Sample representativeness is an important piece to consider when evaluating the quality of a screening assessment. If you are trying to determine whether or not the screening tool accurately measures children's skills, you want to ensure that the sample that is used to validate the tool is representative of your population of interest.

This dissertation is composed of projects on three aspects of gathering and learning from data in the social sciences: drawing representative samples, taking valid measurement, and making warranted inductive inferences. Chapter one studies the challenge of drawing representative human samples. It is well documented that most samples used by…

The current study was designed to evaluate a rotating momentary time sampling (MTS) data collection system. A rotating MTS system has been used to measure activity preferences of preschoolers but not to collect data on responses that vary in duration and frequency (e.g., talking). We collected data on talking for 10 preschoolers using a 5-s MTS…

Background: In the context of international large scale assessments, it is often not feasible to implement a complete survey of all relevant populations. For example, the OECD Program for International Student Assessment surveys both students and schools, but does not obtain information from teachers. In contrast the OECD Teaching and Learning…

E-learning researchers face considerable challenges in creating meaningful and generalizable studies due to the complex nature of this dynamic training medium. Our experience in conducting workplace e-learning research led us to create this guide for planning research on e-learning. We share the unanticipated complications we encountered in our…

Researchers and statistics educators consistently suggest that students will learn statistics more effectively by conducting projects through which they actively engage in a broad spectrum of tasks integral to statistical inquiry, in the authentic context of a real-world application. In keeping with these findings, we share an implementation of…

This is the first of two reports that summarize the findings from an impact evaluation of a violence prevention intervention for middle schools. This report discusses findings after 1 year of implementation. A forthcoming report will discuss the findings after 2 years and 3 years of implementation. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education (ED)…

The National Food and Agriculture Council of the Philippines regularly requires rapid feedback data for analysis, which will assist in monitoring programs to improve and increase the production of selected crops by small scale farmers. Since many other development programs in various subject matter areas also require similar statistical…

Reviews the 25-year record of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), highlighting criticisms of test design and validity, sampling techniques, standards, and usefulness of results. Provides the newly organized NAEP with guidelines for selecting input variables and specifies nine variables to be studied. A sidebar describes NAEP's…

A new Joint Comprehensive Evaluation System for the assessment of 15 different federal programs has been developed by the U.S. Office of Education. In this system these diverse program services will be thought of as resources available to meet the needs of critical target groups. Using this approach, a set of nine crucial questions that need to be…

The Joint Federal/State Task Force on Evaluation (the Belmont Group) is currently developing a Joint Comprehensive Evaluation System (JCES) for the federally funded programs under the federal acts listed above. It is planned that JCES will replace the multiplicity of evaluation systems (and paper work) under the separate existing programs. This…