Review of rural social work literature of the 1970's indicates research has primarly followed the naturalistic model defined by Taylor, rather than the positivist approach favored by Fischer. Discussed are: surveys and case studies; ethnographies; participatory/action research; historical research; positivistic research; hypothesis testing…

The results of reanalyses of statistical procedures used in the class-size meta-analyses by Glass and Smith are reported. The analyses suggest that the use of suboptimal statistical methods did not greatly affect the results of the meta-analyses by Glass and Smith. (Author/PN)

Practical formulas for several analysis of variance (ANOVA) designs and models are presented which make it possible for readers to compute strength of association measures without the use of complete ANOVA tables. (Author/PN)

The desirability of combining tests of theory with evaluations of treatment modalities is argued in an investigation of the effectiveness of a juvenile diversion program. Using a true experimental design (with randomization), recidivism analyses dependent on court record data failed to demonstrate the relative superiority of any of three treatment…

Describes an alternative method for using live animals in the classroom. A toy dog, the "Trail Tracker Hound Dog" (manufactured by CPG Products Corporation, Cincinnati, Ohio), is used to encourage development of such skills as observation, hypothesis testing, and collection and analysis of scientific data. (Author/JN)

Tests the "holistic construal" method of validating constructs and testing organizational hypotheses, using examples from organizational theory and data on wholesale distribution companies. Holistic construal is meant to explicitly represent theoretical and empirical concepts, nonobservational hypotheses, and correspondence rules and…

Results of an evaluation by 135 graduate students in educational administration of hypothetical superintendents depicted as male or female and bound or flexible suggest that sex bias has operated to the disadvantage of women and the education profession. (Author/WD)

Subjects were trained against their initial dimensional preference in a two-dimensional simultaneous discrimination learning task. (RH)

In a conceptual replication and extension of a study by Bem and Lenney, male (n=90) and female (n=118) college students rated their comfort in and preference for performing several series of masculine, feminine, and neutral activities. (MP)

Hawkin's procedure for testing a sequence of observations for a shift in location could have applicability for assessing change within a single subject. Monte Carlo results suggest that Hawkins' procedure is robust with respect to moderate violations of its underlying assumptions of homogeneity of variance and normality. (Author/GDC)

Errors of misclassification and their effects on categorical data analysis are discussed. The chi-square test for equality of two proportions is examined in the context of errorful categorical data. The effects of such errors are illustrated. A correction procedure is developed and discussed. (Author/MH)

Evaluations involving nonrandom assignment to treatment or control groups are vulnerable to an accidental or intentional confounding of a selection effect with the treatment effect. Two techniques, discriminant analysis and base expectancy analysis, permit separate estimation of the selection and treatment effects in the final results. (Author/CTM)

A data analysis procedure for testing the hypothesis that one task is a developmental prerequisite for another task is illustrated. The procedure was applied to new data on the acquisition of conservation concepts to test the hypothesis that synthesis, visual-scanning skills, and memory capacity are prerequisites of conservation mastery. (JMB)