The assumptions and consequences of applying conventional and newer statistical methods to meta-analytic data sets are reviewed. The application of the two approaches to a meta-analytic data set described by L. V. Hedges (1984) illustrates the differences. Hedges analyzed six studies of the effects of open education on student cooperation. The…

A growing controversy surrounds the strict interpretation of statistical significance tests in social research. Statistical significance tests fail in particular to provide estimates for the stability of research results. Methods that do provide such estimates are known as invariance or cross-validation procedures. Invariance analysis is largely…

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how multiple linear regression provides a viable statistical methodology for dealing with meta-analysis in general, and specifically with the issues of nonindependence and design complexity, such as multiple treatments. Since the F-test and t-test are special cases of the general linear model,…

The relationship between American College Testing Program (ACT) and California Test of Mental Maturity (CTMM) scores were explored. Four hundred and thirty-four undergraduate subjects of both sexes were selected from a midwestern university. Pearson product moment correlation (r) and Kendall rank correlation coefficient (tau) were used to measure…

Evaluation design is discussed in terms of conditions that an adult education intervention (product, practice) must meet to get Joint Dissemination and Review Panel (JDRP) approval. (Effectiveness, the sole criterion for JDRP approval, must be established by evaluation data adequate to tie the project and desired impact together in a…

The relationship between classical discrimination indices (CDI) and criterion-referenced discrimination indices (CRDI) and the appropriateness of each for use on criterion-referenced tests are investigated. A CRDI is proposed that attempts to separate those who master material from those who do not master material. A 26 item multiple-choice…

The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between the unreliability of difference scores and the power of tests of significance in an attempt to determine the validity of the paradox for the measurement of change presented by Overall and Woodward: that the power of tests of significance is maximum when the reliability of the…

Bargmann's test for examining the statistical significance of simple structure in factor analysis, an extension of the original significance tables, and the application of the significance test to several noted factor analytic findings are described. Using Bargmann's test, only 2 of 25 factor analytic studies reviewed are considered acceptable.…

A procedure was developed within hypothesis-testing logic that allows researchers to support a hypothesis that has traditionally been the statistical or null hypothesis. Four activities involved in attainment of this goal were discussed: (1) development of statistical logic needed to define the sampling distribution associated with the hypothesis…

The Chi-Square Test for Hierarchical Dependency (THD) is presented. The THD tests the hypothesis that all members of a population who possess a certain skill are a subset of the members who possess another skill. This hypothesis is basic to the writings of several prominent theorists, such as Gagne and Piaget. The THD is designed as an improvement…

Stability of Type I error rates and power are investigated for three forms of the Box test and two forms of the jackknife test with equal and unequal sample sizes under conditions of normality and nonnormality. The Box test is shown to be robust to violations of the assumption of normality when sampling is from leptokurtic populations. The…

Faced with a nonstandard, complicated practical problem in statistical inference, the applied statistician sometimes must use asymptotic approximations in order to compute standard errors and confidence intervals and to test hypotheses. This usually requires that he derive formulas for one or more asymptotic sampling variances (and covariances)…

Three procedures are examined that educational researchers can use to analyze quantitatively the extent to which modifications of specific teacher behaviors lead to changes in student achievement. The task requires decent descriptions of the behaviors, appropriate statistical tools and measures of student outcomes that are worth while examining.…

This investigation was designed to ascertain whether students could transfer concepts related to specific rules of conditional logic to two designated areas. Specifically, the first type of transfer investigated was concerned with the ability of students to judge verbal simple deductive arguments written with suggestive content after instruction…

Methods exist for testing the homogeneity of group regression for the case in which there is only one predictor. Studies which have investigated aptitude-treatment interactions have adopted the homogeneity of regressions test as standard methodology for assessing the difference in regression slopes across treatments. Additional statistical…