A recent national survey polled public library directors and local government officials concerning the value of public library services and outlook for local tax support of public libraries. This article focuses on procedures used in planning the study sample, and broader issues to be considered in designing a national sample for public libraries.…

Statistically based risk assessment devices are widely used in criminal justice settings. Their promise remains largely unfulfilled, however, because assumptions and premises requisite to their development and application are routinely ignored and/or violated. This article provides a brief review of the most salient of these assumptions and…

This executive summary presents the major findings of Interim Report III, which reports preliminary evaluation of Project Developmental Continuity (PDC). A Head Start demonstration program, PDC is aimed at promoting greater educational and developmental continuity as children make the transition from preschool to school. The report addresses three…

The development and data validation of the 1977 Ladd-Lipset national survey of the American professoriate are described. The respondents were selected from a random sample of colleges and universities and from a random sample of individual faculty members from the universities. The 158 institutions in the 1977 survey were selected from 2,406…

Two different methods for collecting course-specific data on class learning and growth are discussed. The first, Item/Student Sampling, is directly dependent upon assessing class performance both prior to and following instruction. This procedure relies on multiple matrix sampling techniques. The second method, referred to as Self-Report of Course…

Representing a set of required readings for those who would keep abreast of developments in the field of educational evaluation, this book presents nine chapters, each written by a recognized scholar on the topic being considered. Several chapters are also available as separate booklets, thereby increasing the flexibility with which the materials…

After reviewing the literature, the authors defined a two dimensional framework comprising formative evaluation activity as one dimension and source of information as the other. Four types of formative evaluation activity were identified and defined. Three primary sources of information-internal, external, and contextual-were identified for…

The measurement information generated by CRT's is designed for use in instructional management systems where classifications of pupils for treatment are to be decided on the basis of minimal data consistent with predetermined limits for the errors of misclassification. The measures obtained are content specific estimates of proficiency useful for…

The paper initially describes the sources of uncertainty in National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data and standard errors. As NAEP sample sizes have increased, greater precision has been attained by the program. For this reason, exclusion effects are increasingly important. Two scenarios of revised NAEP results are presented (for New…

A project to make computerized language sample analysis available to Wisconsin public school speech-language pathologists is described. The project developed the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts computer program as a standard analysis procedure, created a reference database of language samples, and developed indices of developmental…

Research shows that learning communities are an effective way to improve student performance and persistence, but the success of any particular implementation is not guaranteed. Each program should be evaluated with regard to the likelihood that better-prepared students tend to participate. The protocol used for evaluation at Indiana…

Purpose: This research provides state policy makers and others interested in developing needs-based reimbursement models for Medicaid-funded assisted living with an evaluation of different methodologies that affect the structure and outcomes of these models. Design and Methods: We used assessment data from Medicaid-enrolled assisted living…

Suggestions, based on the experience of researchers at Oak Ridge (Tennessee) Associated Universities (ORAU), are offered on how evaluations in which true experimental designs are not possible can be designed for meaningful comparison. The ORAU conducts evaluation and assessment studies of educational programs intended to explore some aspect of the…

Some students are excluded from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) because of an inability, whether due to physical, mental, or linguistic barriers, to participate in studies requiring questionnaire or cognitive test completion. The implications of this exclusion for sample representativeness, national estimation, and…

The implementation of research design in studies on substance abuse education is discussed in this meta-analysis. Findings indicate that the quality of research design is constrained by negative feedback from evaluation stakeholders. This finding is applied to an evaluation of the Here's Looking at You, 2000 drug education program currently…