A course to prepare nursing students to identify health and safety needs of farm families used a model with eight subsystems. Students were trained to gather assessment data from a variety of sources in each subsystem; then they developed diagnoses and planned interventions. (SK)

Introduces the analysis of a river as an excellent way to teach geochemical techniques because of the relative ease of sample collection and speed of sample analysis. Focuses on the potential sources of sample contamination during sampling, filtering, and bottle cleaning processes, and reviews methods to reduce and detect contamination. Includes…

Presents a model for using the Internet to teach high school students about plasma physics and fusion energy. (Author/CCM)

Describes the use of focus groups to determine young adult needs in public libraries, based on experiences at the Johnson County Library system in Kansas City. Highlights include the benefits of focus groups over surveys, time involvement, how to design questions to ask, and compiling data. (LRW)

Investigates a mixed set of methods (group interviews, recollection of information needs and word association tests to collect data; content analysis and discourse analysis to analyze data) to evaluate whether these methods collected the data needed for work domain oriented thesaurus design. Findings showed the methods together provided domain…

Conducted meta-analysis of preschool and early elementary school self-esteem instruments, using reliability as criterion variable and different aspects of methodology used in testing an instrument as predictor variables. Found that reliability could be predicted by study setting, number of items in the scale, age of children being studied, method…

Describes study of administrative data from Northern Ireland on the costs of family and child care services, using small area utilization modeling, to derive a new set of needs indicators that could be used within the family and child care capitation funding formula. Argues that small area utilization modeling produces a fairer and more equitable…

Examined feasibility of linking administrative data sets for evaluation of home visiting as a strategy for reducing incidence of child abuse and neglect. Also examined associations between family characteristics and subsequent child maltreatment. Found home visiting efforts were targeted to the populations most at-risk for child maltreatment.…

This response to an article evaluating Indiana's early intervention service delivery (EC 628 669) notes additional important aspects such as the central finance model used, the value of the Indiana data system in tracking the amount and type of services provided, the incentive provided to complete all the Individual Family Service Plan data…

Schools gather, store and use an increasingly large amount of data. Keeping track of everything from bus routes to building access codes to test scores to sports equipment is done with the help of electronic database programs. Large databases designed for budgeting and student record keeping have long been an integral part of the educational…

Extending inquiry-based learning to allow students to develop their own questions and design and perform their own experiments can greatly enhance education. Students gain an appreciation of how knowledge is acquired and insights into evaluating data. Although easily applied to laboratory courses, the technique is also applicable to lecture…

It would be kind to say that the U.S. Department of Education (ED) was dawdling in its analysis of the data on charter schools that were collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). ED collected the data with the regular NAEP assessment in 2003 and placed the regular data on its website in the fall of 2003. The American…

The science notebook is more than a record of data that students collect, facts students learn, and procedures students conduct. It is also a record of students' questions, predictions, claims linked to evidence, conclusions, and reflections--all structured by an investigation leading to an understanding of "big ideas" (not factoids) in science. A…

In March 2003, a total of 394 media specialists throughout the state of Kentucky completed an online survey regarding the professional development needs. The public relations subcommittee of the Kentucky School Media Association Board of directors generated the questions and collected data from the three parts of the survey-demographics,…

In this article, Mary Kellett, of the Children's Research Centre at the Open University, draws on case study evidence to illustrate how an 11-year-old girl's quality of life was transformed in the last few months before she died when an Intensive Interaction intervention approach was adopted. The study raises issues about the way we respond to…