Annual state panel data from 1980 to 1999 was examined to understand the effects of child support enforcement (CSE). However, in recent years, it has been found that the CSE among current and former welfare families are dramatically improved.

According to researchers, the ability to engage teachers and students in the data analysis process helps them to understand the complexities involved in the task. The flexibility of the strategies used in the process are examined by analyzing the experience of student researchers and teacher researchers.

Training is conducted that provides opportunities for students to apply counting, number sense, data collection and graphing skills. The lessons were taught at the end of the school year in a kindergarten classroom in a Title I school in Fairfax Country, Virgina.

None of the techniques -- sorting, scatter graphs, grouping, or calculating means -- that are highlighted in this work are particularly sophisticated, and yet their simplicity is often more than adequate for displaying the trends in data or for making comparisons in a convincing way. These are strategies that are easy to introduce to students and…

This paper examines the practice of benchmarking universities using a "league table" approach. Taking the example of the "Sunday Times University League Table", the author reanalyses the descriptive data on UK universities. Using a linear programming technique, data envelope analysis (DEA), the author uses the re-analysis to…

The present simulation investigated the performance of parallel analysis for unidimensional binary data. Single-factor models with 8 and 20 indicators were examined, and sample size (50, 100, 200, 500, and 1,000), factor loading (.45, .70, and .90), response ratio on two categories (50/50, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20, and 90/10), and types of correlation…

Data Envelopment Analysis has become a popular tool for evaluating the efficiency of decision making units. The nonparametric approach has been widely applied to educational production. The approach is, however, deterministic and leads to biased estimates of performance in the presence of measurement error. Numerous simulation studies confirm the…

This article describes how job analysis, a method commonly used in personnel research and organizational psychology, provides a systematic method for documenting program staffing and service delivery that can improve evaluators' knowledge about program operations. Job analysis data can be used to increase evaluators' insight into how staffs…

The method of least squares (LS) is considered as an important data analysis tool available to physical scientists. The mathematics of linear least squares(LLS) is summarized in a very compact matrix rotation that renders it practically "formulaic".

The study discussed in this paper focuses on the responses of mathematics teachers to the fundamental transformation of the Namibian educational system. As described in this qualitative study, changes to the educational system transformed the social context of mathematics teaching in fundamental ways. The findings of this study reveal that the…

Locating pairwise differences among treatment groups is a common practice of applied researchers. Articles published in this journal have addressed the issue of statistical inference within the context of an analysis of variance (ANOVA) framework, describing procedures for comparing means, among other issues. In particular, 1 article (Jaccard &…

Obtaining meaningful information from statistically valid and reliable measures of the quality of care for disease-specific care provided in small rural hospitals is limited by small numbers of cases and different definitive care capacities. An alternative approach may be to aggregate and analyze patient services that reflect more generalized care…

Discusses criticisms of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST), suggesting that historical use of NHST was reasonable, and current users should read Sir Ronald Fisher's applied work. Notes that modifications to NHST and interpretations of its outcomes might better suit the needs of modern science. Concludes that NHST is most often useful as…

Based on a sample of ten of the country's 21 public universities, this article examines the relative efficiency of South African universities between 1994 and 1997 using Data Envelopment Analysis. After outlining the nature and limitations of the technique, a series of seven models were tested. Each used a consolidation of the annual output of…

Advocacy for academically based teacher education informs this article, which stresses the need for persuasive evidence of its value. A summary of the current state of the evidence is presented, concluding that positive evidence is now very limited. What is needed to make the case for academically based teacher education is quantitative empirical…