Background: Educational and developmental psychologists often examine how groups change over time. Two analytic procedures -- analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and the gain score model -- each seem well suited for the simplest situation, with just two groups and two time points. They can produce different results, what is known as Lord's paradox.…

Purpose: The purpose was to examine and determine effect size distributions reported in published audiology and speech-language pathology research in order to provide researchers and clinicians with more relevant guidelines for the interpretation of potentially clinically meaningful findings. Method: Cohen's d, Hedges' g, Pearson r, and sample…

When well-implemented, mediation analyses play a critical role in probing theories of action because their results help lay the ground work for the critical development of a treatment and the iterative advancement of theories that are foundational to a discipline. Despite strong interest in designs that incorporate mediation, few studies have…

Mixed-effects models can be used to examine the association between a categorical moderator and the magnitude of the effect size. Two approaches are available to estimate the residual between-studies variance, t[superscript 2][subscript res] --namely, separate estimation within each category of the moderator versus pooled estimation across all…

Intelligence tests produce composite scores that are interpreted as indexes of psychometric g. Like all measures, general intelligence composites are not pure representations of their intended construct, so it is important to evaluate the score characteristics that affect accuracy in measurement. In this study, we identified three characteristics…

Concept mapping is a popular tool for knowledge structure assessment. In recent years, both the amount of research about concept maps and their measurement ability have grown. It has been shown that concept maps with different types of tasks, for instance, links between concepts given or selected by a respondent, provide information about the…

In the contemporary society a massive amount of data is generated continuously by various means, and they are called Big-Data sets. Big Data has potential and limits which need to be understood by statisticians and statistics consumers, therefore it is a challenge to develop Big-Data Literacy to support the needs of constructive, concerned, and…

Research approaches are general techniques that researchers follow when conducting a study. Employing research approaches in information research is noted to vary from one researcher to another based on the investigator's choice as well as the nature of the topic under investigation. The differences in the use of research approaches in information…

It is widely believed that regression models for binary responses are problematic if we want to compare estimated coefficients from models for different groups or with different explanatory variables. This concern has two forms. The first arises if the binary model is treated as an estimate of a model for an unobserved continuous response and the…

In equating, smoothing techniques are frequently used to diminish sampling error. There are typically two types of smoothing: presmoothing and postsmoothing. For polynomial log-linear presmoothing, an optimum smoothing degree can be determined statistically based on the Akaike information criterion or Chi-square difference criterion. For…

Undergraduate business students, like many other undergraduate majors, are often apprehensive about the quantitative courses required to earn their degree. Active learning methods, including flipped classrooms, have been studied as approaches to mitigate these fears among students. With our overarching goal of helping students improve their…

Statistical tests carry with them a number of assumptions that must be checked. Failing to do so and to report the results of such preliminary analyses introduce a potential threat to the internal validity of a study and to our ability as consumers to put faith in study findings. This article systematically examines the reporting of checks on…

Theories of causation in philosophy ask what makes causal claims true and establish the so-called truth conditions allowing one to separate causal from noncausal relationships. We argue that social scientists should be aware of truth conditions of causal claims because they imply which method of causal inference can establish whether a specific…

Population-adjusted indirect comparisons estimate treatment effects when access to individual patient data is limited and there are cross-trial differences in effect modifiers. Popular methods include matching-adjusted indirect comparison (MAIC) and simulated treatment comparison (STC). There is limited formal evaluation of these methods and…

In evaluating the learning achievement of programming-thinking skills, the method of using a rubric that describes evaluation items and evaluation stages is widely employed. However, few studies have evaluated the reliability, validity, and consistency of the rubrics themselves. In this study, we introduced a statistical method for evaluating the…