In 1993 The Annie E. Casey Foundation made a substantial commitment to the goal of reducing adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease by investing in the design and development of the Plain Talk initiative. Plain Talk attempts to organize and mobilize community residents to change the attitudes and practices of adults, teenagers, and…

This handbook gives a broad overview of the practice of institutional research in higher education. The first of the handbook's four chapters describes how to define the context for institutional research by looking at where the institution is now, where it is going, and how it can arrive at its desired end. Chapter 2, which discusses how to…

This paper describes one aspect of a multi-factor investigation of the parameters which mediate in the effectiveness of an inservice staff development program. The paper also represents an attempt to recognize and to meet the problems associated with the evaluation of inservice programs for teachers in terms of student outcomes. The inservice…

This guide to writing research proposals for theses, dissertations, and grants contains practical suggestions for the would-be writer and several exemplars that show how effective proposal writing can be done. The guide is divided into two parts: Part 1, "Writing the Proposal" and Part 2, "Specimen Proposals." Part 1, the core of the guide,…

While national debates focus on rising immigration and its impact, current data on immigrants and how they affect the national life are limited. To determine the feasibility of conducting a national survey of immigrants, a pilot project surveyed Salvadorans and Filipinos in Los Angeles in 1991. This report addresses key methodological issues in…

This paper describes a project at Arizona State University West to generate a collection of narratives to be used in professional teacher education and to examine ways narratives and narrative research techniques could be used with students. The first half of the paper lists members of the research team, their individual concerns, how they came…

The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project was initiated in classrooms at five sites as a program of research on the impact of interactive technologies on teaching and learning. ACOT provided teachers and students with an Apple computer at home and at school. The University of California, Los Angeles, conducted an evaluation of the ACOT…

To satisfy federal requirements, the National Center for Education Statistics and the Division of Adult Education and Literacy planned a nationally representative household sample survey to assess the literacy skills of the adult population of the United States, to be conducted by the Educational Testing Service with the assistance of Westat, Inc.…

To question how she constructed an earlier idea about the role resistance takes in peer tutoring, a college professor examined the literature review she had prepared for the first chapter of her doctoral dissertation. In the literature review, the professor intended to establish an interpretive lens to comment about an African-American woman's…

This report summarizes the National Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) Study, which examined the impact of Title IIA of JTPA on participants' employment, earnings, and welfare receipt. Between 1987 and 1989, more than 20,000 adults and out-of-school youths who applied for JTPA services in 16 areas across the country were randomly assigned to a…

Issues and elements of case study research are explored and illustrated with the example of a case study of a kindergarten in a suburb of Tokyo (Japan). Case study research is a type of qualitative research that concentrates on a single unit or entity, with boundaries established by the researcher. The case is an example drawn from a larger class,…

This paper discusses a number of interventions that are aimed at increasing educational opportunities of homeless students in the United States. Only a few of these programs have been locally evaluated, and the evaluation process is particularly challenging for local evaluators to undertake. At a state and national level, commitment to evaluation…

This collection of papers presented at a 1996 conference on children's mental health focuses on research methodology and information systems. Papers have the following titles and authors: (1) "Parental Agreement on Ratings of Child Behavior: Measures of Agreement and Related Factors" (Carol T. Nixon, William E. MacLean); (2) "CAFAS…

The progress of an Improving the Efficiency of Educational Systems (IEES) Project initiative toward developing a prototype indicator system for tracking the overall education systems in participating countries, is described in this interim report. Two needed dimensions were identified during the development of the model: (1) incorporate…

This study investigated the cognitive benefits of learning how to program by determining the degree of cognitive transfer of programming skills at a construct level to solving analogous problems in other domains. Subjects, who were students enrolled in four sections of the beginning Pascal programming course and two sections of a calculus course,…