Explains the use of a maintenance-management assessment process that educational facility managers can use to improve facility conditions and to provide evidence for future capital investments in maintenance management. Discusses questions a maintenance-management audit can answer and describes how to analyze the data to gain maximum understanding…

Addresses the multivariate nature of research on minority children and families in Israel; offers an alternative framework for investigation. Applies ecological approach toward study of child development in an attempt to identify variables that influence the child and family at various levels of the ecological context. Discusses research methods…

Through a layered analysis that reinterprets previous research experience with middle-schoolers, considers how being positioned researchers changes the interpretations or texts inscribed on their research interactions. Researchers create texts that unintentionally conceal the direction and nature of their "invasiveness." Conundrums abound in…

Examines federal data on trends in inclusion of students with disabilities. Text and tables show placement settings for students with disabilities, changes in placement settings across categories from 1988-89 to 1994-95, trends across categories, and the overall trend toward increased inclusion of students in all disability categories. (DB)

Examines the reliability and validity of the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale (RADS) with 89 young adolescents from an inner-city school. Participants were assessed in their classrooms and then individually retested and interviewed. Results suggest that the RADS provides a reliable and valid assessment of depressive symptomatology in young…

Presents a critical review of religious attribution literature. Discusses the development of an instrument to measure religious attributions of responsibility for problem cause and solution. Also discusses analysis of the instrument. Presents research questions that would advance current understanding of religious attributions and notes…

Focuses on students' understanding of electric circuits. Findings suggest that children's interpretive frameworks of electric circuits are reflected in the specificity of the details, consistency, and coherence of their understanding. Contains 23 references. (DDR)

School districts often lack the capacity for turning vast amounts of existing student-performance data into useful information for helping teachers and improving classrooms. The California Accountability Project helps districts to function more systematically on behalf of children and to understand schools' pockets of success and underperformance.…

Explores the factor structure of the Child and Adolescent Anxiety Survey, a parent rating scale designed for use in the assessment of child and adolescent anxiety. Surveys (N=176) from parents of children in kindergarten through grade 11 were utilized. Factor analysis suggests that one second-order factor yields an internal consistency estimate of…

Demonstrates that parents' education is linked to changes in adolescent (N=350) self-reported physical health through the level of and changes in parental rejection. The study also finds that parents' education has a significant, direct effect on subsequent changes in adolescents' self-reported health status. (Author/MKA)

The reliability and validity properties of the Brigance K&1 screen were examined with a sample of 134 Head Start children preparing to enter kindergarten. Prediction/outcome analyses, intended to explore the test's accuracy in predicting special-education status at the end of preschool, indicated a relatively high false negative rate and a…

Compared four standard-setting procedures for an objective structure clinical examination (OSCE) in medical education. Applied Angoff, borderline, relative, and holistic procedures to the data used to establish a cutoff score for a pass/fail decision. The Angoff and borderline procedures gave similar results; however, the relative and holistic…

Tests the premise of peer cluster theory as it applies to individual alcohol use, and makes a comparative analysis between its ability to explain alcohol use and marijuana use among college students (N=1312). Results of the causal models show some support for peer cluster theory. Discusses the study's limitations and implications. (Author/MKA)

This essay argues that reliability should be reconceptualized in a way that reflects the importance of the theoretical expectations of the test specialist and the learning and problem solving of the test takers. It is time to characterize clearly the substantive theoretical framework supporting reliability studies and the technical evaluation of…

Review of research using data from five British national demographic surveys showed that secondary analyses occurred less often in education; such analyses focused on the effect of educational qualifications on employment; and some data remain relatively unexploited. (SK)