Background: Youth programs often rely on self-reported data without clear evidence as to the accuracy of these reports. Although the validity of self-reporting has been confirmed among some high school and college age students, one area that is absent from extant literature is a serious investigation among younger children. Moreover, there is…

Writing is an important content area that pervades all subject areas and is required for post-school success, yet many students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often struggle in written expression. In this article we discuss the characteristics of students with ASD that make writing difficult, and the strengths, such as the use of technology,…

Addresses the use of subjective judgment in research that involves statistical/quantitative methods with regard to four aspects of quantitative research: (1) design; (2) preliminary analyses; (3) general analyses; and (4) specific analyses. (Contains 37 references.) (ASK)

This book is a guide to categorizing, measuring, testing, and assessing aspects of language, and is intended for language teachers, speech therapists and other language-related practitioners, and researchers, in conjunction with other resources on research methods and statistics. The first part is a discussion of basic terminology and the varied…

This study evaluated child sexual abuse statistics since introduction of a child sexual abuse program in 1985 in Shelby County, Tennessee. Findings suggest a highly fluctuating validation rate, higher validation rates for girls than boys, possible underreporting of male victims, and 78 percent of the perpetrators being known to their victims.…

Asserts that traditional approaches to multivariate analysis, including standard linear regression techniques, ignore the special character of count data. Explicates three suitable alternatives to standard regression techniques, a simple Poisson regression, a modified Poisson regression, and a negative binomial model. (MJP)

Instructional leadership studies are plentiful but have many shortcomings, including lack of definition of key variables, problems of causality, overrepresentation of exemplary schools, and lack of validity and reliability in research design and implementation. Definitions of "leadership" and "instruction" are needed. There is…

Higher education relies on student ratings to evaluate faculty teaching, partly because the alternatives (expert peer appraisals or objective performance criteria) are costly or unavailable. Because student ratings are crucial not only to improving instruction, but also in making or breaking faculty careers, it is important to assure that they…

In statistical terms, transfer rates require two components: a numerator that represents community college students who transfer and a denominator that approximates the pool of potential transfer students. The California Task Force adopted a set of criteria to judge the appropriateness of prospective pairs of numerators and denominators. Its form…

This book provides basic skills and knowledge about assessment so that teachers can expand their ability to deal with appraisal problems in their own settings. The first section deals with the basic principles of assessment. The second section concerns creating and applying assessment tools. The third section reviews issues in understanding and…

Rectifies the unsatisfactory textbook treatment of the finite-sample proprieties of estimators of regression models with a lagged dependent variable and autocorrelated disturbances. Maintains that the bias of the ordinary least squares estimator is determined by the dynamic and correlation effects. (MJP)