This paper examines trends and issues in international agricultural extension and offers seven reasons for the establishment of extension systems after World War II. It makes the case that, although the general situation is somewhat similar today, three current developments color and shape extension and may cause its demise: (1) institutional…

Studies on alcohol and aggression have tended to use male subjects and to employ negative shock deliveries as the measure of aggression. This study was conducted to investigate sex differences in alcohol's effect on aggression and to examine the impact of providing both positive and negative response options. Male (N=48) and female (N=48)…

Research addressed two questions: (1) Does collaborative problem solving lead to greater learning among children than independent work? and (2) Does children's expertise and that of their partner influence learning? To address these questions, the performance of 5-year-old novice and expert singletons copying a Lego model was compared to that of…

Research has shown that relaxation exercises produce physical changes in students. After relaxation exercises, students appear calmer, have reduced levels of anxiety, and are more responsive to instruction. In order to determine if relaxation exercises would improve the rate at which students learn keyboarding, a study was conducted in a South…

One hundred seventy-nine students enrolled in a first-year college level composition course were subjects in a study of the effects of four levels of audience specification on writing anxiety, performance, and sensitivity to audience. Subjects completed the Writing Apprehension Test, which determined levels of writing apprehension, and then…

Because educational managers are central to effective school administration, states and local school districts are seeking improved methods of evaluating principals. The evaluative process can substantially affect productivity, employee commitment, and evaluation system stability. This study describes the characteristics of a state-mandated…

The results of research on the amount of information retained by television viewers from weather broadcasts suggest that audiences retain little information on weather conditions even though they are interested in it, and that more information is retained when the report is presented via the spoken word than with extensive use of visuals. An…

This one-page abstract summarizes the final report of a federally funded project titled, "Maintaining the Work Rate of Youth with Severe Handicaps." The study evaluated the effects of two self-management techniques, self-monitoring and self-solicitation of feedback with seven 18- to 20-year-old severely and moderately retarded youth over…

A new approach to assessing unexpected differential item performance (item bias or item fairness) is introduced and applied to the item responses of different subpopulations of Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) takers. The essential features of the standardization approach are described. The primary goal of the standardization approach is to control…

Two factors which act to depress cognitive test performance are referred to as anxiety and boredom. The responses to a 20-item adjectival checklist administered to high school seniors after completing a cognitive test battery were subjected to iterative principal axes factor analysis. The relationships between anxiety or boredom and test…

To maintain a good school system, a school board should expect from its administrators certain attitudes and behaviors: first, administrators should consider the students' interests above all else, support board decisions once made, consider ethical issues, be optimistic, and take pride in their jobs and their school district; second, they should…

This paper presents an economic model of the relationship between time allocated to learning activities at home and achievement in school. The model is contrasted to four alternative models of the home-school relationship. Data from a 1975 survey of the parents of 887 elementary school children from one New York State school district are used to…

Previous research has found that people are often so anxious about performing in public that they cannot recall what happened when they were next-in-line to perform. In the current research, 96 general psychology students at Texas Christian University, in four experimental groups of 24 subjects each, took turns reading words aloud. Later, they…

This commitee of the National Research Council was established to develop improved indicators of mathematics and science education. In its first report, the committee used a model of education consisting of inputs, processes, and outcomes. Indicators recommended in these areas include teacher quantity and quality, quality of the curriculum…

The traditional explanation for dual-task interference is that tasks compete for scarce processing resources. Another possible explanation is that the outcome of the processing required for one task conflicts with the processing required for the other task. To explore the contribution of outcome conflict to task interference, this paper describes…