A project was undertaken to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a unit of instruction which would teach economically deprived first grade children some interesting scientific concepts and increase their curiosity behavior and willingness to offer hypotheses, carry out experiments, and evaluate outcomes. The instructional unit was based on…

A report is given of student learning outcomes investigated over a one and one half year period on the Spanish Dame School Project. This project provided instruction in Spanish and English for approximately 100 children between the ages of three and six. A pretest-posttest control group design was used involving eight groups. Four tests were used…

Research designed to discover the effect of individual instruction and team teaching upon the academic growth of students in high school English during a six weeks summer school session is discussed. Two control and experimental groups were used. Results are given in tabular form. (CK)

Two experiments on multiple-choice assessment of students learning from sentences were conducted. Interference arising from intersentence similarity was a function of both the kind of learning strategies students were instructed to employ and the kind of strategies they reported having employed spontaneously. Implications for test construction and…

The problem of the appropriate comparison group for bereavement studies is discussed. The use of the retrospective pretest design is illustrated through a longitudinal study of bereavement outcome following pregnancy loss, involving 138 bereaved women and a comparison group of 215 currently pregnant women. (SLD)

Measures the effectiveness of a medically oriented educational game in increasing knowledge and decreasing young children's fears regarding common medical procedures. Paired t-tests indicated a significant increase in children's knowledge of health care concepts and decrease in fear of medical procedures after the game was played. (BB)

This study investigated differences in achievement for control groups learning college algebra using traditional classroom instruction methods compared to experimental groups using computer algebra tutorials for three precalculus topics. Two instructors each taught one control group and one experimental group. No significant differences were…

The regression-discontinuity design involving a treatment interaction effect (TIE), pretest-posttest functional form specification, and choice of point-of-estimation of the TIE are examined. Formulas for controlling the magnitude of TIE in simulations can be used for simulating the randomized experimental case where estimation is not at the…

An experimental class in introductory statistics (n=40) using simulation software at American University was compared to a traditionally taught control group (n=36) with respect to achievement and accrued beliefs about the benefits of the simulations. Results indicate significantly higher achievement scores for the experimental class with about…

The epidemiological method of case-control study is described, and its advantages and disadvantages are discussed for use in health program evaluation. Examples are reviewed, with a step-by-step description of the method. Potential applications are discussed, including worksite health promotions, screening programs, and large-scale public health…

The question of memory-based processing when transfer is delayed was addressed for 181 college students in a transfer-for-training paradigm. Results indicate that the use of a general and a specific schema for retrieval when memory-based processing is required to demonstrate transfer in a problem domain. (SLD)

This commentary argues that the study reported in EC 605 442, which indicated long-term gains for children with autism who experienced intensive behavioral intervention as preschoolers, needs to be replicated to be convincing, especially given the problem of nonrandom assignment of experimental and control groups. (JDD)

Discusses strategies researchers can use to help young children understand the research process and be better able to give informed consent. Argues that proxy consent from parents (historically used as a substitute for children's informed consent) does not fully meet the requirements of informed consent. (Author/GR)