In the mid-1960s, social scientists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss developed grounded theory as a systematic and rigorous method of qualitative data analysis leading to "the discovery of theory from data." In grounded theory, the researcher applies a set of coding procedures to the data until a provisional theory emerges inductively.…

Unstable, and potentially invalid, variance component estimates may result from using only a limited portion of available data from operational performance assessments. However, missing observations are common in these settings because of the nature of the assessment design. This paper describes a procedure for overcoming the computational and…

This report presents findings on the role of tuition in financing higher education and as payment by students and parents. The content is organized into 11 chapters grouped into six parts. Part 1 is an enrollment profile of students who opt to attend college. Topics covered include starting conditions, such as student academic skills, family…

The Steering Committee of the National Postsecondary Education Cooperative established a Unit Record versus Aggregate Data Working Group in 1996 to identify and assess data sharing methods that are needed to advance the understanding of how postsecondary students are served, and with what outcomes. Most mandated record sharing has been through…

The assessment of dimensionality of data is important to item response theory (IRT) modelling and other multidimensional data analysis techniques. The fact that the parameters from the factor analysis formulation for dichotomous data can be expressed in terms of the parameters in the multidimensional IRT model suggests that the assessment of the…

Research with older persons suffering from physical illness presents numerous challenges to gerontologists. Issues of conceptualization pertaining to the definition of illness, its location in the research paradigm, and the context in which illness occurs must be addressed prior to dealing with methodological problems. Access to physically ill…

This paper presents a promising new item bias detection technique that derives practical appeal from its simplicity and economy, and provides data relating to the method's consistency across samples. The proposed regression on item characteristics (RIC) method is a straightforward and inexpensive approach to the study of item bias, based on…

This exploratory study was designed to compare three groups within the teaching profession--women school administrators, women teachers matched with administrators on years of teaching experience and teacher education, and women teachers randomly selected--on variables which may be relevant to career decisions. (Editor)

The purpose of the study was to test the effectiveness of two related strategies for changing a measured disposition of intolerance toward cultural diversity to one of significantly less intolerance. (Editor)

A Computer program written in FORTRAN IV is presented which will create a population of desired size with marginally normal score vectors manifesting any desired centroid and covariance matrix. Uses and documentation are provided. (Author)

A class of closely related hierarchical grouping methods are discussed and a procedure which implements them in an integrated fashion is presented. These methods avoid some theoretical anomalies inherent in clustering and provide a framework for viewing partitioning and nonpartitioning grouping. Significant relationships between these methods and…

Many data analysis problems in psychology may be posed conveniently in terms which place the parameters to be estimated on one side of an equation and an expression in these parameters on the other side. A rule for improving the rate of convergence of the iterative solution of such equations is developed and applied to four problems. (Author/RC)

A Connecticut study of school absenteeism reported here provides pertinent data for consideration of a national conundrum. The author's suggestions for dealing with the problem are thought-provoking. (Editor)