Guidelines for achieving significance in vocational education research include the following: (1) specify whose problem is addressed; (2) describe consequences of conclusions or recommendations; (3) involve those affected in the inquiry; (4) do not let statistical precision substitute for purpose; and (5) avoid research to justify political…

Considers relationship between statistically and clinically significant change. Sees Jacobson and Truax's index of clinically significant change as neglecting possible confounding of improvement rate estimates by regression to the mean. Describes alternative method (Edwards-Nunnally method) that incorporates an adjustment that minimizes this…

Notes that, in assessing and diagnosing children and adolescents for psychological treatment, attention must be paid to variations across sources of assessment data, comorbidity of diagnoses, and potential utility of family diagnosis. Presents specific methodological recommendations regarding randomized clinical trials, control groups, dependent…

Discusses issues to consider when investigating behavioral effect of foods, including idiosyncratic response to particular food, necessity of identifying individual sensitive to food being studied, necessity of including washout phase, consideration of withdrawal effects, assessment of change, dietary challenge, and time parameter necessary for…

Presents first of two-part editorial (second part to appear in next journal issue) proposing guidelines for developing useful tables to report multiple regression outcomes. Pays particular attention to situations where a hierarchical multiple regression analysis is guided by theory. Concludes that some conventional way to report multiple…

Reviews empirical studies of suicide survivors with designs that include control groups. Discusses investigations individually with respect to those in which participating survivors are friends or combination of different relationships to deceased, parents of deceased child, and spouses. Discusses commonalities of findings and most frequent…

Expresses concerns about importing qualitative research methods from education to family therapy. Argues that qualitative researchers cannot establish the trustworthiness of their findings, regardless of the methods they use. Further contends that the legitimacy of research knowledge cannot be determined by researchers, but rather requires the…

Suggests that teachers or researchers ought to slow down, trust their intuitions, and keep solutions open longer as they approach and attempt to solve educational problems. Shares, through three studies and one poem, the similarity in the thinking and writing of research problems and the composing of a poem. (MG)

Identifies and discusses four issues that arise in process of collaborative research conducted by practitioners and researchers: issues of practice, design, measurement, and team development. Includes case example of practitioner and research collaboration to evaluate single-session groups for families of psychiatric inpatients to illustrate…

Presents overview of research about mental illness and criminality. Notes methodological problems. Discusses general conclusions that psychiatric patients tended to get arrested at higher rate; factors associated with offenses by mentally ill people were same as those associated with offenses by general public; there was no uniform rate of…

Although comments of D.J. Nordlund and R. Nagel are welcomed, their arguments are not sufficient to accept the recommendation of using total variance estimates to standardize canonical discriminant function coefficients. If standardized coefficients are used to help interpret a discriminant analysis, pooled within-group variance estimates should…

Reacts to Jennings and Skovholt's (1999) study on master therapists. Discusses the lack of clear definition of master therapist, lack of meaningful comparison groups needed to infer the distinctive characteristics of master therapists, the incomplete communication of data-analytic procedures, and the formulation of results as a uniform…

Describes 11 common dogmas of understanding (convictions that are impervious to evidence) that have led researchers to ignore or dismiss many features of everyday language. Discusses evidence against them, and some of the dangers they pose for the study of understanding. Argues that using language is fundamentally social, and that social features…

Argues that history and philosophy of science can investigate scientific questions that are excluded from science itself by working as a shadow discipline, complementing the specialist science in the production of knowledge about nature. Contains 16 references. (Author/WRM)

Describes the experience of being a researcher in mathematics classrooms. Offers background-research information and describes the research context. Presents a series of episodes to stimulate reflections. Contains 12 references. (ASK)