This study posited that a relationship exists between information technology (IT) project managers' technical education and commercial project management certification and project management success, also known as project efficiency, for Department of Defense (DoD) IT project managers (PMs). Specifically, this research asked, "To what extent…

Community colleges are unique in the higher education realm. Open access, the demographics of students, communities served, locations, and funding sources all present distinct circumstances. A strategic plan supported by leadership, faculty, staff and the external environment is needed to steer students on pathways to success. The focus on…

Reading and spelling are essential skills for a student's educational success. The current literature on spelling instruction has examined a variety of spelling modalities, but has never directly compared written versus oral spelling. There are theoretical and empirical indications that either method may be superior to the other. Thus, study one…

Item response theory (IRT) has gained an increasing popularity in large-scale educational and psychological testing situations because of its theoretical advantages over classical test theory. Unidimensional graded response models (GRMs) are useful when polytomous response items are designed to measure a unified latent trait. They are limited in…

Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA) methods were used to capture the knowledge and skills, represented by action and decision steps, of expert English teachers when they recall and describe how they provide expository writing instruction at the eleventh-grade level. Three semi-structured CTA interviews were conducted to elicit and capture the…

A reasoned action approach (RAA) was used to assess the importance of psychological factors (attitude, perceived norm, and perceived behavioral control) in forming a woman's intention to use mobile technology, specifically mobile business applications. This study also examined whether the significance of these factors varied across cultures. An…

The computer-adaptive multistage testing (ca-MST) has been developed as an alternative to computerized adaptive testing (CAT), and been increasingly adopted in large-scale assessments. Current research and practice only focus on ca-MST panels for credentialing purposes. The ca-MST test mode, therefore, is designed to gauge a single scale. The…

Hospitals, clinics, and physicians' offices are being mandated to implement health information technology to support electronic health records or receive reduced government reimbursements for the treatment of Medicare and Medicaid patients. The EHR Medicare and Medicaid Incentive Program, managed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services,…

Increasingly, users are performing more sophisticated types of tasks, like information search, across computing platforms including desktops/laptops, tablets, and smartphones. While much research has been done to improve efficiency for each of these devices in the area of information search, few investigations have taken a pragmatic approach to…

Discrete trial teaching is an effective procedure for teaching a variety of skills to children with autism. However, it must be implemented with high integrity to produce optimal learning. Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is a staff training procedure that has been demonstrated to be effective. However, BST is time and labor intensive, and with…

Nonlinear multilevel latent variable modeling has been suggested as an alternative to traditional hierarchical linear modeling to more properly handle measurement error and sampling error issues in contextual effects modeling. However, a nonlinear multilevel latent variable model requires significant computational effort because the estimation…

In the United States, community colleges serve nearly half of the 18 million students enrolled in postsecondary education. However, it has only been the last decade or so where these public, two-year institutions have claimed substantial attention from the research community. This dissertation consists of three essays that focus on aspects of the…

This study implemented a two phase concurrent mixed-methods design to generate a greater understanding of how elementary schools with increased autonomy in fiscal decision making allocated their money, how their site-based decisions affected allocative efficiency, and how increased autonomy affected site-based decision making when compared with a…

The purpose of the current study was to determine the efficiency of an electronic data collection method compared to a traditional paper-based method in the educational field, in terms of the accuracy of data collected and the time required to do it. In addition, data were collected to assess users' preference and system usability. The study…

This study examined student achievement in Michigan public school districts to determine if rural school districts are demonstrating greater financial efficiency by producing higher levels of student achievement than school districts in other geographic locations with similar socioeconomics. Three models were developed using multiple regression…