Despite their widespread use, there is little academic evidence on whether applicant selection instruments can improve teacher hiring. We examine the relationship between two screening instruments used by Spokane Public Schools to select classroom teachers, and three teacher outcomes: value added, absences, and attrition. We observe all applicants…

Selection bias is a persistent, and often hidden, problem in educational research. It is the primary obstacle standing in between increasingly available large education datasets and the ability to make valid causal inferences to inform policymaking, research, and practice (Stuart, 2010). This article provides an accessible discussion on the…

Although researchers can easily select probability samples of addresses using the U.S. Postal Service's Delivery Sequence File, randomly selecting respondents within households for surveys remains challenging. Researchers often place within-household selection instructions, such as the next or last birthday methods, in survey cover letters to…

Social media are useful facilitators when recruiting hidden populations for research. In our research on youth and radicalization, we were able to find and contact young people with extreme ideals through Facebook. In this article, we discuss our experiences using Facebook as a tool for finding respondents who do not trust researchers. Facebook…

The purpose of this case study was to examine if the Matching Assistive Technology to Child Augmentative Communication Evaluation Simplified (MATCH-ACES) assessment can help a special education team select an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention for a student with special needs. Additionally, this study identified the…

Packed with new topics that reflect today's challenges, the Sixth Edition of the bestselling "How to Conduct Surveys" guides readers through the process of developing their own rigorous surveys and evaluating the credibility and transparency of surveys created by others. Offering practical, step-by-step advice and written in the same…

Feature selection is one of the most important decisions made by product managers. This three article study investigates the concepts, tools and techniques for making trade-off decisions of introducing new features in evolving Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software products. The first article investigates the efficacy of various feature…

This research brief describes the value of using mobile technologies in and out of elementary mathematics classrooms, and investigates the view that teachers may not be getting the guidance they need to best leverage those technologies. The authors explore three areas of concern: How can teachers use technology in developmentally appropriate ways…

Recently, considerable concern has arisen over the complex financial markets, which are inclined to require more individual responsibility. Accordingly, students have to bear more responsibility for their financial management. Nevertheless, in a sluggish economy with high unemployment, the commercial events during the last decade have rendered the…

Randomized experiments provide unbiased estimates of treatment effects, but are costly and time consuming. We demonstrate how a randomized experiment can be leveraged to measure selection bias by conducting a subsequent observational study that is identical in every way except that subjects choose their treatment--a quasi-doubly randomized…

While engaged in academic reading, a college provost converged on an idea to use a preferential approach to students' selection of college courses, similar to the recommendation ideas based on Netflix and Amazon. The result of this idea came to be known as Degree Compass and was implemented on the campus of Austin Peay State University in 2011.…

This article alerts academic libraries to some of the methods for purchasing electronic books (e-books) and notes that, while they are similar to the models used for journal-evaluation purposes, there are a number of factors important to consider that are different for e-books. Simon notes that, while theoretically there should be some advantages…

It is well documented that teachers can have profound effects on student outcomes. Empirical estimates find that a one standard deviation increase in teacher quality raises student test achievement by 10 to 25 percent of a standard deviation. More recent evidence shows that the effectiveness of teachers can affect long-term student outcomes, such…

Peer selection based on the similarity of a couple of institutional parameters, by itself, is insufficient. Several other considerations, including clarity of purpose, alignment of institutional information to that purpose, identification of appropriate statistical procedures, review of preliminary peer sets, and the application of additional…

Evidence suggests that teacher hiring in public schools is ad hoc and often fails to result in good selection among applicants. Some districts use structured selection instruments in the hiring process, but we know little about the efficacy of such tools. In this paper, we evaluate the ability of applicant selection tools used by the Spokane…