The paper discusses two common scenarios in which evaluators must conduct impact evaluations when working under budget, time, or data constraints. Under the first scenario the evaluator is not called in until the project is already well advanced, and there is a tight deadline for completing the evaluation, frequently combined with a limited budget…

The teaching faculty for this course sought to address their own concerns about the quality of student learning in an impersonal large lecture biology class for majors, the difficulties in getting to know each student by name, and difficulties in soliciting answers and reactions from the students during the lecture. Questions addressed by this…

The Portland Neurotoxicity Scale (PNS) is a brief patient-based survey of neurotoxicity complaints commonly encountered with the use of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). The authors present data on the validity of this scale, particularly when used in longitudinal studies. Participants included 55 healthy controls, 23 epilepsy patient controls, and 86…

A storybook intervention for kindergarten children that integrates principles of explicit vocabulary instruction within the shared storybook reading experience is described with findings from an experimental study demonstrating the effects of this intervention on the vocabulary development of kindergarten students at risk of reading difficulty.…

We conducted 2 studies to assess and enhance levels of graduate preparation. In Study 1, 248 undergraduates and 28 graduate students completed a new measure of graduate preparation, the Grad Prep Quiz. Results documented the psychometric utility and the predictive validity of the measure, with graduate students scoring significantly higher on this…

The study investigated whether changes in the educational context of teaching Arabic as a second language in Israeli schools affect students' attitudes towards the language, its speakers and culture, and motivation to study the language. These changes included teaching spoken Arabic rather than Modern Standard Arabic and lowering the starting age…

The authors examined the effects of a simplified English dictionary accommodation on the reading-test performance of Hmong English-language learners (ELLs). Participants included a control group of 69 non-ELL students and an experimental group of 133 Hmong ELLs from 3 urban middle schools in Minnesota. In a randomized counterbalanced design, all…

Background: The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a brief CBT intervention for anxiety with children diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS). A second interest was to evaluate whether more intensive parent involvement would increase the child's ability to manage anxiety outside of the clinic setting. Methods: Seventy-one children…

Background: Deficits in autism have been characterised as a bias towards local over global processing. This paper examines whether there is a deficit in gestalt grouping in autism. Method: Twenty-five low-functioning children with autism and 25 controls who were matched for chronological age and verbal mental age took part in the study. Results:…

This article reports first-year achievement outcomes of a national randomized evaluation of Success for All, a comprehensive reading reform model. Forty-one schools were recruited for the study and were randomly assigned to implement Success for All or control methods. No statistically significant differences between experimental and control…

The authors present 3 experiments demonstrating ways to reduce illegal moves in problem-solving tasks. They propose a 3-stage framework for the rejection of illegal moves. An illegal move must come to mind and be selected, checked for legality, and correctly rejected. Illegal move reduction can occur at any stage. Control group participants…

Three forms of objective evaluation were used to assess the impact of a nurture group pilot project on the lives of staff and pupils: Boxall Profiles, the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire, and questionnaires for staff. In addition, a micro study was carried out of two nurture groups using matched control groups. The article provides an…

Despite their purported neuroanatomic and functional isolation, empirical evidence suggests that sometimes conscious explicit processes can influence implicit motor skill learning. Our goal was to determine if the provision of explicit information affected implicit motor-sequence learning after damage to the basal ganglia. Individuals with stroke…

Much research has suggested that those who stutter are likely to be anxious. However, to date, little research on this topic has addressed the role of expectancies of harm in anxiety, which is a central construct of anxiety in modern clinical psychology. There are good reasons to believe that the anxiety of those who stutter is related to…

There has been an increasing emphasis in educational policies, practices and professional development on the capacity of educational leadership to exert a causal impact on student cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. If the strict criteria of counterfactual causality are adhered to no causal inference could be made about the effects of…