Because the attitude research approach to determining public opinion typically yields data irrelevant to public policy formation, researchers need to consider nontraditional approaches to public opinion measures. Attitude research assumes that people actually have readily measurable opinions and that each attitude can be measured singly.…

Among the many problems faced by family researchers in conducting experimental research in field settings is that posed by nonequivalent and intact treatment and control groups. Nonequivalence refers to the assignment of individuals to treatments on a nonrandom basis, thus generating treatment groups with different expected values on one or more…

The scientific approach with humans is usually subject to many human and environmental variables that are difficult to control. Reading behavior and reading disability are two of the most researched topics in education and psychology, yet reading research continues to abound with contradictions. Standardized tests, speed reading, and computer…

A number of methodological and substantive issues were raised by the ethnographic research for the book (coauthored by the author of this paper), "Teaching Tales and Theories: A Story and A Commentary on a Science Classroom" (1981). First, the origin of the "problem" came not only from earlier research but also from a serendipitous meeting with…

Noting that social interaction theory has long been characterized by a plethora of divergent research studies in search of an organizing paradigm, and that a common failing of most social interaction research has been its focus on process or change in relationships, the first part of this paper specifies the major limiting, or boundary, conditions…

Qualitative research that takes into account children's views of themselves as well as their own assessments of their talents and capabilities in reading and other academic areas can enhance understandings already established in research and measured by standardized instruments. New avenues of qualitative research can prove amenable to assessing…

Semi-projective holistic methods in political science research can augment knowledge of political attitudes and political reasoning. Semi-projective methods refer to techniques which present focused or structured stimuli and allow an unrestricted range of responses. Visual stimuli include ink blots, standard drawings, political cartoons, or…

Methodological issues which confront researchers using the concept of the family career include the selection of appropriate dependent variables; the efficacy of historical versus immediate effects; and scaling the family career (a proposed replacement for the "family life cycle"). The issue of which dependent variables should be…

An explicit model identifying 10 relevant components of achievement gain scores has been developed. Based on that model, all students under consideration are stratified according to individual observed pretest score, and achievement gains are measured relative to the average and range of gains among students in the same prescore stratum. The…

The hypothesis that conventional approaches to evaluating contaminants in performance appraisal overlook important individual ratee effects was examined. A rating form was developed that consisted of the following dimensions and behaviors: warmth; guided discourse or indirect teaching methods; control of subject matter; enthusiasm and reinforcing;…

The study investigated statistically significant correlations between levels of test anxiety and socioeconomic status among college sophomores and juniors. The Anxiety Scale (Alpert and Haber) was administered to students in an educational psychology course. Administrations were conducted at a neutral time, 45 days prior to the final exam, and…

The paradox of the diffusion of innovations research is that in its efforts to find ways and means of breaking the communication constraint in Third World countries, it has generated many bottlenecks that cumulatively constitute the major constraint: lack of an efficient system for delivering adequate and reliable information, knowledge, and…

Writing researchers must be concerned with whether the instruments they are using are constructed as soundly as possible and, if so, whether they are performing the necessary analytic procedures to interpret the results correctly. To examine the logic in the construction of J. A. Daly and M. D. Miller's Writing Apprehension Test and the incomplete…

The effects of daily training in visual memory and basal reader instruction were investigated. Training and tests on 295 first-graders indicated that visual memory training resulted in more growth in visual discrimination and higher levels of reading achievement than reading instruction alone. (SDH)

Using reading models interchangeably with reading theories blurs the distinction between models as representations and theories as explanations. This report presents several models of reading comprehension and compares the functional purposes and research implications of selecting one model over another. The report draws the following conclusions:…