Bottom line regarding veracity of assertion of Michael L. Penn, Stanley O. Gaines, and Layli Phillips in their article "On the Desirability of Own-Group Preference" (1993)--that the preference toward one's same group (racial or otherwise) is neither a valid measure of ethnic identity nor a predictor of psychological health--is that it is…

This thesis describes a Policy Delphi study which was conducted to initiate discussion on sensitive policy questions among members of the Board of Trustees of the Pacific Telecommunications Council (PTC), an international, non-profit organization created as a permanent forum to promote the development, understanding, and beneficial use of…

This study was designed to: (1) investigate the relationships between internal-external (I-E) locus of control and academic achievement for boys and girls over a nine-month period and (2) to determine whether the moderate ability of I-E scores to predict academic achievement is due to the moderate reliabilities of the I-E measures. A total of 279…

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the real internal rate of return to the old age insurance (OAI) portion of the old age, survivors, and disability insurance (OASDI) program for worker-only beneficiaries retiring between 1967 and 1970. Section I reviews the analytical background for this study. The issues concern alternative measures of…

Since problems associated with the statistical methodology of educational research are becoming increasingly important, this paper examines a subset of problems associated with the analysis and interpretation of aggregated data. Two major questions arise: (1) if a researcher knows the level (e.g., individual, teacher/classroom, school, school…

Studies pertaining to community growth have dealt with the community's territorial expansion, economy, government's functions, and institutions. Since researchers usually use the dimension that they have been taught (economists use economic measures, and social scientists use sociological measures), two problems have resulted: (1) How should…

Since the Bureau of Labor's cost-of-living statistics are available for only 40 standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) in four regions, the author presents a method to estimate family budgets for all SMSAs. Data for the calculations are easily accessible in Census and other government publications. (Author/KC)

This discussion of the historically dependent dispositions influencing prosocial behavior includes both a brief summary of the present state of knowledge regarding individual orientations to prosocial behavior, and a critical examination of the form that research has taken to date. (JM)

Since university enrollment forecasting is very important, many different methods and models have been proposed by researchers. Two new methods for enrollment forecasting are introduced: (1) the fuzzy time series model; and (2) the artificial neural networks model. Fuzzy time series has been proposed to deal with forecasting problems within a…

Educational research on the factors of student achievement has been limited by its failure to consider the multilevel or hierarchical nature of most data. This study used a nonexperimental regression-based procedure, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), to empirically develop a predictive model of fifth-grade achievement in reading and mathematics…

Although a complex process, canonical correlation has numerous potential advantages over other predictive techniques, the most important being that canonical correlation predicts several criterion variables simultaneously. The paper shows how the method can be used for industrial and vocational-technical education data. (Author)

The nature and use of LISREL (LInear Structural RELationships) analysis are considered, including an examination of college students' commitment to a university. LISREL is a fairly new causal analysis technique that has broad application in the social sciences and that employs structural equation estimation. The application examined in this paper…

"Outlier studies" identify items for which extreme differences in performance by contrasting groups occur; these extreme items are the "outliers" referred to. Review of the studies conducted on tests receiving major use in higher education reveals that though one cannot make a priori classifications of outliers with confidence,…

The purpose of this study was to design a valid, reliable instrument that identifies and measures teachers' attitudes toward inservice programs. The study also sought to locate attitude differences between school sites. An attitude scale was developed in five stages: (1) identifying the nature of the possible attitude factors from current…