Empirical data suggest that there is at most a very small sex difference in general mental ability, but men clearly perform better on visuospatial tasks while women clearly perform better on tests of verbal usage and perceptual speed. In this study, we integrated these overall findings with predictions based on the Verbal-Perceptual-Rotation (VPR)…

The perceived spatiotemporal continuity of objects depends on the way they appear and disappear as they move in the spatial layout. This study investigated whether infants' predictive tracking of a briefly occluded object is sensitive to the manner by which the object disappears and reappears. Five-, 7-, and 9-month-old infants were shown a ball…

The NEAIR (North East Association for Institutional Research) 2011 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Boston, Massachusetts conference. Papers in this document include: (1) Are Students Dropping Out or Dragging Out the College Experience? The Roles of Socioeconomic Status and Academic Background (Leslie S. Stratton…

Basic and integrated science process skills form the basis for inquiry-based, hands-on learning. This study explores conditions that are essential for students to master the process skill of prediction. The following question is asked: Is there a significant difference between kindergarten students' prediction ability using hands-on objects…

Discrete-time survival analysis is a new method for educational researchers to employ when looking at the timing of certain educational events. Previous continuous-time methods do not allow for the flexibility inherent in a discrete-time method. Because both time-invariant and time-varying predictor variables can now be used, the interaction of…

A phenomenon previously noted in prior prediction of mathematics scores on the Content Mastery Examinations for Educators (CMEE) of the National Teacher Examinations Core Battery subtests of General Knowledge (NTE-GK) and Communication Skills (NTE-CS) was investigated. Prior research with 1991-1992 data sets had established an equation for the…

Measurement is prescriptive in that the model required to produce the numbers from the phenomena is known in advance. Statistical theory is descriptive because the model required to explain the numbers is inferred from the numbers and any other information the researcher can bring to bear. There are well-known families of measurement models and…

In this study, the ability of test development staff to predict the difficulty of analogy items was explored. The nature of the item attributes that contributed to test writers' predictions of difficulty as well as actual item difficulty was also investigated. The two expert test writers studied were quite good at predicting item difficulty. Item…

This report presents an analysis of an expert performing a highly interactive computer task. The analysis uses GOMS models, specifying the Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules used by the expert; the GOMS models are implemented within a unified theory of cognition called Soar. Two models are presented, one with function-level operators,…

A study examined the relative contributions of semantic and non-semantic sources of redundancy in printed English, which play a central role in information processing models. Subjects, 40 undergraduate college students, were divided into two groups. One group predicted missing characters using English text, and the second group was required to…

Research has demonstrated that depressed people lack the optimistic bias evidenced by nondepressed persons and that the former may be more realistic in predicting the outcome of future events (depressive realism hypothesis). This study assesses the depressive realism hypothesis by comparing the accuracy of depressed and nondepressed people's…

Three methods of transforming unordered categorical response variables are described. One is a method using dummy binary variables. The second method analyzes all categorical variables simultaneously and is based on an eigenanalysis of frequency patterns scaled relative to within-groups variance, jointly developed by J. E. Overall and J. A.…

The public has a right to expect economy, efficiency, and ultimate reduction in all governmental spending; however, educators are cautioned about those persons using educational statistics as a basis only for reducing school funding. (Author/MLF)

It is possible to predict a successful foster placement. This may be done through information obtained in interviews with potential foster parents, combined with data on the foster child, the social worker, and the constellation produced by adding the child to the family. (Author)