"What works" policies are the latest incarnation of best practices in educational research. Instituted by various organisations internationally, they define what kind of research counts as "evidence" for reform-oriented decision-making. While some countries rely on systematic analyses and meta-analyses, the U.S. favours primary…

The essay examines the variety of research methods and measures used in the first-year experience and students-in-transition field over the past 25 years. Interrogating the extant research, Kinzie explores whether the methods and analytic processes most commonly employed are adequate to advance our understanding of complex issues in the field. The…

Combining diverse methods in a single study raises a problem: What should be done when the findings of one method of investigation conflict with those of another? We illustrate this problem using an example in which three study phases--quantitative, qualitative, and intervention--were applied. The findings coming from the quantitative phase did…