Self-selection bias poses a major threat to the validity of research findings in naturalistic, quasi-experimental, or single-group designs. A new method of addressing self-selection bias in naturalistic evaluations of prevention programs was implemented. The study, involving voluntary exposure to multicomponent interventions, was developed and…

Social and cognitive theories indicate that conflict plays an important role in an individual's psychological development. Research findings bearing on this conundrum provide initial hints about what social conflict in children is like and how it relates to characteristics of the child, but the short and long term positive and negative effects of…

Sixteen questions dealing with racial equality, abortion, and civil liberties were extracted from the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Surveys of 1972 (N=986) and 1980 (N=1,128) to seek a possible cultural component of rurality and note any changing contours to such a phenomenon over time and across social strata. Rural…

The use of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS), a type of microcomputer application software, to analyze open-ended survey questions is discussed. Using open-ended questions allows researchers to ask respondents to express themselves freely about their attitudes and beliefs. This approach also can elicit a precise answer even though the…

The results of studies that have calculated projections of food deficits for less developed countries (LDC's) toward the year 2000 are compared. Included in the comparison are: (1) reports entitled "The Global 2000 Report to the President,""The Future of the World Economy," and "The Model of International Relations in Agriculture"; (2) work done…

The main purpose of this article is to generate a functional model of evaluation that EMSs can be able to empower online communications characterized by imperative decision making task. The evaluation process of EMSs must merge the multicultural strategies of the theory of Media Richness, and the ethical concerns of the critical approach. Media…

The author examines, in the light of funding problems for Federal agencies supporting educational research, the difficulties inherent in the research process as it now exists, and methods for attacking these difficulties. The thought is presented that only by working on these general problems, will the more specific problem of funding be…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress has now completed two major assessments of reading. The first took place in the 1970-71 school year, the second during the 1974-75 school year. Both assessed the achievement of students aged nine, thirteen, and seventeen. This report focuses on the results of these two assessments, comparing changes…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efforts that scholars in a wide variety of disciplines have made to understand the communication dimension of the health care system. Sixty-nine doctoral research studies conducted between 1975 and 1977 were surveyed, highlighting the methodologies they used, the hypotheses they explored, and their…

Discusses a segment of research which involved both participant and non-participant observation from September 1967 to January 1970 of the school, home, and peer experiences of a group of approximately 30 black children, emphasizing the problem of alleviating the suspicion and winning the trust of the teachers and principals in the elementary…

Outlines university research policies, criteria for acceptability of research programs, and objectives achievable through research. Presents the role of the federal government and industry in supporting research and describes problems that arise in university-industry cooperative research. (GS)

In this study four research strategies used in previous studies of the socialization of cognitive skills were first contrasted and then assessed in terms of five criteria. (The data base for this study was 32 videotapes of mothers preparing their 7- or 9-year-old children to take a memory test.) The four strategies (frequency coding, fine-grained…

In order to assess the methodological merit of the published research in educational administration based on surveys, the authors analyzed data from a random sample of 24 survey studies published in the "Education Administration Quarterly" and the "Journal of Educational Administration." Each article was evaluated according to…