Presents an activity using national achievement data to involve students in a project on data collection and statistics while learning about their attitudes toward and beliefs about mathematics. This activity presents a good opportunity to talk about various interpretations of data and allows students to examine and discuss their attitudes about…

Presents different real-world mathematics activities on data display and data analysis with pie charts from different time periods. (ASK)

Highlights effective graphical methods for screening and cleaning data, exploring and identifying models, and displaying data in counseling-psychology publications. Argues that graphs are not ancillary to scientific publications but are essential and, in some cases, sufficient expositions of results. (Author/GCP)

Describes the process behind health-plan selection for school district employees and offers suggestions on how managers might enhance their current healthcare plan purchasing process. Areas of health-plan review and critique are listed as are tips for measuring plan performance and advice on acquiring backup data on plan quality. (GR)

Significance tests are often used inappropriately in counseling research. In addition to comments on the significance test controversy (Vacha-Haase and Nilsson, this issue), a wider historical context and personal experiences are provided. The controversy is discussed, and seven recommendations for using significance tests are included. (EMK)

The Kuder Occupational Interest Survey (KOIS) and Kuder Career Search Survey (KCSS) are interpreted for a 29-year-old female client in the form of a letter addressed to her. Technique, the author's reasoning, and suggestions for interventions are discussed. Includes job profiles of people whose scores were similar to the client's. (MKA)

Presents background information on the Skills Confidence Inventory (SCI) and the construct it assesses. Interprets the skills confidence and interest profiles of a 29-year-old female high school teacher using the SCI and the Strong Interest Inventory. (MKA)

Reports on an investigation of the status of procedural knowledge in chemistry among students entering into bridging programs at two South African universities. Findings show that students overall tend to repeat in order to get a recurring reading. Very few students were able to use a line of best fit for a set of graphical data. Discusses…

Attempts to develop a methodology for assessing the relationship between students' written text and their scientific thinking by investigating how one group of middle school students generated meanings for scientific data and expressed them in writing. Finds that many student reports contained a minimal number of written inferences, expressing…

Medication use is recognized as the least expensive, most cost-effective health care intervention. In older adults this is especially important, as they are the largest consumer of prescription medications. We describe the use of a linked data set including pharmaceutical, medical, and hospital claims to examine pharmaceutical use in the…

This issue introduces a new feature to appear regularly in "History of Education". A compelling aspect of education history and one that is drawing new writers and readers in the field is the increasing diversity of sources on which education historians draw. New forms of admissible evidence challenge us to adopt different approaches to…

In this undergraduate biochemistry laboratory experiment, the vacuolar ATPase protein complex is purified from yeast cell extracts by doing immunoprecipitations under nondenaturing conditions. Immunoprecipitations are performed using monoclonal antibodies to facilitate data interpretation, and subunits are separated on the basis of their molecular…

Understanding the dynamics of school-to-work transition processes is of major interest for individuals involved in these processes, for guidance and counselling institutions, and for education policy. This knowledge is particularly important in order to assess the relevance of education inequality correction policies implemented in most countries…

In this paper we propose two interpretations for the discrimination parameter in the two-parameter logistic model (2PLM). The interpretations are based on the relation between the 2PLM and two stochastic models. In the first interpretation, the 2PLM is linked to a diffusion model so that the probability of absorption equals the 2PLM. The…

Conceptual and pragmatic issues relevant to the study of persons with autism are addressed within the context of comparison groups and matching strategies. We argue that no choice of comparison group or matching strategy is perfect, but rather needs to be determined by specific research objectives and theoretical questions. Thus, strategies can…