Rating scales are ubiquitous in the social sciences, yet may present practical difficulties when response formats change over time or vary across surveys. To allow researchers to pool rating data across alternative question formats, the article provides a generalization of the ordered logit model that accommodates multiple scale formats in the…

This article presents an updated meta-analysis of survey experiments comparing the performance of the item count technique (ICT) and the direct questioning method. After synthesizing 246 effect sizes from 54 studies, we find that the probability that a sensitive item will be selected is 0.089 higher when using ICT compared to direct questioning.…

This article presents the methodological strategies, results and a critical analysis of the national research project MapCom "The Research Sphere on Communication Studies Social Practices, Map of Projects, Groups, Research Objects and Methods". We present the results obtained within the first two phases of the research project. The…

Background: This study investigates the use of large language models to create adaptive, contextually relevant survey questions, aiming to enhance data quality in educational research without limiting scalability. Purpose: We provide step-by-step methods to develop a dynamic survey instrument, driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and introduce…

Background: Observation Studies, Unmeasured Confounding, and Sensitivity Analysis: An important part of educational research is identifying important, potentially causal, factors that influence children's learning from observational studies. However, it is well-known that discovering such factors from observational studies can be biased due to…

This paper presents best practices for conducting survey research using Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). Readers will learn the benefits, limitations, and trade-offs of using MTurk as compared to other recruitment services, including SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics. A synthesis of survey design guidelines along with a sample survey are presented to help…

Survey research is prevalent among many professional fields. Both cost effective and time efficient, this method of research is commonly used for the purposes of gaining insight into the attitudes, thoughts, and opinions of populations. Additionally, because there are several types of survey research designs and data collection instruments, the…

One innovative way to help students make sense of survey research has been to create a multifaceted, collaborative assignment that promotes critical thinking, comparative analysis, self-reflection, and statistical literacy. We use a short questionnaire adapted from the Higher Education Research Institute's Cooperative Institutional Research…

In this paper we compare the use of research and other evidence in the decision-making practices of two groups of education policy elites, situated in different contexts--provincial education ministries and school districts. Data are derived from two pan-Canadian studies: Galway (2006) and Sheppard, Galway, Brown and Wiens (2013). The findings…

This study explored perceptions of community-based learning in a sample of 176 students at a liberal arts college in Cairo, Egypt, and a sample of 176 students at a liberal arts college in the Midwestern United States. Students responded to a 38-item rating scale that assessed gains in several domains as a result of engaging in community-based…

The current main research trend in mathematics education is publishing studies by Western scholars pertaining to educational issues of the world in general. but Asia is mostly overlooked. Since international comparisons show Asian students outperform others in mathematics, the imbalance should receive more attention. To gain insight into this…

Missing data are a common occurrence in survey-based research studies in education, and the way missing values are handled can significantly affect the results of analyses based on such data. Despite known problems with performance of some missing data handling methods, such as mean imputation, many researchers in education continue to use those…

Why should we assume systematic comparative research on state-based curriculum-making to be possible at all, given the high complexity and large variety of institutional forms of educational and political systems across nation-states? On the other hand, how can we explain the significant endeavour of nation-states all over the world to align their…

Because optimal matching (OM) distance is not very sensitive to differences in the order of states, we introduce a subsequence-based distance measure that can be adapted to subsequence length, to subsequence duration, and to soft-matching of states. Using a simulation technique developed by Studer, we investigate the sensitivity, relative to OM,…

Very little is known about whether and what kinds of research are being undertaken at private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in South Africa. This article draws on a recent survey of all registered PHEIs undertaken by a group of interested private higher education providers. This survey was facilitated by the Council on Higher Education…