Describes an activity designed to introduce concepts of randomness and standard deviation. (CP)

Concerns about students' difficulties in statistical reasoning led to a study which explored year 11 (14 to 16 year-olds) students' ideas in this area. The study focussed on sampling variability, probability, descriptive statistics and graphical representations. This paper presents and discusses the ways in which students made sense of sampling…

Weighting and variance estimation are two statistical issues involved in survey data analysis for large-scale assessment programs such as the Higher Education Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy Assessment. Because survey data are always acquired by probability sampling, to draw unbiased or almost unbiased inferences for the…

Possible bias due to sampling problems or low response rates has been a troubling "nuisance" variable in empirical research since seminal and classical studies were done on these problems at the beginning of this century. Recent research suggests that: (1) earlier views of the alleged bias problem were misleading; (2) under a variety of fairly…

Two basic methods exist for drawing probability samples to be used in telephone surveys: directory sampling (from alphabetical or street directories) and random digit dialing (RDD). RDD includes unlisted numbers, whereas directory sampling includes only listed numbers. The goal of this paper is to estimate the effect of failure to include…

The first phase of a monitoring project to evaluate the implementation of the Chicago Reform Act, with a focus on the process of securing school participation in the study, is described in this report. Twelve schools out of a random stratified sample of 16 schools agreed to participate in the study, which was to consist of interviews and classroom…

Parametric analysis of covariance was compared to analysis of covariance with data transformed using ranks. Using a computer simulation approach the two strategies were compared in terms of the proportion of Type I errors made and statistical power when the conditional distribution of errors were: (1) normal and homoscedastic, (2) normal and…

BRRVAR, which uses the Balanced Repeated Replication approach, was designed for use with the Statistical Analysis System (SAS). It was created for the National Center for Education Statistics, to enlarge their capacity to estimate and analyze sampling errors for statistics generated from educational surveys with complex sampling designs. BRRVAR…

This book presents hands-on information on how to plan, administer, and analyze opinion polls. Guidance is also offered on how to make this strategy accessible to public interest groups. Several examples, checklists, warnings of possible pitfalls, and lists of material and human resources occur throughout the chapters. Major sections address the…

A common problem in the behavioral sciences is to determine if a set of observed variables can be more parsimoniously represented by a smaller set of derived variables. To address this problem, the performance of five methods for determining the number of components to retain (Horn's parallel analysis, Velicer's Minimum Average Partial (MAP),…

Guidelines are provided for designing and conducting a telephone opinion poll of the community. Issues discussed in the first part of this guide include determining the proper sample size, drawing a representative sample of the general adult population or of voters, selecting phone numbers, making call-backs, obtaining the proper male-female…

The purpose of this study was to determine the types of research methods used to study cognitive processing development in gifted learners, from 1975-1986. Of 870 research publications identified on giftedness, 522 publications (60 percent) dealt with cognitive processing development. Research designs used most frequently were causal-comparative,…

The governance options matrix is provided to offer a way for state and university policymakers to examine the functioning environments of specific university-owned public teaching hospitals. With it, they can consider the benefits and problems involved with different options for governance. The issues related to the environmental factors affecting…

This report is about the problem of making transition or enrollment rate gains comparable. It is shown that measures based on the proportions themselves, i.e. the difference between proportions, the proportion ratio and the residual gain ratio do not make the gains comparable. Instead a non-linear transformation has to be done. Two such…

Written in response to a request by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) for information on the extent to which federal agencies are not complying with the clearance provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, this brief narrative report presents the results of an Information Management and Technology Division survey of 90 out of 2,551…