Background: Multisite designs, also known as blocked designs, are experimental designs in which the random assignment of treatment and control conditions is within each site (or block) after the random selection of sites (or blocks). Multisite designs exhibit remarkable adaptability and, statistically, it can maintain a rigorous basis for…

Recent studies show cluster randomized trials may be well powered to detect mediation or indirect effects in multilevel settings. However, literature has rarely provided guidance on designing cluster-randomized trials aim to assess indirect effects. In this study, we developed closed-form expression to estimate the variance of and the statistical…

One interesting idea in social network analysis is the directionality test that utilizes the directions of social ties to help identify peer effects. The null hypothesis of the test is that if contextual factors are the only force that affects peer outcomes, the estimated peer effects should not differ, if the directions of social ties are…

This paper describes a new model of students' concern about indebtedness within a rank-based social norms framework. Study 1 found that students hold highly variable beliefs about how much other students will owe at the end of their degree. Students' concern about their own anticipated debt--and their intention of taking on a part-time job during…

Mind wandering--mentation unrelated to one's current activity and surroundings--is a ubiquitous phenomenon, but seemingly competing ideas have been proposed regarding its relation to executive cognitive processes. The control-failure hypothesis postulates that executive processes prevent mind wandering, whereas the global availability hypothesis…

Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n = 114), Japan (n = 98), and Korea (n = 90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which…

This report summarizes the complex research literature on quantitative methods for assessing how impacts of educational interventions on instructional practices and student learning differ across students, educators, and schools. It also provides technical guidance about the use and interpretation of these methods. The research topics addressed…

In multilevel modeling (MLM), group-level (L2) characteristics are often measured by aggregating individual-level (L1) characteristics within each group so as to assess contextual effects (e.g., group-average effects of socioeconomic status, achievement, climate). Most previous applications have used a multilevel manifest covariate (MMC) approach,…

Extant data collected through the Experience Sampling Method--a signal contingent method for gathering data about students' immediate experiences--were analyzed to describe adolescents' subjective experiences doing homework. Analyses were conducted to explore variation in subjective experience in relation to the contexts in which homework was…

Background: Speaking rate has implications for both clinical practice and an understanding of normal and disordered communication processes. Fundamental information on speaking rate is required by the clinician for the appropriate management of those disorders with disturbances of rate or those in which rate modification strategies are applied.…

By the spring of 2000, forty states had begun using student test scores to rate school performance. Twenty states have gone a step further and are attaching explicit monetary rewards or sanctions to a school's test performance. In this paper, the authors focus on accountability programs in which states measure the effectiveness of individual…