The paper outlines the advantages, disadvantages, and other implications of using the Internet to collect data from gaming addicts. Drawing from experience of numerous addiction studies carried out online by the author, and by reviewing the methodological literature examining online data collection among both gambling addicts and video game…

School-wide positive behavioral support (SWPBS) programs are becoming an increasingly popular and effective way to reduce behavioral disruptions in schools. Results from a 4-year study examining the effects of an SWPBS program in a public elementary school indicated significant reductions in percentages of behavioral referrals, suspensions, and…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether an interview protocol, based on the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, could be adapted to examine the close relationships of children with developmental disabilities in an inclusive school setting. Twenty-five children with developmental disabilities aged between approximately 5 and 12 years…

Durkheim's nineteenth-century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century, however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the…

How can statistics clearly be mathematical and yet distinct from mathematics? The answer lies in the reality that statistics is both an art and a science, and both aspects are important for teaching and learning statistics. Statistics is a mathematical science in that it applies mathematical theories and techniques. Mathematics provides the…

Common source bias has been the focus of much attention. To minimize the problem, researchers have sometimes been advised to take measurements of predictors from one observer and measurements of outcomes from another observer or to use separate occasions of measurement. We propose that these efforts to eliminate biases due to common source…

Background: The School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS) is a national study periodically conducted to assess school health policies and programs at the state, district, school, and classroom levels. For SHPPS 2006, district-level questionnaires were designed for telephone administration, but mixed-mode data collection that also used…

Electronic spreadsheets and online weather databases are excellent tools for making real-world comparisons of local, national, and global climate trends. The activities described in this article incorporate these tools to help familiarize students with electronic spreadsheets and how to use authentic data sets available from the internet to answer…

Collecting data from students within classrooms or schools, and collecting data from students on multiple occasions over time, are two common sampling methods used in educational research that often require multilevel modeling (MLM) data analysis techniques to avoid Type-1 errors. The purpose of this article is to clarify the seven major steps…

This document presents a summary of the larger report "Discipline Policies, Successful Schools, and Racial Justice." State legislation is an important lever for improving the equity of student discipline policies. However, states vary tremendously, and only some provide accurate public reports on school discipline, support effective…

This report presents findings on the numbers and types of public elementary and secondary local education agencies (LEAs) in the United States and other jurisdictions in the 2009-10 school year, using data from the Local Education Agency Universe Survey of the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey system. The CCD is an annual collection of data that…

Ever since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states have faced a federal mandate to improve their ability to collect and analyze education data for the purpose of tracking and reporting the progress of their education reform efforts. With the assistance of federal funds, virtually all of the states are developing…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of the Offer versus Serve (OVS) provision in the National School Lunch Program would result in a significant difference in fruit and vegetable consumption by fourth and fifth grade elementary students, and in plate waste cost. Methods: Weighed and visual plate waste data…

This study explored interrelationships among high school students' views about nature of science (NOS), acceptance of evolution, and conceptual understanding of evolution, and the extent to which these may have shifted from pre- to post-instruction on evolutionary theory. Eighty-one students enrolled in ninth-grade Biology responded to…

Background: Although class attendance is linked to academic performance, questions remain about what determines students' decisions to attend or miss class. Aims: In addition to the constructs of a common decision-making model, the theory of planned behaviour, the present study examined the influence of student role identity and university student…