Despite the availability and potential usefulness of demographic and contextual data in many quantitative studies within engineering education, the preference for ANOVA over regression models remains prevalent, often without clear justification. A mapping review of literature from the EJEE and JEE spanning 2012-2022 identified 98 studies using…

Conventional estimators for indirect effects using a difference in coefficients and product of coefficients produce the same results for continuous outcomes. However, for binary outcomes, the difference in coefficient estimator systematically underestimates the indirect effects because of a scaling problem. One solution is to standardize…

Causal asymmetry is a situation where the causal factors under study are more suitable for explaining the outcome than its absence (or vice versa); they do not explain both equally well. In such a situation, presence of a cause leads to presence of the effect, but absence of the cause may not lead to absence of the effect. A conceptual discussion…

Researchers often have hypotheses concerning the state of affairs in the population from which they sampled their data to compare group means. The classical frequentist approach provides one way of carrying out hypothesis testing using ANOVA to state the null hypothesis that there is no difference in the means and proceed with multiple comparisons…

Checking the normality assumption is necessary to decide whether a parametric or non-parametric test needs to be used. Different ways are suggested in literature to use for checking normality. Skewness and kurtosis values are one of them. However, there is no consensus which values indicated a normal distribution. Therefore, the effects of…

The current study compares estimates of peer influence from an analytic approach that explicitly address network processes with those from traditional approaches that do not. Using longitudinal network data from the PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience peers project, we obtain estimates of social influence on…

Piecewise GMM with unknown turning points is a new procedure to investigate heterogeneous subpopulations' growth trajectories consisting of distinct developmental phases. Unlike the conventional PGMM, which relies on theory or experiment design to specify turning points a priori, the new procedure allows for an optimal location of turning points…

It is widely believed that regression models for binary responses are problematic if we want to compare estimated coefficients from models for different groups or with different explanatory variables. This concern has two forms. The first arises if the binary model is treated as an estimate of a model for an unobserved continuous response and the…

Today, 35 states use performance-based funding models tying appropriations directly to educational outcomes. Financial incentives should induce colleges to improve performance, but there are several well-documented reasons why this is unlikely to occur. We examine how two of the most robust performance funding states--Tennessee and Ohio--responded…

Conventional approaches for selecting a reference indicator (RI) could lead to misleading results in testing for measurement invariance (MI). Several newer quantitative methods have been available for more rigorous RI selection. However, it is still unknown how well these methods perform in terms of correctly identifying a truly invariant item to…

I employ ordered probit regression and a new instrumental variable to compare the Fall 2015 parental satisfaction survey results of open-enrollment charters to district-conversion charters. Choice status in Arkansas charter schools is largely beneficial to parental satisfaction. Specifically, parents with children in open-enrollment charters had…

Bayesian techniques have become increasingly present in the social sciences, fueled by advances in computer speed and the development of user-friendly software. In this paper, we forward the use of Bayesian Asymmetric Regression (BAR) to monitor intervention responsiveness when using Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) to assess oral reading…

Inferring causal effects of treatments is a central goal in many disciplines. The potential outcomes framework is a main statistical approach to causal inference, in which a causal effect is defined as a comparison of the potential outcomes of the same units under different treatment conditions. Because for each unit at most one of the potential…

Network meta-analysis is a popular method to synthesize the information obtained in a systematic review of studies (e.g., randomized clinical trials) involving subsets of multiple treatments of interest. The dominant method of analysis employs within-study information on treatment contrasts and integrates this over a network of studies. One…

Every year, over 20,000 Hispanics enlist in the U.S. military. Their military experiences influence their long-term educational outcomes. This exploratory study estimates the effect of military service on education level completed by men up to 15 years after initial enlistment. Findings suggest that technical military jobs, more than nontechnical…