This paper evaluates the logic underlying various criticisms of statistical significance testing and makes specific recommendations for scientific and editorial practice that might better increase the knowledge base. Reliance on the traditional hypothesis testing model has led to a major bias against nonsignificant results and to misinterpretation…

This study assessed the effect of group size and presentation mode on acquisition of the process skill of forming and testing hypotheses and selected attitudes. Preservice elementary teachers (N=87) in five intact classes received two 1-hour sessions presented by microcomputer, 1 week apart. Half of the subjects were assigned to three-member…

Data drawn from 30 journal articles and ERIC documents reporting on gender differences in natural science achievement were re-examined. Three meta-analysis methods were used: (1) vote counts and vote-counting estimation procedures; (2) tests of combined significance; and (3) analyses of effect sizes. The three methods produced seemingly…

Some examinees' test-taking behavior may be so idiosyncratic that their scores are not comparable to the scores of more typical examinees. Appropriateness indices, which provide quantitative measures of response-pattern atypicality, can be viewed as statistics for testing a null hypothesis of normal test-taking behavior against an alternative…

Fifty-eight studies relating to the "knowledge gap" hypothesis (a theory that correlates public knowledge to educational level and mass media exposure) are examined in this report. In the opening sections, the theory is defined, and the early information diffusion studies and public opinion polls that led to its formulation in 1970 are…

Information gathered via literature review, interview, and personal observation was used to examine the effectiveness of animation rurale programs in Senegal and Niger, French West Africa. Identifiable animation rurale assumptions tested as applicable to Senegal and Niger were: nationwide development programs at the grass roots level can be…

Characteristics and attitudes of 1970-71 Alaska Native school dropouts were surveyed in order to answer questions relative to: (1) factors influencing dropouts; (2) students' occupations since leaving school; (3) student preferences relative to future plans; (4) social services received by students since leaving school; and (5) kinds of additional…

Home visitors were used to teach mothers to be more effective educational change agents in their own homes. The one-hour visits continued over 30 weeks. The initial sample consisted of 72 Negro mothers and their first grade children. All children has had 8-week summer Head Start. Five treatment groups were (1) Mother-Involved Cognitive home…

This paper is concerned with issues related to reasons why some early childhood intervention programs may not have lived up to expectations. By intervention is meant the introduction of planned programing deliberately timed and arranged in order to alter the anticipated or projected course of development. Although an intervention program should be…

This investigation consisted of two studies. In Experiment I, three methods of dealing with the identified emotionally disturbed child were compared, simultaneously testing the hypothesis that community personnel can be taught to work effectively with these children. Under the three treatments, the identified child was either: (1) removed from his…

A review of some assumptions made in the development and implementation of a bilingual-bicultural curriculum for Navajo students in the early primary grades is presented. The curriculum set out to develop and expand the students' abilities for learning, teaching them how to learn, so they could cope with change. It set out to sensitize them to the…

Reviews study that investigated the interaction between the age of the viewer and the gender of the narrator of a film. Visual attention to the program by second and fifth graders is described, and recall of story ideas as measured by a multiple-choice test is analyzed. (21 references) (LRW)

This study used secondary education students to investigate three instructional design variables hypothesized to improve rule learning. Results show structuring information by a schematic analysis improves learning over taxonomic analysis; response-sensitive sequency adapting instruction for generalization, then discrimination, improves learning;…

Fixed and moving-camera videotaped versions of a scene were shown to adult participants to test hypothesis that perspective changes produced by television camera movement provide viewers with information about the environment being viewed not available to viewers of fixed images. Moving-camera viewers better understood and remembered a scene's…

This author reviews published data and presents new data relevant to the Spearman hypothesis concerning racial differences on cognitive tests. He concludes that across-the-board difference between SES groups occurs primarily on the general factor, and that there are major determinants of race differences independent of the general factor.…