An approach to educational research that is receiving renewed attention is participatory action research (PAR), which emphasizes a bottom-up approach to research as well as useful outcomes. PAR is a philosophy, and not a methodology per se. It is a deliberate, goal-directed, structured, and applied means of obtaining information that looks to…

To gather data on the place of community colleges in the overall structure of American postsecondary education, a study was conducted of state-level administrators of community colleges regarding the practice of baccalaureate degree-granting institutions offering programs of upper-division collegiate credit at community colleges. Administrators…

A study of the impact of economic differentiation on institutional pricing and expenditure policies, higher education public policy, and governance in public colleges and universities is described. It is suggested that economic differentiation is a likely determinant of variation in institutional expenditure and pricing policies and higher…

Industrial education has reached the stage of evolution where a major transition is required if it is to continue as a viable field of education and contribute to the solution of some of society's significant and critical problems. If industrial arts practitioners are to guide their field through an orderly transformation, they must follow a…

This paper describes a conceptual framework for studying the family environment that (1) incorporates recent advances in understanding multiple social influences on behavior; (2) recognizes common and idiosyncratic characteristics of families as social units; (3) identifies research strategies that can be used to assess families; and (4) generates…

Background information is provided on the development and activities of Project Cooperation, a demonstration project to help institutions improve educational effectiveness by employing outcomes measures and assessment strategies. After highlighting the various activities of the project (e.g., a national survey, research on different plans and…

Five workplans were developed for the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) educational indicators program. The implementation of these workplans will be useful to both NCES staff and users of NCES data and will provide opportunities for joint working relationships among the authors, consultants, and NCES staff. The five plans call for…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is compared to the two studies of the National Educational Longitudinal Studies (NELS) Program--the National Longitudinal Study of the Class of 1972 (resurveyed in 1973, 1974, 1976, and 1979) and the 1980 High School and Beyond study (partially resurveyed and retested in 1982). The third phase…

This evaluation report summarizes the impact of the Hartford Effective Schools Initiative (HESI) during the 1984-85 implementation year and is based on: (1) interview and observation data gathered during two day visits to each of the three schools in April and May and compared with similar data collected from the same teachers, facilitators,…

In 1981, the developers of a school-based change effort engaged researchers to conduct an evaluation study employing qualitative methodology that would provide the developers with information that could be used to improve the program. Resource constraints, short timelines, and the developers' preference for useable information encouraged…

At the request of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Educational Research and Improvement, the Panel to Evaluate the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was established in 1985 by the National Academy of Sciences. This report culminates an extensive two-year study of NCES and reflects the panel's broad view of the center's…

Statistical significance is misused in educational and psychological research when it is applied as a method to establish the reliability of research results. Other techniques have been developed which can be correctly utilized to establish the generalizability of findings. Methods that do provide such estimates are known as invariance or…

To evaluate the ethical role of researchers in developmental communication, this paper first reviews current thinking on development theories, suggesting that world recession, as well as skyrocketing national debts and internal conflicts in Third World nations underscore (1) the relationship between Third World development and global stability,…

This paper proposes some possible areas of research and tentative theoretical guidelines for the Learning in Science Project (Primary)-- LISP(P). This new project, designed to investigate the teaching and learning of science in the primary school, arises from the work of the original Learning in Science Project (LISP). LISP(P) has two…

The methodology and results of a survey undertaken to develop data on current experiences and future needs of selected nonfederal users in obtaining and using federal information are reported in a letter to the chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) of the U.S. Congress and in eight appendixes. Noting that information from the survey…