In exploring factors inhibiting formal evaluation at the school district level, and limiting the utility of conventional achievement monitoring, this paper begins with a review of the actual origin of the Elementary Secondary Education Act's (ESEA) evaluation requirements, and the attempts to implement national evaluation of ESEA Title I programs.…

Path analysis is presented as a technique that can be used to test on a priori model based on a theoretical conceptualization involving a network of selected variables. This being an introductory source, no previous knowledge of path analysis is assumed, although some understanding of the fundamentals of multiple regression analysis might be…

Perhaps due to misunderstandings of the nature of the research task in visual communication, findings of empirical research in that field have been highly inconsistent. Historically, there has been little serious systematic empirical investigation of visual communication. One difficulty is that it is not always possible to measure nonverbal…

This brief summary outlines the activities and findings of the research and development efforts of the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP) from 1971 to 1976. The paper suggests that the original goals of the program were met and that the initial operating procedures agreed upon by KEEP and the Hawaii State Department of Education were…

Research has identified a number of effective means of maximizing returns to mailed questionnaires. The accompanying cover letter, the first contact with the potential respondents, may be the most important aspect of the survey. Studies indicate that the most effective cover letters incorporate personalization with an altruistic and/or egoistic…

This study examines the development of children's preference for task difficulty levels. Subjects were 78 boys and 66 girls, aged 63 to 105 months. The sample was separated into older and younger groups. Within each age group, half the children of each sex were randomly assigned to one of two forms to test their level of aspiration. Subjects were…

A solution is proposed for analysis of variance procedures with missing cells, such as may occur when a control group is not assigned to any of the rows or columns of the various experimental groups. Mathematical models for two-way design are presented which define several variables; as well as row effect, column effect, and row and column…

In large-scale surveys, it is no longer uncommon for repeated measurements to be obtained from respondents and analyses performed to gauge the magnitiude of nonsampling errors. This is particularly true for periodic surveys and longitudinal surveys where a very large investment in data collection is made. This technical note, aimed at the analysis…

Important aspects of field research in education were discussed at this seminar. A wide spectrum of topics included the theoretical foundations of field methodology, information gathering, access, validity, reliability, interpretation and explanation, limits of methods, ethical issues, and approaches to write-up and presentation of data. Four…

The Mahalanobis distance model was compared with the linear discriminant function model and found to provide very similar results, even when a number of the variables were binary. A group of college freshmen were categorized into two groups: 116 "leavers," students who did not return for the second year, and 269 "returners."…

Three different approaches to metaevaluation are described and shown to have been applied to the study of Project Follow Through. These approaches include evaluation of primary evaluations, integrative meta-analysis in which results from several primary evaluations are combined, and secondary analysis involving the independent reanalysis of the…

This study explores the existence of a continuum of sexual aggression among males and a corresponding continuum of sexual victimization among females. A 12-question Sexual Experiences Survey written in parallel versions for men and women was administered to 3,862 university students. Three levels of sexual aggression/victimization ranging from…

This document is the final report of the Interactive Research and Development on Teaching (IR&DT) study on the implementation of educational research in actual site locations. Two teams of teachers, researchers, and trainer/developers spent fifteen-and-one-half months implementing the IR&DT at two sites in Vermont and California. Their…

RISK TAKING ON OBJECTIVE EXAMINATIONS (RTOOE) OCCURS WHENEVER AN EXAMINEE TAKES AN EXAMINATION WITH PENALTIES FOR INCORRECT RESPONSES, AND RESPONDS TO AN ITEM WITHOUT KNOWING THE CORRECT ANSWER WITH CERTAINTY. THIS PROJECT WAS CONCERNED WITH THREE ASPECTS OF RTOOE--(1) ITS MEASUREMENT, (2) ITS GENERALITY, AND (3) ITS EFFECT ON TEST SCORE. IN THE…

This paper addresses four issues in the design and execution of behavioral observation in classrooms. These four issues relate to the consequences of using different observation intervals, schedules of observation, student sampling methods, and definitions of on-task and off-task behavior for reliability, means, and correlations of time on-task…