CHANGES IN ARMY TRAINING PROGRAMS AND PROCEDURES ARE DESCRIBED TO ILLUSTRATE INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE RESULTING FROM IMPLEMENTATION OF APPLIED RESEARCH. SERVING SINCE 1951 AS A RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AGENCY UNDER CONTRACT TO THE ARMY, THE HUMAN RESOURCES RESEARCH OFFICE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY HAS IDENTIFIED INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE THROUGH…

Schools are often reluctant to be watched or studied, especially when their interests do not coincide with those of researchers. The development of good site relations can improve the chances of successful data gathering in such circumstances. In addition to acting with courtesy and respect, research teams can organize their site relations…

Five myths permeate the counseling and psychotherapy literature. Two of these myths concern the absolute and differential effects of counseling and psychotherapy. Contrary to the conclusions of Smith and Glass's (1977) meta-analysis, it has not been established that aggregated counseling and psychotherapy schools are effective at all, much less…

A method was developed for characterizing and comparing the semantic content of picture-text combinations used as stimuli in research on reading procedural instructions. The written directions for assembling a toy model were analyzed, and sets of propositions in the instructions were constructed using C. H. Frederiksen's discourse analysis model.…

Assumptions held by sociologists concerning the role that women played in their own mobility has resulted in a variety of creative operationalizations in measuring female mobility; however, the assumptions can no longer be accepted as applicable to the present generation of younger women. Some research on social mobility has simply excluded…

In human communication research today, two fundamental issues must be addressed. The first issue concerns the need for study of communicative relationships as events that change over time. The second issue involves the nature of the data currently gathered in such research and its adequacy in providing information concerning change. In order for…

This symposium presentation outlines the activity of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in regulating the use during pregnancy and lactation of drugs which affect the fetus and neonate. When presented with an unexpected adverse effect of a drug or of a class of drugs, the FDA can take several steps. These steps include ordering total removal…

This manual is intended to improve both the design of longitudinal studies and analysis of the resulting data. Issues related to educational and developmental research have been emphasized in these eight chapters. Topics of particular interest to longitudinal researchers include stochastic models of developmental change, mathematical…

Based upon the theory of moral stages devised by educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, this report examines the influence of the social situation on principled moral reasoning and on cheating. Research assessed the level of moral reasoning for 152 college juniors and seniors using Rest's Defining Issues Test (1976) in which levels of low,…

The point is made that educational research must become classroom-oriented instead of remaining university-oriented. The suggested manner of accomplishing this is to focus on the development of inservice teachers into practicing educational researchers as part of a staff improvement program. Case studies of a New Hampshire junior high school's…

This paper explores what is known and what is needed in the areas of (1) experiential learning and experiential education and (2) extending experience-based career education (EBCE) to groups not currently served by such a program. Following the introduction, the paper contains eight sections. Section 2 provides a discussion of what the experts are…

Ethnographic research in reading examines process more than outcomes of instruction, considers environmental factors, and studies the behavior of individual learners. There are few descriptive studies in reading to guide researchers in ethnographic research. Some aspects of planning such a study include gaining permission from school…

The emphasis on the mechanics of research techniques has often overshadowed other aspects of evaluation research that are determiners of research quality. Many problems encountered by program evaluators are not solvable by the information provided in research texts. Some of the practical problems encountered and dealt with during an experimental…

This document is part of a series of chapters described in SO 011 759. Addressing the problems of studying change and the change process, the report argues that sociologists should study coupled changes in qualitative and quantitative outcomes (e.g., marital status and earnings). The author presents a model for sociological studies of change in…

This document is part of a series of chapters described in SO 011 759. The chapter examines the merits of four estimators in the causal analysis of event-histories (data giving the number, timing, and sequence of changes in a categorical dependent variable). The four procedures are ordinary least squares, Kaplan-Meier least squares, maximum…