Identified factors for matching individuals to treatments by surveying experts in the field of obesity about the indications and contraindications of 11 common approaches to weight loss. Experts provided 170 client characteristics as possible matching factors. Discusses potential variables for studies on matching individuals to treatments along…

Discusses thinking skills for college students and describes strategies that can be used by faculty to teach thinking skills in distance education courses. Criteria for teaching thinking skills to distance learners are suggested, and methods are presented for teaching problem solving, how to evaluate information, and decision making. (10…

Effective evaluation of college student recruitment and retention programs is critical to any enrollment management strategy as a strategic tool and a policymaking tool. Meaningful evaluation is based on setting clear goals, asking the right questions, and establishing a context for interpretation of results. (Author/MSE)

Discusses bibliographic instruction in libraries. Topics include a history of bibliographic instruction; the Internet and electronic searching; librarians' use of technology; defining information needs; locating and accessing information, including classification systems and Boolean searching; evaluating information; using and communication…

Sixty-five hour-long, topic-centered interviews were conducted with site-level administrators at elementary schools in a large urban school district to explore the relationships between evaluation information and other inputs into decision-making. The interviews focused on specific program-related decisions and sought to recreate the…

The report summarizes findings on evaluation studies conducted over a 6 year period at the Institute for Research on Learning Disabilities. Major findings are highlighted in the first chapter. Findings are grouped under the following topics: current evaluation practices, reading evaluation, spelling evaluation, written expression evaluation, oral…

Needs assessments are conducted with the expectation that the information obtained will be used to make rational decisions. A prior review of the anticipated utilization of needs assessment data and evaluation of the appropriateness of such utilization may prevent inefficient use of resources. A structured interview was developed to evaluate the…

A comparative case study of seven universities initially focused on: (1) whether and how program evaluation systems differ from other systems approaches, such as management information and program budgeting; (2) desirable degree of overlap between evaluative recommendations and administrative action; and (3) limitations of program evaluation. Site…

A basis is provided for judging the adequacy of evaluation plans or evaluation designs in this document. It is assumed that using the procedures suggested to determine the adequacy of evaluation designs in advance of actually conducting evaluations will lead to better evaluation designs, better evaluations, and more useful evaluative information.…

Suggests that teachers can develop students' study-reading skills more successfully using investigative processes rather than workbook-type exercises. (AEA)

Briefly reviews research on citation indexing and citation analysis as techniques for determining relationships between documents and presents the results of a citation analysis of 31 library/information science articles in which source of cited work and source of citing work were considered as predictors of relatedness. Included are 24…

In one federally funded program, the third-party evaluator was under contract with the program evaluated and not the federal funding agency. The social structure of this arrangement has implications for information utilization. (Available from: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 433 California St., San Francisco, CA 94104, single issue, $6.95.) (Author/GDC)

A number of ways in which evaluations may be biased are illustrated: (1) policy and political purposes for evaluations; (2) sources of policy or political bias prior to evaluation activities; (3) limitations and biases within the evaluation itself; and (4) utilization of evaluation information in the policy process. (Author/GK)

Examines the information problem-solving (Big Six Skills) approach to performance evaluation, which allows library media specialists to focus on student performance and how it benefits from specific activities. Describes the "Big Six Skills Approach": task definition, information seeking, location and access, use of information,…

The literature on how educators use information to solve problems and perform their routine duties is located within a much larger, well-established literature that spans topics in organizational decision-making, communication theory, cognitive science, information theory, and evaluation utilization. This bibliography presents summaries of…