A collaborating scientist--a rewarding addition to any high school science program--can help students collect and analyze data that either replicates or parallels the work of the partnering scientist. This type of partnership is beneficial for both students and scientists, and perhaps there has never been a better time to consider such a…

Early adolescents in the United States are increasingly exposed to a culture of worrisome messages. A degree of adolescent worry is normal, but the likelihood of a young person being anxious or depressed increases with the perceived number of worries. This study examined the effect of age, gender, and worry behavior on frequency of 8 adolescent…

The purpose of this study is to investigate how sixth graders develop inquiry skills to construct explanations in an inquiry-based learning environment. We designed a series of inquiry-based learning activities and identified four inquiry skills that are relevant to students' construction of explanation. These skills include skills to identify…

In this article, the author discusses the most recent attempt by educators to emulate the "sound principles" and methods of business and science, which is to become data-driven. The leaders in a data-driven school are able to demonstrate how some number, preferably scores on standardized tests, moved up as a result of some program they initiated.…

The current state of physical fitness in American youth is unknown. While evidence exists that obesity levels are increasing in children and youth, data on declines in physical fitness measures (i.e., cardiorespiratory and musculoskeletal fitness) are lacking. Tracking of physical fitness components has been poorly done. Surveillance of behaviors…

In this article, Andrew Martin, deputy head teacher at Greenside School in Stevenage, provides an outline of the development of the P scales as an assessment tool for pupils working below Level 1 of the National Curriculum. He recounts the difficulties his school found in using P scales to track pupil progress from year to year and describes and…

Anonymous surveys have been widely used worldwide to describe adolescent substance use yet cannot elucidate causal drug abuse predictors. Studies in the U.S. have generally found that anonymous and confidential surveys yield comparable levels of self-reported substance use, yet the effect of survey format on youth self-report has not been…

The purpose of this article is to test the utility of incorporating a dribble file into a formative software evaluation. The study specifically examines the dribble file's capability to detect software problems that were not detected by the software testers. As the amount of technology used for instructional purposes increases, the need to…

Violence perpetrated by intimate partners (intimate partner violence, IPV hereinafter) is prevalent, and often recurrent, in women's lives (Straus & Gelles, 1990; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Gaining information about lifetime IPV is crucial to assess the cumulative effects of IPV on women's well-being over the life course. This study compared two…

Corporate data fall under the general category of administrative data and provide varied information on the worker and workplace. Studies of worker health, including evaluations of workplace programs, are often based on corporate data. With the exception of health care claims data, which are usually administered by a third party, the corporation…

The theory-based evaluation approach documents the assumptions implicit in program design and points to the data required to test these assumptions. Collecting and analyzing such data through quantitative and qualitative techniques enhances understanding of the validity of the assumptions and the relevance of key program processes. This article…

Campbell and Skinner used an A-B design to evaluate the effects of the Timely Transitions Game (TTG) on room-to-room transitions in a sixth-grade classroom. The TTG incorporated explicit timing, publicly posted feedback, and an interdependent group contingency with randomly selected transitions and criteria. The purpose of the current study was to…

Wake County's participation in the statewide pilot of an electronic student information system has created many changes in the district. The new statewide system eventually will store data for all students in North Carolina in one collection of databases that will be accessible from each K-12 classroom, allowing teachers to record student grades…

In an era of digital technologies, school districts find themselves on a cutting edge, one that slices both ways. Technological tools like the Internet, e-mail, networked computers and such have revolutionized the way children are taught and schools are run, but they also have created new management challenges and ethical issues that many school…

Investigated the impact of a collaborative inquiry involving diverse teams of teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents. The teams collected and analyzed local data to make data-based decisions about improving teaching and learning. The collaboration helped teachers engage in a continuous improvement process that allowed them to…