The articles in this special issue take a "uses and gratifications" approach that emphasizes that people make choices about the media they choose and that they differ in their interpretations of media content. The articles integrate this approach with developmental perspectives on adolescence. (SLD)

Summarizes the conduct and results of the Seattle Longitudinal Study, an investigation that has assessed mental abilities in more than 5,000 adults and has followed some for as long as 35 years. Integrative findings are presented on age changes, cohort differences, factor structure, individual differences, and interventions. (SLD)

Reviews school-based approaches to prevention of adolescent alcohol use and abuse undertaken in the 1950s through the 1970s and discusses problems associated with such studies, remedies to these problems, and current school-based approaches. Also discusses the Alcohol Misuse Prevention Study, a longitudinal intervention undertaken in the 1980s to…

An undergraduate pharmacy course unit designed to teach skills in reading, interpreting, analyzing, and critically evaluating research and presenting findings to peers, is described. Specific course objectives, criteria to be used for evaluating research, and a summary of student responses to a unit evaluation are appended. (MSE)

Examines the effects of an imposed schema on the reader's comprehension of a text. Both a correct and a false schema were imposed on the subjects in the form of comprehension questions geared to one of two points of view. Subjects were 177 English-as-a-foreign-language university students. The implications for teachers of reading comprehension are…

Reports of five Canadian universities concerning gender discrimination in salaries are reviewed, compared, and evaluated. All found some discrimination, but approaches taken varied considerably. Analysis suggests the focus on single equation models is problematic, and further information gathering is needed. (Author/MSE)

The current crisis in American education is examined as reflected in student performance assessments at all levels, and the role of performance indicators in shaping public opinion is discussed. Development of national educational goals, the resulting assessment dilemma for higher education, and methods of assessing progress are also explored.…

This article examines the teacher researcher movement, discussing ethical matters related to action research. In the medical domain, biomedical ethics directs human interventions resulting from clinical and research practice. The paper suggests a discipline called "bioteaching ethics" could help direct human interventionary actions of teachers…

This special issue summarizes parallel studies in five countries (Japan, Greece, Thailand, Republic of China, United States) investigating the causal linkages among socioeconomic status variables, family processes, and school variables on the mathematics achievement of urban elementary school children. Methodological problems in cross-cultural and…

Presents a selective review of the research and theory on the experience, expression, and communication of emotion. Suggests that the research is affected by cultural context and cultural differences. Maintains that contradictions can be resolved by considering the intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, and intergroup aspects of emotions. (CFR)

The following methods of estimating school-level experimentation with drugs by adolescents at 20 California continuation high schools are compared: (1) self-reports; (2) prevalence estimates from students; (3) prevalence estimates from school staff; (4) naturalistic observation; and (5) refuse (garbage) analysis. Advantages of refuse analysis are…

Examines what linguistic devices speakers use to make an entity salient in a discourse and how they re-refer to discourse entities moving in and out of focus. Speakers' center of attention was manipulated via a videotaped basketball game. Speakers referred to prominent entities as subjects; when they referred to them as objects, they repeated the…

Discusses the role of the academic library in training undergraduate students in research methods. Highlights include changes resulting from the electronic dissemination of information; the tradition of apprenticeship, journeymen, and master; information and knowledge; electronic scholarship; layers of learning in research in an electronic…

Results from a performance assessment in which 68 high school students wrote essays support the use of latent variable modeling for estimating reliability, concurrent validity, and generalizability of a scoring rubric. The latent variable modeling approach overcomes the limitations of certain conventional statistical techniques in handling…

This commentary offers authors' reflections on their case-study approach to examining the application of categorical and noncategorical special education (EC 612 095). The reflections address why the authors decided to study this issue, how case study methodology assisted in the study, and implications of the study. (SW)