The literature and typical approaches to reducing attrition among college students are critiqued, and a strategy for the identification of different interventions likely to have positive effects on retention rates of different student subgroups is proposed. It is claimed that a small sample approach to empirical testing of the combinations of…

Meant to study post secondary educational and vocational activities, the National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS) is reported to have consistently succeeded in overcoming diminishing response rates and sample attrition found in other longitudinal surveys. The purpose of understanding the focus and experiences affecting…

The fourth mail and personal interview followup survey from October 1979 to May 1980 is reported as part of the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS). The report is methodological, historical and descriptive in nature, but contains no analytical results. Reference to earlier reports is provided in determining post…

This manual was developed for use at workshops designed to upgrade the knowledge of experienced wastewater treatment plant operators. Each of the sixteen lessons has clearly stated behavioral objectives to tell the trainee what he should know or do after completing that topic. The body of the text provides content information, procedure outlines,…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress in-school sampling design is a three-stage stratified design. Stratification variables include region, size of community and socioeconomic status. The three levels of sample selection are Primary Sampling Units (PSUs), schools and students. In general, two and sometimes three PSUs are selected from…

In 1979-80, the Arkansas minimum competency tests were administered to a sample of 5,000 students in grades 3, 6, and 8. To determine how well test objectives matched the curriculum, their teachers estimated how many of the four items per objective a randomly selected student would answer correctly. Because chi square test comparisons of teacher…

THE OBJECTIVES OF THIS SURVEY WERE TO DESCRIBE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF LIBRARIANS EMPLOYED ON THE STAFFS OF THE MORE THAN 2,000 HIGHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1966-57, AND TO IDENTIFY AND EXAMINE RELEVANT MANPOWER ISSUES. THE REPORT IS BASED ON THE RESPONSES OF 2,282 INDIVIDUALS, OR 93 PERCENT OF 2,459 SAMPLED FULL-TIME…

This document answers the question, "What has been learned about evaluation methodology from the decade of compensatory education"? Ten issues dealing with the evaluation of Title I were identified within a general theoretical framework of evaluation. For each issue it was the aim of this document to do the following: 1)to clarify the…

This report presents the results of a two-year project to design, pretest, and revise the Statistical Survey of Elementary Schools, which is intended to provide information on federally funded elementary education programs operating in local public school systems. The report also documents the activities and decisions that brought about these…

In some educational research studies--particularly longitudinal studies requiring a probability sample of schools and spanning a wide range of grades--it is desirable to so select the sample that schools at different levels (e.g., elementary and secondary) "correspond." This has often proved unachievable, using standard methods of selecting school…

The use of games to introduce elementary school children to some concepts about environmental factors is described in this group of five documents. Teaching procedures to investigate wind, shadows, liquids, colors, and color change, and aspects of sampling populations are outlined. Simple apparatus and experiments are suggested, and details of the…

To justify the use of a particular teaching method it should be followed up with a measurement of student achievement. Thus, the primary objective of this study was to determine whether the project method of instruction is accomplishing its task of training young men and women to enter the world of work without the benefit of first hand experience…

The Michigan Oral Language program was installed in the Santa Paula School District for a 2-month tryout and student performance before and after the program was assessed through multiple matrix sampling. Student performance over seven content areas was determined for both the English and Spanish language components. In all seven content areas,…

The mathematical derivation of the statistics used for inference in some linear models assumes that the values of the independent variables are measured without error. This assumption is often disregarded when these models are utilized in research. This study is an investigation of the consequences of the violation of this assumption for one…

When norming tests, it may be preferable to use the matrix sampling technique. The results from the samples may be used to estimate what the distribution of scores would have been if each subject had taken all the items. This paper compares four methods for making these estimates. The sample size made it possible to compare the techniques in a…