This paper draws on data and experiences observing and analyzing school lotteries from the National Evaluation of Charter School Impacts (Gleason et al., 2010) to describe the challenges associated with lottery-based research. In that study, covering 36 charter middle schools in 15 states, we found that charter schools did not affect student…

A special tabulation of individual student scores from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test allowed a ranking of Texas schools according to test score changes ("value added"). The rankings varied greatly by student subpopulation. That is, the vast majority of schools are much more effective with some kinds of students than…

This article tackles the problem of what should be done with real textual data that are contaminated by errors of recording, particularly when the data contain words that are misspelt, unintentionally or otherwise. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

Incidental vocabulary learning has attracted a great deal of attention in ELT research. However, it is important that teacher and researcher exploitation of vocabulary developments be guided by more than replication of previous research designs. For conclusions based on empirical research to be valid, it is important to be clear about exactly what…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of missing physical activity (PA) data of children and youth. Method: PA data from the Chinese City Children and Youth Physical Activity Study ("N" = 2,758; 1,438 boys and 1,320 girls; aged 9-17 years old) were used for the study. After the data were sorted by the…

This article argues that the Seven Solutions in the US, and the Research Excellence Framework in the UK, manifest the vice of epistemic insensibility. Section I provides an overview of Aristotle's analysis of moral vice in people. Section II applies Aristotle's analysis to epistemic vice, developing an account of epistemic insensibility. In so…

Scientific discoveries take place within scientific communities that are established in legitimating organizations such as universities and research institutes. Often times, scientists undergo tensions and paradoxes as they evaluate the risks they are willing to accept in their work. The types of risk/benefit decisions scientists make to determine…

This article is a response to "Issues in Differential Response", a review of the current evidence pertaining to differential response (DR) programs in child protective services (CPS). In my view, the Hughes, Rycus, Saunders-Adams, Hughes, and Hughes article suffers from several weaknesses. First, DR programs are critiqued as if they were…

The Hughes et al. paper is critiqued generally and in specific areas. The weak nature of the authors' empirical work is discussed along with their enigmatic writing and vague and incorrect use of references, and their simultaneous use of sweeping statements of opinion and narrow analytical focus. This review examines the authors' errors…

This article is an invited commentary and analysis of the authors' completed systematic evaluation of Child Protective Services (CPS) differential response (DR) models. I write this commentary based on 25 years of public child welfare experience followed by 13 years as a social work professor and researcher. In their review of DR, the…

This article presents a sociologically informed critique of a range of academic literatures relating to self-injury. It is noted how a lack of consensus on definitional issues, together with the inaccurate portrayal of the "typical self-injurer" in the clinical literature, has impeded the development of a sound understanding of self-injury. Some…

Power and inequality are central concepts in feminist theory and practice. Yet, with a few notable exceptions, there is relatively little empirical research on gender and power within feminist psychology. A search of PsycINFO for articles published in "Psychology of Women Quarterly" for the years 2000-2011 yielded only 14 empirical articles with…

The author cannot think of a time in his career when the leaders of higher education institutions have faced so many complex issues and hard decisions, with the possible exception of the student uprisings in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Unlike that earlier time, however, the issues facing higher education today go to the very heart of who people…

Using John Creswell's Research Process Cycle as a framework, this article describes various web-based collaborative technologies useful for enhancing the organization and efficiency of educational research. Visualization tools (Cacoo) assist researchers in identifying a research problem. Resource storage tools (Delicious, Mendeley, EasyBib)…

Morgante et al. (in press) find inconsistencies in the time reporting of a Tobii T60XL eye tracker. Their study raises important questions about the use of the Tobii T-series in particular, and various software and hardware in general, in different infant eye tracking paradigms. It leaves open the question of the source of the inconsistencies.…