Discusses the international negotiations and cooperation involved in cross-national studies of academic achievement sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Criticizes a previous article for its views of which research is and is not policy relevant; the relationship between between-country and…

Major barriers to conducting needs assessment for AIDS prevention are resource deficits, technical deficits, environmental complexity, and apprehension about expectations. Comprehensive, methodologically sound assessments conducted collaboratively by consumers and providers of prevention services are essential. (SK)

"Why Is It Necessary to Change?" (Bregger, Dippo), "Redesigning the Questionnaire" (Polivka, Rothgeb), and "Evaluating Changes in the Estimates" (Bowie et al.) examine the changes that will be made in the 53-year-old Current Population Survey (CPS) beginning in 1994. (JOW)

Examines the paradox of case studies' abilities to understand the complexity in particular contexts while not being generalizable. Argues that the pressure for quantification and multisite case study design in policy research has weakened the original utility of the case study method for understanding complex educational phenomena. (DSK)

Health effects of teacher stress and teacher burnout are reviewed separately. Serious methodological and conceptual difficulties in research weaken conclusions that have been drawn regarding the effects on teacher health of stress and burnout. The need for theory-based investigations is discussed. (SLD)

Reestimates with maximum likelihood procedures of a previously specified model that aimed at explaining the joint determinants of two binary choice variables: (1) the presence of a gender economics course and (2) a women's-studies program. Results differ from the original study enough to conclude that the use of more appropriate techniques is…

Examines the problem of how to account for the observation of research on cold fusion after the apparent closure of the controversy in 1990. Despite the controversy, scientists continue to work with cold fusion. Examines whether the controversy is in fact closed, creating a hybrid category, "undead." (Author/CCM)

Notes that faculty members in communication departments or schools of journalism and mass communication must navigate between the Scylla of diminishing faculty lines and the Charybdis of the turbulent waters of academic scholarship. Examines problems faced by journalism and communication researchers and places their work in a contemporary…

The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education in the United Kingdom (the Dearing Committee) aimed to examine short-term problems and long-term development more efficiently than did previous inquiries. The committee's uneven engagement with research and academic literatures reflects general features of higher education's contemporary…

Explicates the statement, "Results of most non-traditional authorship studies are not universally accepted as definitive." Lists and discusses six problems associated with these studies, and suggests a similar number of solutions. Argues that future nontraditional attribution studies must be held to a higher standard of competency and…

Presents three mini-essays reviewing progress made on three problems in text comprehension (two traditional and one newer problem): their relationship between sentence processes and text processes; individual differences in discourse comprehension; and the representation of multiple-text information, which exposes fresh views of problems of…

Addresses generalizability theory (GT), which offers a flexible framework for assessing dependability of measurement. GT allows for consideration of multiple sources of error, allowing investigators to assess the overall impact of measurement error. Illustrative analyses demonstrate the special advantages of GT for planning studies in which…

Highlighting Success for All, this article argues that federal funds are being used to support the promulgation and biased evaluation of failed programs. Educators need to beware of conflicts of interest and developers' misleading claims about publicly and privately developed programs. Independent evaluators are needed. (MLH)

David Baker and Cornelius Riordan mistakenly claim that Catholic schools failed in the 1950s because they were mediocre. Their article is a house of cards built on a distortion of history and a single new finding that Catholic schools' social-class composition has changed. The "elitism" problem, stemming from rising costs, can be remedied by more…

The exploratory nature of much research on organizational training makes case studies vital to the construction of knowledge and theory. However, case study research poses problems in terms of access to organizations, data collection, confidentiality, and the coordination of multiple studies. (SK)