This paper presents the author's responses to nine questions addressed to the standard-setting symposium participants. A central theme in this assessment is that one cannot clearly demonstrate, a priori, that either a normative or a content-referenced approach is superior. Most methods used to date have been insufficiently grounded in…

The thesis of this paper is that the humanistic mode of inquiry is underemployed in evaluation studies and the future evaluation of Follow Through could profitably use humanistic approaches. The original Follow Through evaluation was based on the assumption that the world consists of a single system explainable by appropriate methods; the…

A persistent problem in the evaluation of field-based projects is the lack of no-treatment comparison groups. Frequently, potential comparison groups are confounded by socioeconomic, racial, or other factors. Among the possible methods for dealing with this problem are various matching procedures, but they are cumbersome to use with multiple…

Describes changes to be made in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) system of peer review approving grants for research proposals. (SL)

The financial aspects of educational programs are discussed in this commentary on the evaluation of the Emergency School Aid Act. Budget and expenditure data must be examined closely when evaluating educational programs. (JKS)

This paper addresses itself to issues related to data collection in survey research with a community population. Areas discussed relate to practical human problems in conducting a community survey of a stratified random sample of people 65 years of age and over in New York City. (Author)

A study of school district uses of evaluation and test data is used to illustrate the variety of ambiguities that can appear in qualitative data. Rules of evidence to distinguish valid and potentially nonvalid testimony are proposed. Uses of testimony in evaluation are discussed. (BS)

A study which compared two groups of college students--transfers and natives--and attributed the lower academic achievement of the transfer students to their community college experience is critiqued. The study results are not valid because the groups compared are not equivalent. An alternative approach for studying transfer students is suggested.…

Critical analysis of an article that attempts to refute the claims of Sesame Street'' concerning its educational value for children from poverty areas, (Author/MF)

Problems that face evaluators, including field based evaluations, are discussed. The author states that open communication, access to data, and an ability to be accepted are paramount; knowledge of randomness, robustness and homoscedasticity may be secondary. (Author/PN)

Problems in the usefulness of current financial assessment methods are examined and specific suggestions are made for assessment methodology and validation procedures. Expert ratings, if improved, could be a meaningful validation criterion. Self-assessment, while useful for individual schools, is not as useful for multiple institutions as…

Reports that the results of a study that used both classical and naturalist experimental approaches yielded quite different linguistic pictures of the same children. (JL)

An initial research referral instrument was created and evaluated. Results suggested an effective referral instrument could more effectively capitalize upon the skill and training of a professional counselor in contributing to a more useful psychological-vocational evaluation report by a counseling psychologist. Evaluation data were used to revise…

The goals of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are described, and procedural guidelines for each approach are summarized, emphasizing the use of factor analysis in developing and refining clinical measures. Recent examples of the use of factor analysis are reviewed and used to highlight controversies that can emerge. (SLD)