Adults in 309 households in the Orlando, Florida, area were surveyed by telephone in a study that investigated the public's perceptions about journalists and the media. The subjects were asked 20 questions that elicited their knowledge about ownership of daily newspapers, including the name of the owner of the local daily, as well as their…

Changes in sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates among adolescents and young adults may depend on changes in sexual activity, accessibility of referral and treatment services, and education. To assess the knowledge and attitudes of college students toward various aspects of STD's, a 45-item Likert inventory focusing on symptoms, prevalence,…

Word association techniques were used to examine the growth of biological knowledge over a period of years, from fourth-grade to college students. Results were analyzed by classifying stimulus-response word pairs according to the nature of the relationship between the words in each pair. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) the proportion of enactive…

A study to determine the effectiveness of a comprehensive health education curriculum developed for Head Start, "Hale and Hardy's Helpful Health Hints," shows that the program appears to favorably affect the health knowledge of the children in the sample, and that the picture identification instrument format is appropriate for the…

In 1983-84, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges developed and field tested an instrument, the General Academic Assessment (GAA) student survey, to assess community college students' knowledge in several liberal arts areas, including the humanities. The GAA was completed by a sample of 8,024 students at four large, urban community…

The relationship between teacher appraisal and educational research in the United Kingdom is illustrated by the personal and professional experiences of an educator. An autobiographical analysis of this relationship, in light of M. Foucault's analysis of the relationship between power and knowledge, is presented. A clear relationship between…

The relationship between expert teachers' classroom behavior and their subject matter knowledge is an area of research that has not been examined extensively. To begin that study, one topic, fraction knowledge, was explored in depth as it occurred in natural teaching settings. Fractions are one of the more difficult topics in elementary…

A cohort analysis of data gathered in three national election surveys (1956, 1968, 1980) was used to study the effect of media use on political knowledge, which was divided into knowledge of issues, personalities, and political parties. Knowledge levels were calculated by creating indices from open-ended questions about why a person liked or…

The effects of compensatory education programs in the United States during the past 20 years are discussed. The author believes the programs have had the least impact on scholastic achievement and intelligence quotient (IQ). The theoretical view of human intelligence and prevailing views of psychologists and educators of the 1960's regarding the…

This document presents provisional data for all Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) questionnaire items from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for August 1987. It notes that the AIDS questionnaire was designed to provide baseline estimates of public knowledge and attitudes about AIDS transmission, the prevention of AIDS virus…

The monograph considers the role of teachers in child abuse prevention and reporting from the perspective of a New Zealand educator. A 1985 study of the author is summarized in which a training program resulted in commitment by 80% of teachers involved to identify and report child abuse and by 60% of teachers to further educate themselves in child…

Two studies examined the impact of a five-session behaviorally oriented nutrition curriculum on health knowledge, behavioral intentions, attitudes, and self-reported behavior of tenth grade students. The first study examined the impact of a nutrition curriculum when combined with materials for the family and the impact of the curriculum when…

The fundamental purposes of this study were to develop mastery tests in the cognitive and psychomotor domains for skin and scuba diving and to establish validity and reliability for the tests. A table of specifications was developed for each domain, and a pilot study refined the initial test batteries into their final form. In the main study,…

An overview of the research on the cognitive effects of higher education is presented. It is suggested that studies exist on three levels: (1) measurement of the increment of specific factual knowledge; (2) understanding the basic concepts in a certain area, studied by qualitative analysis; and (3) the development of awareness of the nature of…

Eighty-eight college students were invited to cook a chocolate mousse and were allowed first to ask any question that seemed helpful to completing the task. The questions were answered immediately according to a predetermined schema: in one condition the subjects were told that the task would be rather easy, in the other condition they were told…