Recommendations are made for data processing procedures for the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of Data survey program. Data are anticipated from about 16,000 local education agencies and 85,000 schools in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 7 territories. These recommendations concern editing and verification…

This report is the result of a project which analyzed the current collection of statistics from academic, public, and school libraries by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and by state agencies and prepared recommendations for a more efficient and effective national data collection system. Current data collection methods are…

A combined qualitative/quantitative methodology was employed to explore the interplay between the development of 16 German families and their individual members. Describing the dual approach, discussion concerns (1) the development of an appropriate framework for focusing observations; (2) the introduction of the concept of "family task"…

This paper describes an undergraduate-level course designed to teach the applications of computers that are most relevant in the social sciences, especially psychology. After an introduction to the basic concepts and terminology of computing, separate units were devoted to word processing, data analysis, data acquisition, artificial intelligence,…

Fertility trends estimated alternately from birth histories and own children method are compared for eight developing countries in which the World Fertility Survey was conducted. Principle hypotheses are that fertility trends estimated by the two approaches suffer from similar errors in the reporting of women's and children's ages, and that these…

The goal of this research was to predict from a recruit's responses to the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) items whether the recruit would pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). The data consisted of the responses (correct/incorrect) of 1,020 Navy recruits to 200 items of the ASVAB together with the scores of these…

This report, based on the results of the fifth biennial survey of humanities doctorate recipients, describes the demographic and employment characteristics of humanities Ph.D.s who received their degrees between January 1942 and June 1984 and were residing in the United States in February 1985. The number of humanities Ph.D.s in 1985 was estimated…

Periodic summaries of research techniques used in important journals help professors of educational research teach each new generation of researchers. Literature published in "American Educational Research Journal" (AERJ), "Educational Researcher" (ER), and "Review of Educational Research (RER) is reviewed for the 10-year…

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA; LISREL) was used to: (1) validate the Self Description Questionnaire III (SDQ III) subscales measuring general, school, English, and mathematics self-concepts for a sample of 898 (285 low track and 613 high track) students in grades 11 and 12, and (2) test the equivalency of the factor structure across academic…

A practical guide to conducting and reporting graduate-level research projects outlines each step in the research process and discusses both practical and theoretical considerations. Chapter 1 addresses idea and topic development. Chapter 2 discusses the purposes, procedures, and sources for literature reviews and searches. In chapter 3, the…

Although item bias statistics are widely recommended for use in test development and test analysis work, problems arise in their interpretation. The purpose of the present research was to evaluate the validity of logistic test models and computer simulation methods for providing a frame of reference for item bias statistic interpretations.…

This report analyzes the distribution of immigrants in Neighborhood Development Areas (NDAs) and other Community Districts of New York, New York based on the 1980 U.S. Census. A Community District is designated as an NDA by the Community Development Agency (CDA) if more than 20,000 of its residents are recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent…

Several techniques have been developed for creating continuous smooth distributions of test norms. This paper describes two studies that explore the behavior of cubic splines in order to determine their appropriateness for use in test norming. The first study uses data from the Curriculum Referenced Tests of Mastery (CRTM) and employs two…

A new approach to assessing unexpected differential item performance (item bias or item fairness) was developed and applied to the item responses of males and females to Scholastic Aptitude Test and Test of Standard Written English items administered operationally in December 1977. While the main body of the report describes the particulars of the…

Addressing a common problem in the analysis of social networks, this study describes quantitative techniques for identifying social subgroups using individual perceptions of social affinities within natural groups. Compared are four analytic methods for abstracting composite representations of sub-structures. These methods, formally evaluated…