This paper reports on findings from a recent collaborative participatory action research study that involved a group of teachers from two Kenyan schools in a review and development of interpretation resources and materials. It focuses on an engaging process between teachers and non-formal educators in which interpretive capital (the tools and…

The purpose of this study was to collect and examine intervention studies conducted with young children with autism. The synthesis looked at inferential studies reported between 1975 and April 2001 that included preestablished criteria such as, for example, at least two thirds of the participants ages 3 to 8 years and 50% or more of the…

Following the cultural turn within the social sciences, recent debates on how to conceptualise "the rural" have focused on "rurality" as a phenomenon produced by processes of social construction. This paper presents an empirical account of the outcome of these social construction processes through an analysis of how teenagers…

Wider use in psychology of confidence intervals (CIs), especially as error bars in figures, is a desirable development. However, psychologists seldom use CIs and may not understand them well. The authors discuss the interpretation of figures with error bars and analyze the relationship between CIs and statistical significance testing. They propose…

After completing a longitudinal study of co-principal shared leadership initiatives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the author discusses some of the issues raised by her research design and methods. First, she explains the storying techniques she used to construct case narratives of each initiative. While these accounts drew largely on the participants'…

Rural Appalachia has significantly higher overall cancer mortality compared with national rates, and lack of cancer screening is believed to be one of the contributing factors. Reducing the cancer disparity in this region must include strategies to address suboptimal cancer screening practices by rural Appalachian primary care providers (PCPs). To…

The challenges involved in the design of ethical, nonexploitative research projects with sex workers or any other marginalized population are significant. First, the size and boundaries of the population are unknown, making it extremely difficult to get a representative sample. Second, because membership in hidden populations often involves…

During the past 20 years, we have learned how similarly harmful are experiences of terror, violence, and abuse, whether they occur on the combat field or at home. The field of family violence has gained much from the field of traumatic stress, and collaborations between these two previously separate fields have yielded important new answers, as…

Personal crises have been associated with spiritual growth. Sparked by the global response to the crisis of September 11, 2001, this study examined the relationship of spirituality and the September 11 tragedy using a sample of convenience from a college student population. This preliminary study used an experimental design to examine various…

Method is usually viewed as completely separate from philosophy or theory, focusing instead on techniques and procedures of interviewing, focus groups, observation, or statistical analysis. Several texts on methodology published recently have added significant sections on philosophy, such as Creswell's (1998) Qualitative inquiry and research…

The research presented in this article examines the predictors of institutional commitment of first-year students at 28 two-year and 23 four-year public institutions. Previous research has demonstrated that institutional commitment is a strong predictor of college students' intent to persist, and ultimately student persistence itself (Braxton,…

School nurses need to demonstrate that their practice is based on the best evidence available, which is usually data obtained from research. Evidence-based practice involves combining the best evidence available with nursing expertise and patient and family preferences to determine optimum care. Evidence-based practice guidelines are developed by…

Studies of autism typically adopt a factorial matched-groups design aimed at eliminating nonspecific factors such as mental retardation as explanations of performance on experimental tasks. This paper reviews the issues involved in designing such studies and interpreting their results and suggests that the best approach to matching may be to…

The phrases "best practice" and "evidence-based" are much in the air, and they imply that the answers are already out there. We just have to choose the right ones. Educational research in this connection is a kind of product testing. The U.S. Office of Education has made it a policy that rigorous product testing is the only…

Randomized social policy experiments (SPEs) are an important methodology for investigating topics in child development. This article provides a framework for understanding how evidence from SPEs can add to knowledge about child development. The use of SPEs for child development questions to date is summarized and lessons from the applied economics…