This study examined preservice teachers' understanding of the syntactic structures of inquiry; in particular, what it means to give priority to evidence and how to use evidence to construct explanations. Data were collected from student journals, the course syllabus, the assignment description, and weekly lesson plans. The use of content analysis…

Background/Context: A longstanding debate continues concerning whether community colleges democratize education by expanding enrollment or divert students from attaining a bachelor's degree. The extant evidence is contradictory, but recent findings suggest that community colleges are serving to democratize education without a sizeable diversion…

Although the mail survey is an efficient method for collecting data, its major disadvantage of nonresponse bias is reflected in the number of studies conducted investigating the effects of incentives to increase response rates. Linsky (1975) reviewed studies investigating the use of incentives to increase mailed return rates and found…

This report of research findings describes a confidentiality-preserving data collection method called the Context-Determined, Rule-Generated, Pseudonym (CDRGP) technique, a specifically constructed set of questions based upon personal information known to the respondent (but to few others) which each respondent answers whenever data are gathered;…

This report is a compilation of record-keeping techniques being used in elementary schools in New York State. The materials compiled are not all-inclusive nor meant to be an exemplary collection; they represent the response to a request sent by the Board of Elementary Curriculum Development in June 1971. Five major sections include program…

This task was part of an effort directed to the dissemination and installation of new products. In addition to assembling comprehensive information about these products, the mission was to evolve a set of criteria for use in selecting from among them those to be recommended for National Center for Educational Communication (NCEC)…

The effectiveness of the educational efforts of the Ohio Cooperative Extension Service was studied. A random selection of two counties from each of the ten supervisory areas was used. Information was gathered by mail questionnaires sent to 1,000 randomly selected clientele from the 20 counties. Conclusions are: (1) The extension effectively…

The purpose was to test the effectiveness of a $5.00 incentive on the rate of return of mail questionnaires sent to 353 schools in the United States. The effects of the geographical region and the size of the city in which the sampled schools were located, and the school type (junior high vs. senior high) also were studied. Results showed that a…

A numeric classification system has been devised for a meteorological data collection which is based upon World Meteorological Organization region numbers. An enriched KWIC index has been prepared for this collection, which contains material in a variety of physical forms. (Author)

It is argued that numerical peculiarities in Burt's reports of kinship correlations are more reasonably attributable to carelessness than to fraud. No analysis shows that Burt's results are biased so as to favor his theory, and they are in close agreement with numerous independent studies. (Author/AM)

A sense mark card was designed to facilitate the computer scoring of medical examinations. (JY)

This report summarizes NCES's current statistical programs, major publications and plans for future work. The publication includes descriptions, timelines and plans for all of the NCES data collections, such as the Common Core of Data, Integrated Postsecondary Education Data system and the National Assessment of Education Progress. Also included…

This digest provides an introduction to content analysis, a systematic, replicable technique for compressing many words of a text into fewer content categories based on explicit rules of coding. This allows inferences to be made that can then be corroborated using other methods of data collection. In a technical sense, content analysis is not…

Today many data warehousing systems are data rich, but information poor. Extracting useful information from an ocean of data to support administrative, policy, and instructional decisions becomes a major challenge to both database designers and measurement specialists. This paper focuses on the development of a data processing system that…

Prior to conducting a statistical analysis, sufficient data screening methods should be used for all research variables to identify miscoded, missing, or otherwise messy data. The primary purpose of these exercises was to demonstrate the role of data screening techniques and their potential to improve the performance of statistical methods. A…