This research study investigated the behaviour and interactions of university students as they engaged with ill-structured and well-structured assessment tasks. Twenty students participated in a one-semester intensive design study in a course on "Vietnamese traditional culture". The students worked in five-person groups that were…

Eight different variable selection techniques for model-based and non-model-based clustering are evaluated across a wide range of cluster structures. It is shown that several methods have difficulties when non-informative variables (i.e., random noise) are included in the model. Furthermore, the distribution of the random noise greatly impacts the…

In a recent paper, Hessen ("Psychometrika" 70(3):497-516, 2005) introduces the class of constant latent odds-ratios models as an extension of the Rasch model for which the sum score is still the sufficient statistic for ability. In this paper the relation between both the general and the general parametric constant latent odds-ratios model and the…

Many professors of program evaluation courses look for ways to merge their students' theoretical understanding of program evaluation with practical experience. In this scenario, a professor arranges for his students to evaluate a series of workshops in campus residence halls sponsored by a university diversity center (DC). What follows in this…

Increasingly, program managers are required to evaluate programs with multiple outcomes against costs. This is difficult when program outcomes are not easily translated into a common metric. This article compares cost benefit analysis with Multiple Attribute Utility Technology and discusses the application of judgment in both analytical…

The identification of key elements for effective campus-wide sustainable service-learning programs at faith-based colleges and universities was examined. This qualitative research investigated an extensive range of documents, web sites, and literature to determine the conditions of institutionalization that must be met in conjunction with…

There is a lack of valid and reliable low cost observational instruments to measure moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) in school physical education (PE). The participants in this study were third to tenth grade boys and girls from a south Texas school district. The SAM (Simple Activity Measurement) activity levels were compared with…

When test forms are administered to examinee groups that differ in proficiency, equating procedures are used to disentangle group differences from form differences. This dissertation investigates the extent to which equating results are population invariant, the impact of group differences on equating results, the impact of group differences on…

Apparently fraud is a growth industry. The monetary losses from Internet fraud have increased every year since first officially reported by the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in 2000. Prior research studies and third-party reports of fraud show rates substantially higher than eBay's reported negative feedback rate of less than 1%. The…

For people who are currently under twenty-five years old, it is almost impossible to recall life before the Internet, as they have grown up knowing it to exist all along. For today's college students, the Internet and other new technologies are not only indispensable research tools, but a vehicle for socializing, entertainment, and even defining…

This researcher examined the relationship of bureaucratic structure to school climate by means of an exploratory factor analysis of a measure of bureaucracy developed by Hoy and Sweetland (2000) and the four dimensional measure of climate developed by Hoy, Smith, and Sweetland (2002). Since there had been no other empirical studies whose authors…

Nearly all high school seniors plan college, but many low-income students do not enroll. Moreover, among students who do enroll, low-income students often pursue less dependable college pathways. While research typically focuses on college cost and academic preparation as explanations of socioeconomic differences in enrollment outcomes, other…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate if the use of a self-advocacy strategy, with high school students identified as having a mild cognitive disability, would increase student use of self-advocacy skills across multiple school settings. Participants in the study were also identified as participating in at least one general education class at…

\The purpose of this study was to investigate population invariance of the true-score linking functions with respect to the ability subgroups (i.e., average-achieving students, low-achieving students, and students with learning disabilities). The mean/mean linking functions for five alternate forms of a curriculum-based math problem solving…

Teacher mobility is often viewed as a limitation of longitudinal analyses of teacher learning in communities, in which membership changes. I introduce an analytical tool developed to address the continuation of the learning of such communities across changes in membership. In the case analysis, I examine whether changes in membership should be…