A student might find a certain representational format (e.g., diagram, text) more attractive than other formats for learning. Computer technology offers opportunities to adjust the formats used in learning environments to the preferences of individual learners. The question addressed in the current study was: does the match between a student's…

We ask whether failing one or more of the state-mandated high-school exit examinations affects whether students graduate from high school. Using a new multi-dimensional regression-discontinuity approach, we examine simultaneously scores on mathematics and English language arts tests. Barely passing both examinations, as opposed to failing them,…

Context: Emergency Department (ED) use among the rural elderly may present a different pattern from the urban elderly, thus requiring different policy initiatives. However, ED use among the rural elderly has seldom been studied and is little understood. Purpose: To characterize factors associated with having any versus no ED use among the rural…

Purpose: Little is known about interrelationships among nutrition knowledge, attitude, dietary intake, and body satisfaction, which are important variables that play a role in nutrition education interventions. This paper aims to focus on these interrelationships. Design/methodology/approach: Students (n = 279; 20.12 plus or minus 1.75SD years)…

The logistic person response function (PRF) models the probability of a correct response as a function of the item locations. Reise (2000) proposed to use the slope parameter of the logistic PRF as a person-fit measure. He reformulated the logistic PRF model as a multilevel logistic regression model and estimated the PRF parameters from this…

Students who engage in high-risk behaviors, including early initiation of sexual intercourse, alcohol use, marijuana use, tobacco use, and externalizing behavior are vulnerable to a broad range of adverse outcomes as adults. Latent class analysis was used to determine whether varying patterns of risk behavior existed for 212 urban African-American…

This methodological brief introduces the readers to the propensity score matching method, which can be used for enhancing the validity of causal inferences in research situations involving nonexperimental design or observational research, or in situations where the benefits of an experimental design are not fully realized because of reasons beyond…

Youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods are at risk for becoming hopeless about their future and engaging in violent behaviors. The current study seeks to examine the longitudinal relationship between social connections, hopelessness trajectories, and subsequent violent behavior across adolescence. Our sample included 723 (49% female)…

Objective: This study examined the relative risk of placement disruption for 3-10 year-old children placed in out-of-home care based on the biological relatedness of the placement caregiver and child disability status: no disability, a non-behavioral disability only, a behavioral disability only, or both a non-behavioral and behavioral disability.…

This study examines the differences in the interpretation of ten "in context" verbal probability expressions used in accounting standards between native Chinese speaking and native English speaking accounting students in United Kingdom universities. The study assesses the degree of grouping factors consensus on the numerical…

Following the ongoing increase in nonmarital fertility, policy makers have looked for ways to limit the disadvantages faced by children of unmarried mothers. Recent initiatives included marriage promotion and welfare-to-work programs. Yet policy might also consider the promotion of three generational households. We know little about whether…

Considering the range of changes in the instruction and learning of statistics, several questions emerge regarding how those changes influence students' attitudes. Equally, other questions emerge to reflect that statistics is a fundamental course in the university academic programs because of its relevance to the professional development of the…

This study focused on variables that may account for response-rate differences under variable-ratio (VR) and variable-interval (VI) schedules of reinforcement. Four rats were exposed to VR, VI, tandem VI differential- reinforcement-of-high-rate, regulated-probability-interval, and negative-feedback schedules of reinforcement that provided the same…

This article presents a model of long term forgetting based on 3 ideas: (a) Memory for a stimulus can be described by a population of accessible traces; (b) probability of retrieval after a delay is predicted by the proportion of traces in this population that will be defined as correct if sampled; and (c) this population is diluted over time by…

This paper reviews the literature on poverty dynamics in the U.S. It surveys the most prevalent data, theories, and methods used to answer three key questions: How likely are people to enter, exit, and reenter poverty? How long do people remain in poverty? And what events are associated with entering and exiting poverty? The paper then analyzes…