument is made that the impetus for change occurs as a result…

An alternative sociology course is described that links student computer skills with available social survey data. The students, at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, have primarily technical and scientific interests, and the goal of the sociology courses offered is to promote awareness of the social world they will live and work in. Students are…

This special issue of "Catalyst", entitled Testing Programs in Schools: What's New?, was published jointly by the Nebraska Council of School Administrators and the Nebraska Association for Supervision and Curriculum. The articles emphasize desirability of designing testing programs to meet the information needs of educators and the…

Proponents of management information systems (MIS) have traditionally held that educational administrators are in need of better management information with which to make more informed planning and policy decisions. However, few successful implementations have been reported. Literature discussing the lack of success of MIS point to such factors as…

An extension and re-analysis of data obtained in a national study of knowledge production and utilization in schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) brings together a picture of the current effort being made by SCDEs in dissemination and utilization (D&U). Ninety-two masters level and doctoral SCDEs were assessed with regard to…

The explicit goal of most educational information or resource centers, is to assist clients in obtaining and utilizing information to improve educational practice and aid in educational decision making. As the number of services has increased, the need to systematically assess them has become critical. Previous efforts have been limited and…

This brief, semi-technical handbook describes the various data systems of the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) with summaries of background, purpose and scope, sample design, data collection procedures, questionnaire content, data release, and data uses for individual NCHS surveys. NCHS operates a diverse survey and inventory program…

A growing international controversy exists between the West on one hand and the Third World, Marxist states, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the other focusing on the concepts of "free flow of information" and "Western communication imperialism," and on ethical issues relating to these…

The short-term effect of feedback of student ratings of college teachers was investigated, but no significant differences were found. Ratings of 84 teachers, in three experimental groups and a control group, were obtained in the third week of the fall semester and again during the final week of the same semester. Feedback in the form of a computer…

The 1975 Community/Junior College Conference sought to define and describe evaluation, discuss measuring devices, and underscore the ethical reasons for fair evaluation. William P. Gorth began by discussing the purpose of evaluation--to provide data to a specified decision-maker for decision-making--and the implications which could be drawn from…

In a 1979 survey, the majority of the 73% responding superintendents and 38% responding school board chairmen in 269 randomly chosen small school districts across the nation indicated that program evaluation activity occurred in their districts and that evaluation information was generally desired by and available to the school board.…

Volume I of this 4-volume report contains the research instruments used in an 18-month project which was designed to understand the rural poor in terms of their information-seeking and information-utilization behavior patterns. Randomly divided into 3 groups, 840 families from 7 target counties in northwestern Florida were studied by a group of…

The primary purpose of the documentation operations suggested by the National Teacher Centers Program is to aid individual projects in gaining a more profound and analytical understanding of what is happening within their own centers. The mechanism for this is the development of a massive information storage system, based on data collected from…