Educational research outcomes frequently rely on an assumption that measurement metrics have interval-level properties. While most investigators know enough to be suspicious of interval-level claims, and in some cases even question their findings given such doubts, there is a lack of understanding regarding the measurement conditions that create…

In using large language models (LLMs) for education, such as distractors in multiple-choice questions and learning by teaching, error-containing content is used. Prompt tuning and retraining LLMs are possible ways of having LLMs generate error-containing sentences in the learning content. However, there needs to be more discussion on how to tune…

Background: Clustered randomized controlled trials are commonly used to evaluate the effectiveness of treatments. Frequently, stratified or paired designs are adopted in practice. Fogarty (2018) studied variance estimators for stratified and not clustered experiments and Schochet et. al. (2022) studied that for stratified, clustered RCTs with…

Background: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs), or experiments, are the gold standard for intervention evaluation. However, the main appeal of RCTs--the clean identification of causal effects--can be compromised by interference, when one subject's actions can influence another subject's behavior or outcomes. In this paper, we formalize and study…

Background: The emergence of causal research in education was almost strictly quantitative twenty years ago, however, that landscape has changed considerably. The number of intervention studies fielded and completed annually has increased substantially, and the quality of the evaluations is much more robust, including paying much greater attention…

Inequities in STEM persist, notably in underrepresented groups relating to gender, race, socio-economic status, and disability. The purpose of this study was to explore correlations between STEM identities, personal identities, mentor-related experiences, and academic/career persistence of undergraduate students in Idaho public post-secondary…

Given the rapid adoption of machine learning methods by education researchers, and the growing acknowledgment of their inherent risks, there is an urgent need for tailored methodological guidance on how to improve and evaluate the validity of inferences drawn from these methods. Drawing on an integrative literature review and extending a…

This article presents findings from a critical review of 163 peer-reviewed articles on the growth of private higher education (HE) cross-nationally. Our review finds that the vast majority of studies on the development of private HE are country-specific case studies, with few comparative or cross-national studies. Moreover, most studies endorse a…

This quantitative study investigates the predictive power of machine learning (ML) models on degree completion among adult learners in higher education, emphasizing the enhancement of data-driven decision-making (DDDM). By analyzing three ML models - Random Forest, Gradient-Boosting machine (GBM), and CART Decision Tree - within a not-for-profit,…

Despite the increasing adaption of automated text analysis in communication studies, its strengths and weaknesses in framing analysis are so far unknown. Fewer efforts have been made to automatic detection of networked frames. Drawing on the recent developments in this field, we harness a comparative exploration, using Latent Dirichlet Allocation…

When it comes to mastering the digital world, the education system is more and more facing the task of making students competent and self-determined agents when interacting with digital artefacts. This task often falls to computing education. In the traditional fields of computing education, a plethora of models, guidelines, and principles exist,…

Intended for researchers and clinical leaders, this article suggests that embedded program evaluation is a good fit with the desired features of practice-oriented research. The systematic nature of evaluation that is built into the operational workflow of a practice setting may increase the diversity of methods available to explore processes and…

With the "pictorial turn", the picture has gained a new significance as a medium. It is impossible to imagine a digitalized world affected by mass media without pictures. While there are several studies on the impact of pictures in the discourse on climate change in the media, there has been no analysis of the visual representation of…

Background: Youth violence, victimization, and bullying are pervasive in schools across the United States and are detrimental for learning and healthy development. K-12 school safety is an increasingly urgent issue to research and understand from multiple perspectives. Physical and psychological safety in school is linked to better student and…

Regression discontinuity (RD) designs have gained significant popularity as a quasi-experimental device for evaluating education programs and policies. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of RD designs, focusing on the continuity-based framework, the most widely adopted RD framework. We first review the fundamental aspects of RD…