While many instructors are aware of the "Literary Digest" 1936 poll as an example of biased sampling methods, this article details potential further explorations for the "Digest's" 1924-1936 quadrennial U.S. presidential election polls. Potential activities range from lessons in data acquisition, cleaning, and validation, to…

Reflecting the inter-connected reality of today's world, contemporary education is striving to keep up with the exponentially rapid changes that individuals around the globe are facing. Innovative educational proposals carry labels such as connective learning (Downes, 2006), e-learning 2.0 (Downes, 2005), education 2.0 (Carr et al., 2008), or…

This chapter aims to answer some of the questions that emerge when carrying out educational ethnography in a blended learning environment. The authors first outline how Virtual Ethnography (VE) has been developed and applied by other researchers. Then, to better illustrate the approach, they describe a doctoral research project that implemented…

Existing data sets can be an efficient, powerful, and readily available resource for addressing questions about developmental science. Many of the available databases contain hundreds of variables of interest to developmental psychologists, track participants longitudinally, and have representative samples. In this article, the authors discuss the…

The High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09) is the fifth in a series of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) secondary longitudinal studies. The core research questions for HSLS:09 explore secondary to postsecondary transition plans and the evolution of those plans; the paths into and out of science, technology, engineering,…

On the basis of a survey of U.S. undergraduate business schools and industry, a study defined the curricular content (knowledge and skills) in electronic data processing (EDP) and statistical sampling (SS) needed to prepare the accounting study to audit computerized accounting systems. (CT)

This user's manual has been produced to familiarize data users with the procedures followed for data collection and processing of the first follow-up teacher component of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). The teacher component provides teacher information that can be used to analyze the behaviors and outcomes of the…

The 1998 High School Transcript Study provides the U.S. Department of Education and other educational policymakers with information regarding current course offerings and students' course-taking patterns in U.S. secondary schools. Similar studies were conducted in 1982, 1987, 1990, and 1994. This guide documents the procedures used to collect and…

The issues, options, and procedures for annually measuring overall payment error in the Pell Grant program are specified in detail. Guidelines for establishing a definition of Pell Grant payment error are provided, and the design issues related to error measurement are examined. A comparison is made of options for selecting a study sample and for…