This study explores a labelling feature that allows students to tag parts of their online messages. Data comes from four sequentially offered sessions of a graduate education course. Students engaged in two to three online activities in groups of three or four. Students (n = 53) contributed from 0 to 56 labels (M = 12.42, SD = 13.50) and 18 to 114…

Written by a social worker for social work students, this is a nuts and bolts guide to statistics that presents complex calculations and concepts in clear, easy-to-understand language. It includes numerous examples, data sets, and issues that students will encounter in social work practice. The first section introduces basic concepts and terms to…

In the passionate debates over providing equal educational opportunity for all children, it's frequently argued that large financial inequities create challenges for many public schools, particularly those in lower-income urban areas. This study compares the revenues and operating expenditures of Michigan's urban, suburban, town and rural school…

The meta-analysis of coefficient alpha across many studies is becoming more common in psychology by a methodology labeled reliability generalization. Existing reliability generalization studies have not used the sampling distribution of coefficient alpha for precision weighting and other common meta-analytic procedures. A framework is provided for…

This article discusses an international research project that explores teachers' views of a recent learning experience they perceive to have been effective for them. Fourteen teachers attending graduate courses at the University of Washington, USA (six teachers), and the University of Northumbria, UK (eight teachers), form the sample for this…

Grading on the curve is a common practice in higher education. While there are many critics of the practice it still finds wide spread acceptance particularly in science classes. Advocates believe that in large classes student ability is likely to be normally distributed. If test scores are also normally distributed instructors and students tend…

The Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) is a regional tuition-reciprocity agreement that enables students from WICHE (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) states to enroll in participating two- and four-year public institutions at 150 percent of the enrolling institution's resident tuition. WUE has been operating for more than 20…

This Digest provides a review and applications of the concepts of normal distribution, standard deviation, effect size, and translation of effect size into percentile gain, the foundations for the understanding of meta analytic results. Meta analysis is a statistical technique that enables the results of a number of studies to be combined to…

Multivariate techniques have been implemented with greater and greater frequency. In order to use multivariate techniques researchers must understand the fundamental assumptions. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate one of the assumptions of multivariate analysis, normality. Overall, normal distributions are unimodal and symmetrical, and they…

The assumption that is most important to the hypothesis testing procedure of multiple linear regression is the assumption that the residuals are normally distributed, but this assumption is not always tenable given the realities of some data sets. When normal distribution of the residuals is not met, an alternative method can be initiated. As an…

Explains two basic approaches to bibliometric models (frequency-size, frequency-rank); cites 28 models; and analyzes three models--Price, Bookstein, and Brookes--by considering their internal properties, interrelationships, and generality. Validity of the generalizations is noted. Appendices include 32 references and list of 28 additional…

Presents table for determining relative rarity of quotient discrepancies on Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) to be used with children at higher Intelligence Quotient levels. Theoretically derived table has been confirmed through empirical observation of WISC-R standardization sample. Suggests table use should reduce…

Discussion of authorship distributions focuses on the results of a numerical study for fractional authorship attribution. Highlights include coauthors; multinomial coefficients; Lotka functions; probability distributions of articles per author; and probability distributions of authors per article. (LRW)

Discusses structural differences between author-publication systems and journal-article systems, i.e., articles can have more than one author. Frequency functions are examined; and a new conceptual explanation of Lotka's Law, based on convolution theory, is proposed. (Contains eight references.) (LRW)

A model for preferential and triadic choice is derived in terms of weighted sums of central F distribution functions. It is a probabilistic generalization of Coombs' (1964) unfolding model from which special cases can be derived easily. This model for binary choice can be easily related to preference ratio judgments. (SLD)