Psychological distress is prevalent in doctoral degree training and affects students' completion time. It is crucial to monitor the amount of distress experienced and understand the causes for it to inform the type of support most needed. This mixed method study explored challenges related to candidature, self-reported progress and measures of…

When randomized experiments are infeasible, quasi-experimental designs can be exploited to evaluate causal treatment effects. The strongest quasi-experimental designs for causal inference are regression discontinuity designs, instrumental variable designs, matching and propensity score designs, and comparative interrupted time series designs. This…

Introduction: Secondary schools have the potential to promote health-related fitness (HRF) and physical activity within and outside school hours. As such, schools are often chosen as the setting to implement child and adolescent physical activity programs. School-based programs often utilise teachers as delivery agents, but few studies examine…

Beginning in 2002, researchers developed, implemented, and evaluated the efficacy of an English reading intervention for first-grade English learners using multiple randomized control trials (RCTs). As a result of this efficacy work, researchers successfully competed for an IES Goal 4 effectiveness study using the same intervention. Unlike the…

Knowledge of dental anatomy is of great importance in the practice of dentistry, especially in oral rehabilitation, because without this knowledge, professional practice is not possible. Dental carving plays a major role in training dental students as it develops their manual dexterity. This randomized controlled trial aimed to evaluate the…

This study evaluated effects of Positive Action (PA), a school-based social-emotional and character development program, on self-esteem levels and processes among minority, low-income, urban youth. A matched-pair, cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted in 14 Chicago Public Schools with outcomes assessed longitudinally for a cohort of…

Background: Previous research has shown positive effects of Omega 3/6 fatty acids in children with inattention and reading difficulties. We aimed to investigate if Omega 3/6 improved reading ability in mainstream schoolchildren. Methods: We performed a 3-month parallel, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial followed by 3-month active…

Research investigating methods to influence examinee motivation during low-stakes assessment of student learning outcomes has involved manipulating test session instructions. The impact of instructions is often evaluated using a popular self-report measure of test-taking motivation. However, the impact of these manipulations on the psychometric…

Background: There is an increased focus on randomized trials for proximal behavioral outcomes in early childhood research. However, planning sample sizes for such designs requires extant information on the size of effect, variance decomposition, and effectiveness of covariates. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to employ a recent large…

Although scalable programs, such as online courses, have the potential to reach broad audiences, they may pose challenges to evaluating learners' knowledge and skills. Automated scoring offers a possible solution. In the current paper, we describe the process of creating and testing an automated means of scoring a validated measure of teachers'…

UNICEF's new Millennium Development Goals and Beyond (2015. http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/) focus on the needs of the largest marginalised minority, individuals with disabilities, challenging us to examine issues related to exclusion and develop strategies for making an authentic sense of belonging and high-quality early childhood education a…

An appropriate estimate of statistical power is critical for the design of intervention studies. Although the inclusion of a pretest covariate in the test of the primary outcome can increase statistical power, samples selected on the basis of pretest performance may demonstrate range restriction on the selection measure and other correlated…

This randomized controlled trial was designed to determine if art therapy in conjunction with Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) was more effective for reducing symptoms of combat posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than CPT alone. Veterans (N = 11) were randomized to receive either individual CPT, or individual CPT in conjunction with individual…

The main purpose of the study was to find out the effect of ethnochemistry practices on secondary school students' attitude towards Chemistry. The design of the study was pre-test post-test control group quasiexperimental design. Two grade 11 intact classes were assigned into experimental and control groups randomly. The total sample size…

Increasing teacher efficacy poses challenges to educational leaders, highlighting the need for a study of the awareness and development of strengths related to teacher efficacy. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effect of the awareness and development of strengths on teachers' perceived self-efficacy, as well as to determine if…