Continuous exponential families may be employed to find continuous distributions with the same initial moments as the discrete distributions encountered in typical applications of classical equating. These continuous distributions provide distribution functions and quantile functions that may be employed in equating. To illustrate, an application…

Most inter-rater reliability studies using nominal scales suggest the existence of two populations of inference: the population of subjects (collection of objects or persons to be rated) and that of raters. Consequently, the sampling variance of the inter-rater reliability coefficient can be seen as a result of the combined effect of the sampling…

Simulating multivariate nonnormal data with specified correlation matrices is difficult. One especially popular method is Vale and Maurelli's (1983) extension of Fleishman's (1978) polynomial transformation technique to multivariate applications. This requires the specification of distributional moments and the calculation of an intermediate…

In the United States, cigarette use is the leading cause of preventable death, and most adult smokers started before the age of 18 years. Nicotine dependence maintains tobacco use and makes quitting difficult. Despite their relatively short smoking histories, many adolescents who smoke are nicotine dependent, and such dependence can lead to daily…

Companies acquire personal information from phone, World Wide Web, or email in order to sell or send an advertisement about their product. However, when this information is acquired, moved, copied or edited, the data may loose its quality. Often, the use of data administrators or a tool that has limited capabilities to correct the mistyped…

A common problem in predictive validity studies in the educational and psychological fields, e.g. in educational and employment selection, is restriction in range of the predictor variables. There are several methods for correcting correlations for restriction of range. The aim of this paper was to examine the usefulness of two approaches to…

This paper examined principals' management of conflicts in public secondary schools in Ondo State, Nigeria. As a descriptive survey, the study population comprised all the 281 public secondary schools in the State. Out of this population, a sample of 80 schools was drawn while 340 respondents (80 principals and 260 teachers) were selected through…

Social and cognitive characteristics of adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) place them at risk for inappropriate inclusion in or exclusion from research participation. As we grapple with how to include adults with ID in research in order to secure their right to contribute to scientific advancements and be positioned to derive benefit from…

Background: The purpose of this study was to describe provider activities in a convenience sample of School-Based Health Centers (SBHCs). The goal was to determine the relative proportion of time that clinic staff engaged in various patient care and non-patient care activities. Methods: All provider staff at 4 urban SBHCs participated in this…

Purpose: This article aims to validate the Leadership Daily Practice (LDP) log, an instrument for conducting research on leadership in schools. Research Design: Using a combination of data sources--namely, a daily practice log, observations, and open-ended cognitive interviews--the authors evaluate the validity of the LDP log. Participants: Formal…

A university ranking with credibility may provide proper guidance to students and parents in university choice, lead to rational flow of educational resources, promote competition among universities and evaluation mechanism in society, and inform the government in decision making. However, there are quite some disputes and doubts from the public…

Background: Evidence suggests that people with intellectual disabilities experience secondary health conditions and report inequities in health status and access to health systems. Reliable information is essential to identify health disparities. A review of health interview and health examination surveys conducted in 17 European countries was…

The purpose of this study was to assess the mediating effect of self-efficacy on the relationship between identity styles and academic achievement. Four-hundred high school students (200 male, 200 female) who were selected through cluster random sampling, completed the Revised Identity Styles Inventory (ISI, 6G) and Morgan-Jink Student Efficacy…

Sampling has been the single most influential component of conducting research with lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) populations. Poor sampling designs can result in biased results that will mislead other researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. Investigators wishing to study LGB populations must therefore devote significant energy and…

It is widely known that there is a dearth of education research in South Africa which takes as its methodological basis experimentation. The emphasis has been on educators' and learners' experiential understanding in the first decade of democracy after apartheid, when qualitative research predominated. The article investigates, first, the extent…