This study was designed to determine the effect of high school physics, the frequency of high school physics laboratory use, and high school mathematics background on the success of students taking first semester physics. Data were obtained from undergraduates (N=248) at Mississippi State University. The final letter grade in the first semester of…

This report provides preliminary technical information on a method for analyzing the factors involved in the closing of elementary schools. Included is a presentation of data and a brief discussion bearing on descriptive statistics, reliability, and validity. An intercorrelation matrix is also examined. The method employs 9 factors that have a…

A study was conducted at Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) to determine if there was a relationship between students' performance in a general mathematics course, MGF 1113, and their performance on the College Level Academic Skills Test (CLAST) computation section. The study investigated the relationship between grades in MGF 1113 and CLAST…

Obesity in children is a problem both insidious and acute. Childhood obesity has been indicated as a forerunner of adult obesity; it is also an immediate problem for the child. Given the lack of evidence for long term maintenance of any weight loss, this paper investigates the etiology of the disorder as a prelude to prevention. Upon review of the…

This paper reports on the factors that characterize high-utilization evaluations. It is based on materials submitted to an American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division H competition for outstanding examples of evaluation utilization. The paper is organized into three sections. The first section outlines the background of the study:…

The predicted scores produced by regression with (1) single best predictor, (2) two best predictors, (3) all predictors with observed values, and (4) all predictors with or without observed values were compared with variable means as estimates of missing values. The study was conducted in a simulation mode on nx8 data matrices using various levels…

Although research has examined the content of alcohol-outcome expectancies and also the role of alcohol use in aggressive and sexual behaviors, few studies have linked the two lines of inquiry. To examine the efficacy of outcome expectancies for predicting actual behavior, 64 male social drinkers, aged 21 to 25 years, completed questionnaires and,…

To examine the impact of ethical ideology, i.e., situationism (high relativism and idealism), subjectivism (high relativism/low idealism), absolutism (low relativism/high idealism), and exceptionism (low relativism and idealism), as well as the saliency of moral norms, and the situational consequences on moral behavior, 112 male and female college…

Previous research linking life events and psychological well being may have been biased by traditional retrospective designs. To eliminate retrospective bias, a prospective design was used in which events were measured before the criterion had occurred. Subjects were 209 male and 159 female participants in the Augmented Baltimore Longitudinal…

The age decrement model has traditionally been a fairly popular model of the human life span. This model has the basic premise that with increasing age there is a corresponding decrease in a wide range of abilities. Not all research has agreed with the unqualified age decrement model. This study examined the relationship between an…

Cross-sectional studies have revealed many psychosocial correlates of adolescent substance use, including familial, environmental, and personality variables. In this prospective study, correlates of substance use were classified as concomitants or unstable if they covaried with substance use across time, increasing (or decreasing) when substance…

Researchers sometimes use stepwise methods to eliminate variables from analyses when the variables do not appreciably improve the ability to explain or predict inferences about the importance of various predictor variables. It is argued that stepwise methods are usually not appropriate for these purposes for three reasons. First, some researchers…

Prenatal appointment keeping is an important predictor of birth outcomes, yet many pregnant adolescents miss an excessive number of appointments. Since effective strategies for increasing appointment keeping require costly staff time, methods to predict relative risk for noncompliance with appointments might help delineate a circumscribed…

This study examined the relationship between qualitative and quantitative indicators of social support in the prediction of depression. Quantitative indicators were examined with regard to their direct effects on depression as well as their indirect effects through their relationship to perceived social support. Subjects were 301…

In his conceptualization of the developmental course of interpersonal understanding, Selman (1980) specifies a set of issues which are central to the concept. For each issue, he assumes that development proceeds through an ordered sequence of ontogenetic levels and that developmental progress has a high degree of inter-issue consistency. In…