The development and validation of a test of listening comprehension for English as a second language at the Dutch National Institute for Educational Measurement (Cito) is described. The test uses two distinct item formats: true-false items and modified cloze items with two options. Both item formats were found to measure foreign language listening…

This handbook provides survey questionnaires and procedures to guide users in the conduct of follow-up studies to assess the transition success of special education and non-special education students. It focuses on collecting three types of data (employment activities, quality of life, and goal achievement) for special education students and…

The "Participation in Adult Education" machine-readable data file (MRDF) is prepared triennially for the Center for Education Statistics (CES) by the Bureau of the Census, as a supplement to its regular "Current Population Survey" (sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics). Previous specialized surveys in this series have…

Ways that data from four major longitudinal surveys can be used in postsecondary education policy analysis are discussed: the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience (NLS-LM), Project TALENT, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), and the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-HS). The potential use…

The issues, options, and procedures for annually measuring overall payment error in the Pell Grant program are specified in detail. Guidelines for establishing a definition of Pell Grant payment error are provided, and the design issues related to error measurement are examined. A comparison is made of options for selecting a study sample and for…

Alternative theoretical approaches influencing the research design of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study are discussed. One line of research used an Experimental Teaching Unit (ETU) to create a semi-standardized situation for comparison of teachers. Though this approach introduces a uniformity which appears to increase comparability, it is at…

The New York State Experimental Prekindergarten Program (PreK) evaluation studied successive waves of children while they were in PreK, and as they progressed through the third grade. For each wave, two control groups were obtained: (1) A waiting-list control group, children in districts offering PreK programs who were identified as eligible for…

This partially annotated bibliography of journal articles, dissertations, convention papers, research reports, and a few books and unpublished manuscripts provides a comprehensive coverage of work on latent trait theory and practice. Documents are arranged alphabetically by author. The period covered ranges from the early 1950's to the present.…

The report of sampling techniques used in "A Study of the Sustaining Effects of Compensatory Education on Cognitive Skills" is briefly summarized. The sustaining Effects Study is a large, multi-faceted national study of issues in the compensatory education of elementary school students. Data describing the characteristics of the students…

This volume presents a summary of the methods, findings and recommendations for federal policy of the National Day Care Study (NDCS), a 4-year study of the effects of regulatable day care center characteristics on the quality and cost of day care for preschoolers. Chapter I describes current day care services and the history of federal involvement…

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), with support from The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education through its Inter-Institutional Program Development Project, has prepared this report as phase 2 of a three-phase project designed to improve the educational approach to disadvantaged children. This report reveals…

Because public opinion polls have become important sources of information for legislators and politicians, public opinion pollsters should carefully consider the relationships between gender wording of polling questions, measurement errors, and validity and generalizability of survey findings. Findings from numerous research projects indicate that…

Data were collected on 80 diverse items concerning student perceptions of teaching for a representative sample of 189 classes at a large university. The items were subdivided by type of focus into four categories: course content, objectives, and structure; instructor's behavior; instructional methods and materials; outcomes of instruction. The…

Six research papers that have been published by the staff of the Center for Statewide Educational Assessment at Educational Testing Service are presented. In "A Selection of Self Concept Measures," Joan Knapp explores questions of defining and measuring self concept. In another paper, she examines some problems of measuring attitudes toward…

This volume describes the technical aspects of TIMSS 2003 and summarizes the main activities involved in the development of the data collection instruments, the data collection itself, and the analysis and reporting of the data. The thirteen chapters contained herein are: (1) Overview of TIMSS 2003 (Michael O. Martin and Ina V. S. Mullis); (2)…