This final report describes the activities and outcomes of a project designed to develop and establish a psychoeducational assessment model to enhance the ability of educators, psychologists, and learning specialists to design and conduct meaningful evaluations of students who are deaf-blind. By focusing on psychoeducational assessment, this…

This article discusses Rochester's two academic models that offer different tools for different purposes--measuring individual learning and measuring what affects learning. The main focus of currently available growth measures is formative assessment--providing data to inform instructional planning. Value-added assessment is not a student…

Many students view statistics as their worst college course. Four heuristics that can improve students' proficiency in statistics and in interpreting reports of research are presented in this paper. The heuristics guide students' judgments about significance, generalizability, cause-and-effect, and strength of independent-dependent variable…

This book offers guidelines for action research, a process in which teachers experiment with various strategies at the classroom level. Action research is the process of systematically evaluating the consequences of educational decisions and adjusting practices to maximize effectiveness. Essentially the examination of one's own practice, it…

This article describes a qualitative research approach (in-depth phenomenological interviewing) and illustrates, through the example of an actual study, its potential for helping institutions of higher education understand their students. It argues that progress in understanding college student outcomes, such as persistence, has been retarded by…

Discusses how to examine and evaluate claims of improved academic performance in advertisements for computer-assisted instruction. Highlights include the proper use of comparison groups; types of statistical analyses; the Hawthorne effect; the interpretation of scores; interpreting graphic presentations; tests of significance; and cost…

Examines the discussion surrounding the establishment of a reliable transfer rate measure by outlining the major arguments advanced by scholars and researchers in the field. Discusses traditional models of calculating transfer rates, their strengths and weaknesses, and introduces nontraditional transfer rate models. (24 citations) (AJL)

Discusses the difficulty in obtaining transfer rates due to the disagreement over definitions of "transfer." Compares different options to show how manipulating the pool of eligible transfer students influences transfer rates. Describes transfer-ready models for calculating transfer eligibility rate, as well as the Student Right-to-Know formula.…

Often quantitative data in the social sciences have only ordinal justification. Problems of interpretation can arise when least squares multiple regression (LSMR) is used with ordinal data. Two ordinal alternatives are discussed, dominance-based ordinal multiple regression (DOMR) and proportional odds multiple regression. The Q[superscript 2]…

This document, which is intended for individuals at the state and local levels with responsibility for school-to-work opportunities, focuses on recommended standard procedures for evaluating school-to-work transition programs. In the introduction, the role of evaluation as a critical element in an overall program management strategy is discussed…

A primer for schools attempting to analyze the data they collect. Describes ways schools can get a better picture of how to improve learning by gathering, intersecting, and organizing four categories of data more efficiently: (1) demographic data; (2) student-learning data; (3) perceptions data; and (4) school-processes data. (WFA)

Data-mining technology's predictive modeling was applied to enhance the prediction of enrollment behaviors of admitted applicants at a large state university. (Contains 4 tables and 6 figures.)

Many social workers are anxious about the use of evaluation techniques and are particularly reticent about using statistical research. Strategies for understanding the steps involved in integrating practice and evaluation in a school social work setting, an appreciation for the need of evaluation, and knowledge of various resources on conducting…

This conference paper presents a description of how faculty workloads are assessed for fiscal and other purposes at Northern Arizona University (NAU). Following a discussion of workload issues, the paper examines: (1) definition of workload; (2) methodology for data collection; (3) development of a faculty full-time equivalency database and two…

Identifies situations in which there is disparity between coefficients calculated from aggregate versus individual level data. Determines the magnitudes of these discrepancies, and discusses the implications for test score reporting and policy decisions based in whole or in part on the aggregate level relationships and discrepancies identified.…