Background/Context: Media comparison studies aim to compare the relative effectiveness of different media at promoting educational outcomes. While these types of studies remain popular, they have been under attack for more than two decades. Critics of media comparison studies claim that continued studies are unhelpful because a great number of…

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of the paper is to explore an instructive case in which two potentially opposed reform theories converge on schools, in order to understand how productively or unproductively the two theories coexist. We attempt to answer the following questions: Can these two reform theories coexist,…

This article uses propensity scores to identify subgroups of individuals most likely to experience a reduction in cash benefits because of sanctions in some of the programs that make up the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies. It extends program evaluation methodology by using propensity scoring to identify the subgroups of…

The health and financial costs of physical inactivity are staggering. Few researchers have assessed the prevalence of physical activity at the level needed to gain health benefits. Objective: The author's purpose in this longitudinal study was to assess the prevalence of university students who maintained physical activity at the level necessary…

The authors compared business journal ranking systems from 6 countries. Results revealed a low degree of agreement among the systems, and a low to moderate relationship between pairs of systems. In addition, the French and United Kingdom ranking systems were different from each other and from the systems in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, and the…

Objective: The authors' purpose in this study was to investigate the influence of knowledge of osteoporosis, attitudes regarding osteoporosis, and knowledge of dietary calcium on dairy product intake in both male and female college-age students. Participants: The authors conducted this cross-sectional study on 911 men and women enrolled in 2…

Piagetian tasks have more to do with the child's ability to inhibit interference than they do with the ability to grasp their underlying logic. Here we used a chronometric paradigm with 11-year-olds, who succeed in Piaget's conservation-of-weight task, to test the role of cognitive inhibition in a priming version of this classical task. The…

Counseling psychologists face many approaches from which to choose when they conduct a qualitative research study. This article focuses on the processes of selecting, contrasting, and implementing five different qualitative approaches. Based on an extended example related to test interpretation by counselors, clients, and communities, this article…

Course evaluation is integral to medical education. We discuss (1) distinctive features of medical education that impact on course evaluation, (2) a framework for course evaluations, (3) details that shape the evaluation process, (4) key measurement issues important to data gathering and interpretation, and (5) opportunities for expanding the…

Evidence-based practices (EBPs) are the basis on which teachers and other service providers are required to design educational programs for learners with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). As part of their work with the National Professional Development Center (NPDC) on ASD, researchers developed a process for reviewing the research literature and…

This study was aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of CAI vs. classroom lecture for computer science at ICS level. The objectives were to compare the learning effects of two groups with class room lecture and computer assisted instruction studying the same curriculum and the effects of CAI and CRL in terms of cognitive development. Hypothesis of…

The study of writers and writing in digital environments raises distinct and complex ethical issues for researchers. Rhetoric theory and casuistic ethics, working in tandem, provide a theoretical framework for addressing such issues. A casuistic heuristic grounded in rhetorical principles can help digital writing researchers critically…

Purpose/Objective/Research question/Focus of study: This study describes and analyzes the student and faculty experiences of a "performance-based" preservice teacher education program at a large comprehensive university in the mid-Atlantic region. The aim is to understand the "hidden" curricular messages within the program and the ways that these…

A new and unified approach to test equating is described that is based on log-linear models for smoothing score distributions and on the kernel method of nonparametric density estimation. The new method contains both linear and standard equipercentile methods as special cases and can handle several important equating data collection designs. An…

The Welch-James (WJ) and Improved General Approximation (IGA) tests for the within-subjects main and interaction effects in a split-plot repeated measurement design were investigated when least squares estimates and robust estimates based on trimmed means were used. Variables manipulated in the Monte Carlo study included the degree of multivariate…