A status report on research in outdoor education needs to be written, including the establishment of research priorities, strategies to upgrade both research quality and researcher skills, and strategies for using research to improve outdoor education programs. (MJB)

The relationship between variables in applied and experimental research is often investigated by the use of extreme groups. Recent analytical work has provided an extreme group procedure that is more powerful than the standard correlational approach. The present article provides procedures to optimize power and thusly resources in such studies.…

This study examines the randomization process in twelve different social reform projects in the fields of health, education, and law. The implementation of the evaluation plan is discussed for each project. Recommendations are made for consideration by program administrators and researchers before planning and implementing true experimental…

Statistical analysis must be approached rationally and with intent. The application of statistical analysis under the guise of the classical experimental paradigm when the underlying statistical assumptions are not met, as is often the case in institutional research, is neither efficient nor likely to produce useful results. (Author/MSE)

Discusses "state of the art" of research in experiential education, gap between researchers and practitioners, and current practices and problems. Suggests refocusing attention in interpretive phase of research and evaluation and use of multimethod, multivariate approach. (NEC)

Discusses the problem of assigning subjects to one of several treatments based on their test scores. The success of each treatment is measured by different criterion. (RB)

Examines the role of importance, novelty, and plausibility of message information in producing belief change. Demonstrates that significant belief changes only occurred when message information was high in importance, novelty, and plausibility. (NKA)

Addresses intensive study of individual subject, emphasizing development of appropriate designs and analytical procedures for single-subject research. Treatment times should be randomly assigned to treatments, creating randomization. The assumption of random sampling is not met in single-subject experiments, however, data from a randomized…

This paper critically examines recent studies investigating the relationship between dramatic play and story comprehension. Four issues to be addressed are (1) play and contextual variables; (2) treatment effects on different subjects; (3) length of effects; and (4) size of effects. Recommendations for future research are made. (Author/MT)

Responds to Bryant's comments on Sugarman's article in this issue. (PCB)

Quality control in the auditing profession has developed useful practices that are applied to the research and evaluation process. By identifying and controlling sources of bias and noise in the system of inquiry, the quality of evaluative evidence can be enhanced for both present and future use. (Author/BS)

When the experimental units are measured twice, and the response variable is dichotomous, the equality of the two proportions is usally assessed by Mc Nemar's (1947) test. In this paper, Bayesian methods are presented for testing hypotheses regarding the two success probabilities in light of complete and incomplete data. (Author/BW)

A dozen schemes proposing to classify research questions are surveyed, analyzed, and applied to the understanding and practice of inquiry. The extent to which these schemes account for questions found in educational journals is estimated. Principles and issues are identified to stimulate work on the classification of research questions. (Author/BS)

This article summarizes the properties of binomial and multinomial logit models, reviews applications of these models in recreation, and provides guidance to the technical literature on estimation techniques. Recommendations for improving models of recreation choice are offered. (DF)

Randomization tests involve generating all possible assignments of subjects to treatments in order to create a distribution of possible test statistics. The use of a premutation group to enhance the understanding and utility of randomization tests is discussed. (Author/JKS)