Experimental designs in the social sciences have received increasing attention due to their power to produce causal inferences. Nevertheless, experimental research faces limitations, including limited external validity and unrealistic treatments. We propose combining qualitative fieldwork and experimental design iteratively--moving back-and-forth…

This academic article provides the essential steps for designing an effective English questionnaire in social science research, with a focus on ensuring clarity, cultural sensitivity and ethical integrity. Developed from key insights from related studies, it outlines potential practice in questionnaire design, item development and the importance…

The "Forum Guide to Metadata" presents and examines the ways in which metadata can be used by education agencies to improve data quality and promote a better understanding of education data. Supported by metadata-related case studies from state and local education agencies, the guide highlights the uses of metadata from a technical point…

There is a broad impetus across policy and institutional domains to expand public engagement and involvement with emerging technology research and innovation. Yet innovative theory, methods, and practices to critically explore algorithmic system controversies and democratic possibilities are still in nascent form. In this paper, we bring together…

As reporting of effect sizes in evaluation studies has proliferated, researchers and consumers of research need tools for interpreting or benchmarking the magnitude of those effect sizes that are relevant to the intervention, target population, and outcome measure being considered. Similarly, researchers planning education studies with social and…

"The Oxford Handbook of Qualitative Research, Second Edition" presents a comprehensive, interdisciplinary overview of the field of qualitative research. Divided into eight parts, the forty chapters address key topics in the field such as approaches to qualitative research (philosophical perspectives), narrative inquiry, field research,…

This article introduces an open-source software package--R for Qualitative Data Analysis (RQDA). RQDA is an R package for analysis of text-formatted data, which is compatible across operating platforms. It is user-friendly and seamlessly integrates with R, which makes it possible to conduct statistical analyses on qualitative coding. Alternative…

There is less attention on examining algorithmic fairness in secondary education dropout predictions. Also, the inclusion of protected attributes in machine learning models remains a subject of debate. This study delves into the use of machine learning models for predicting high school dropouts, focusing on the role of protected attributes like…

Hiring quality teachers that best meet localized needs to provide students with authentic learning opportunities is crucial to both school and student success. Despite the clear importance of teacher hiring, especially in the current teacher labor market, a review of literature that synthesizes the entire body of teacher hiring literature has long…

This volume provides alternatives for tackling existing empirical, methodological, and analytical challenges. It does so by providing a broad overview of less established, as well as emerging methods, which are of great relevance for current research on professional learning and development. As such, it offers a comprehensive collection of…

High demand exists for data to analyze the equitable distribution of school funding within and across school districts. In response to this growing demand, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) developed a new collection of finance data at the school level--the School-Level Finance Survey (SLFS). The SLFS collects at the school level…

This book presents different data collection and representation techniques: elementary descriptive statistics, confirmatory statistics, multivariate approaches and statistical modeling. It exposes the possibility of giving more robustness to the classical methodologies of education sciences by adding a quantitative approach. The fundamentals of…

With the advent of big data and advances in technology, psychological assessments have become increasingly sophisticated and complex. Nevertheless, traditional psychometric issues concerning the validity, reliability, and measurement bias of such assessments remain fundamental in determining whether score inferences of human attributes are…

The work of the National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a key aspect of the National Cooperative Education Statistics System (Cooperative System). The Cooperative System was established to produce and maintain, with the cooperation of the states, comparable and uniform education information and data that are useful for policymaking at…

Large-scale analyses are a powerful and increasingly common tool for investigating a range of public health and social concerns (Pienta, O'Rourke, & Franks, 2011). This series will provide a primer on large-scale secondary analysis in school psychology, with this article focusing on considerations for researchers interested in applying and…