Written by a social worker for social work students, this is a nuts and bolts guide to statistics that presents complex calculations and concepts in clear, easy-to-understand language. It includes numerous examples, data sets, and issues that students will encounter in social work practice. The first section introduces basic concepts and terms to…

Design is critical to the successful development of any interactive learning environment (ILE). Moreover, in technology-enhanced learning (TEL) the design process requires input from many diverse areas of expertise. As such, anyone undertaking tool development is required to directly address the design challenge from multiple perspectives. We…

A solid understanding of "inferential statistics" is of major importance for designing and interpreting empirical results in any scientific discipline. However, students are prone to many misconceptions regarding this topic. This article structurally summarizes and describes these misconceptions by presenting a systematic review of publications…

The purpose of this article is to describe four methods for completing the conceptual development phase of theory building research for single or multiparadigm research. The four methods selected for this review are (1) Weick's method of "theorizing as disciplined imagination" (1989); (2) Whetten's method of "modeling as theorizing" (2002); (3)…

Multisite research designs involving cluster randomization are becoming increasingly important in educational and behavioral research. Researchers would like to compute effect size indexes based on the standardized mean difference to compare the results of cluster-randomized studies (and corresponding quasi-experiments) with other studies and to…

This article takes a further look at the percentage of data points exceeding the median (PEM) analysis method for single-case research data, first presented in this journal by Hsen-Hsing Ma. Ma examined the relationship between PEM and the established percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND) and then applied PEM in a meta-analysis of 61 data sets,…

This article summarizes the findings of a case study on the creation and application of an activity-based cost accounting model that links community college salary expenditures to mission-critical practices within academic divisions of a southern California community college. Although initially applied as a financial management tool in private…

This article reports on the authors' experiences as researchers finding out that working with an advocacy organization helped to address the lag between analyzing and drawing conclusions from research and ensuring that relevant findings had an impact. For many in the world of advocacy or those in the world of research, the partnership that is the…

Individually randomized treatments are often administered within a group setting. As a consequence, outcomes for treated individuals may be correlated due to provider effects, common experiences within the group, and/or informal processes of socialization. In contrast, it is often reasonable to regard outcomes for control participants as…

Using a recent study that examined the effectiveness of a particular approach to improving individual university teaching as a case study, this paper examines some of the challenges inherent in educational research, particularly research examining the effects of interventions to improve teaching. Aspects of the research design and methodology and…

Methodological reviews have been used successfully to identify research trends and improve research practice in a variety of academic fields. Although there have been three methodological reviews of the emerging field of computer science education research, they lacked reliability or generalizability. Therefore, because of the capacity for a…

Background/Context: Determining the effectiveness of reform strategies is a major part of the current and future educational research agenda. Effects of education reforms will be evaluated largely quantitatively, and an important aspect of this work will be judging how well reform strategies work. The rhetoric of contemporary school reform…

This paper describes the process of designing and administering a sufficiently valid and reliable assessment instrument to measure the progress in attainment of adult learners studying numeracy, and discusses some of the inherent difficulties that were involved. The fieldwork took place during 2003-2005 and involved a sample of 34 teachers and 412…

Different research designs answer different questions. Educators cannot use nonexperimental quantitative research designs, such as descriptive surveys and correlational research, to determine definitively that an intervention causes improved student outcomes and is an evidence-based practice. However, such research can (a) inform educators about a…

One of the great strengths of Jim Kaput's research program was his relentless drive towards scaling up his innovative approach to teaching the mathematics of change and variation. The SimCalc mission, "democratizing access to the mathematics of change," was enacted by deliberate efforts to reach an increasing number of teachers and students each…