National and international rankings of institutional performance are playing a growing role in contemporary higher education. It is critical that researchers develop pragmatic, educationally sensitive and methodologically informed approaches for managing this aspect of higher education. This paper compares three approaches for modelling key…

Social workers in academic and agency settings have the opportunity to do funded research using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) R03 small grant mechanism designed for discrete, clearly defined projects that can be completed within a 1- to 2-year time period with limited funding. This article describes the R03 mechanism and provides a guide…

The aim of this study was to examine the underlying structure of the Evaluation Scale of Educational Programme Implementation (ESEPI). The ESEPI consists of six factors that play an important role in educational programme implementation, namely: training, educational material, administration, facilities, relationships and educational procedure.…

There has been much research concerning functional assessment over the past 20 years, but several important research considerations have yet to be explained. One is the comparison of different types of functional assessment (e.g., experimental functional analysis and non-experimental functional assessment). The current study aims to compare the…

Action research can play an important role in institutional research endeavors to improve the quality of organizational performance in higher education. This article outlines how the action research perspective informed a research design that integrated fragmented and isolated student success initiatives at a large urban two-year institution where…

This article addresses the perennial issue of the criteria by which qualitative research should be evaluated. At the present time, there is a sharp conflict between demands for explicit criteria, for example in order to serve systematic reviewing and evidence-based practice, and arguments on the part of some qualitative researchers that such…

This article reviews the processes, issues and dilemmas involved in evaluation research undertaken in the context of changing and evolving government policy in education. The article is grounded in an evaluation of the National Partnership Project (NPP), the team conducted on behalf of England's Teacher Training Agency (TTA) in 2004-2005. It will…

This study examined the impact of rater agreement on decisions concerning the alignment between the "Golden State Examination in High School Mathematics" (California Department of Education, 2001a) and the University of California (UC) "Statement on Competencies in Mathematics Expected of Entering College Students" (Academic…

Educators, practitioners, and policy makers have long debated the impact of the results of evaluation studies on educational practice. If evaluation is to influence practice, the communication gap between researchers and decision makers must be reduced or eliminated. In order to close this gap, evaluators must become educators, working with a…

Qualitative research has increased in popularity among social scientists. While substantial attention has been given to various methods of qualitative analysis, there is a need to focus on strategies for collecting diverse forms of qualitative data. In this article, the authors discuss four sources of qualitative data: participant observation,…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. Existing ratings and rankings of HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and research outputs, such as resources…

This document was developed by the Mid-South Regional Resource Center (MSRRC) and is designed to be used as an assessment of State systems by State Part B and Part C staff and their stakeholders. It provides a detailed process for State Education Agencies (SEA) and Lead Agencies (LA) to follow that will guide improvement efforts relative to the…

Assessment use is a cornerstone of successful counseling. Information from assessments is used for making several important therapeutic decisions, requiring the counselor to have information about assessment devices and approaches. Tests are being published at a remarkable rate; it is a challenge for counselors to stay well informed. Products and…

Every opportunity should be taken to communicate research findings both inside and outside government programs and make them accessible to policy makers, teachers, lecturers, parents, and employers. The "Interchange" series aims to further improve the Educational Research Unit's (ERU) dissemination of the findings of research funded by…

Curriculum suppliers, state departments of education, and home school leaders, are the sources used to estimate that between 248,500 and 353,500 school-aged children (K-12) were educated at home in the 1990-91 school year. This paper explains how this estimate was derived. It provides information on process, possible bias, alternate survey…