The article reviewed 26 studies on mental retardation conducted in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s: 8 focused on etiological questions; 15, on psychoeducational issues; and 3, on vocational or social policy concerns. Findings tended to support trends found in the United States for individuals with mental retardation. (Author/DB)

This meta-analysis examined effects from 126 studies that used organizational development (OD) interventions to modify satisfaction and other attitudes. Multi-faceted interventions were found to be more effective in modifying satisfaction and attitudes than were OD interventions that used a single technique. Team building and lab training were the…

The article reviews the research on effects of cooperative learning on the academic achievement of students with handicaps. Findings of the 12 studies meeting the selection criteria were inconsistent. (Author/DB)

The article reviewed research on professionals', consumers', and others' judgments of the restrictiveness, social acceptability, and estimated frequency of use of procedures to decrease problem behaviors of disabled persons. Most respondents agreed that more restrictive procedures should be used as a last resort and that less restrictive…

Argues that generalizing to message populations by treating messages as a random variable is inappropriate for complex messages, and proposes meta-analytic techniques for investigating biases in message samples and other methodological factors that can limit generalizability of communication research. (MS)

Reviews studies of adult and child response to male and female infants based on preconceived sex stereotypes. Evaluates overall conclusions from studies. Indicates that knowledge of infant's gender is not a consistent determinant of adults' reactions but more strongly influences children's reactions. Considers implications for sex role…

This review brings together 21 studies on the long-term effects of school desegregation on the life chances of African American students. These studies draw on perpetuation theory, a macro-micro theory of racial segregation. They support the idea that interracial contact in school can help blacks overcome perpetual segregation. (SLD)

Finds a small, but statistically significant, association between exposure to U.S. entertainment programs and attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of foreign audiences. Finds also that, when taking study characteristics into consideration, only language of the questionnaire produced a significant difference in correlation size; and that the…

Presents a meta-analysis of literature which examined gender differences in students attitudes toward science, and correlations between attitudes toward science and science achievement. Results found that boys show a more positive attitude toward science than girls in all types of science and that a positive attitude results in higher achievement,…

A metanalysis of studies showed that ethnic minorities prefer ethnically similar counselors; however, these preferences were influenced by the cultural affiliation of the participants and the research methods used. More precise methods need to be developed to determine the degree to which ethnic minorities' preferences for ethnically-similar…

A meta-analysis of the difficulty and discrimination of the "none-of-the-above" (NOTA) test option was conducted with 12 articles (20 effect sizes) for difficulty and 7 studies (11 effect sizes) for discrimination. Findings indicate that using the NOTA option does not result in items of lesser quality. (SLD)

Effects of violating the independence assumption when combining correlation coefficients in a meta-analysis were studied. This Monte-Carlo simulation varied sample size, predictor number, population intercorrelation among predictors, and population correlation between predictors and criterion. Combining statistics from nonindependent data in a…

Implications of metanalytic results from Monte Carlo studies of the robustness of the F test in the one- and two-factor fixed effects analysis of variance (ANOVA) models and Monte Carlo results for the B. L. Welch (1947) and Kruskal-Wallis (1952) tests are discussed. (SLD)

Combining information to estimate standardized partial regression coefficients in a linear model is discussed. A combined estimate obtained from the pooled correlation matrix is proposed, and its large sample distribution is obtained. The method is generalized to handle a random effects model in which correlation parameters vary across studies.…

This paper provides a brief description of meta-analysis geared toward readers with limited statistics experience beyond an introductory course. The advantages and disadvantages of meta-analysis and its application in early childhood special education research are noted. (JDD)