Well-measured and consistently collected indicators of child and family well-being can be used for a variety of purposes. Indicators may be used for five purposes: (1) describing the circumstances of America's children; (2) monitoring outcomes; (3) setting goals; (4) providing outcomes-based accountability; and (5) evaluating programs. To meet the…

This report describes the efforts of the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) during the last several years to respond to direct requests from educational stakeholders to help integrate data into their decision-making processes related to school improvement. In some cases, NCREL cooperated in the development of educational…

This literature review examines the research on the effectiveness of strategies to increase access to technology in different U.S. communities. Issues include not only how different groups and communities access hardware, but also how they organize and interpret activities and social interactions around technology, their own perceived control over…

This study addresses the issues of response rates, nonresponse bias, and response bias in the context of comparing online surveys and traditional paper instruments. Key questions include: (1) Do online surveys yield higher rates of response than do paper surveys? (2) Is the nonresponse bias characteristic of online surveys similar to or different…

The purpose of this study was to augment current knowledge regarding the antecedents of statistics anxiety and negative attitudes toward statistics among graduate students. The researchers also sought to investigate and identify promising methods for gathering and analyzing data in order to advance study in this emerging domain. Initially, 3 focus…

To better monitor children and families served by state child welfare agencies, Congress authorized matching funds for the development of statewide automatic child welfare information systems (SACWIS) and required that U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) compile information on children served by state agencies. This report to…

This report describes the methods and procedures used for the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:99). As did the first 2 cycles of this survey, NSOPF:99 serves the continuing need for data on faculty and other instructional personnel. NSOPF:99 used a sample of 960 institutions and 28,576 full- and part-time faculty employed at…

This publication provides census questionnaires and instructions for decennial censuses beginning in 1790 and ending in 2000. It also presents a history of the decennial censuses from 1790 to 2000 and offers individual histories of the U.S. census from the first (1790) to the sixteenth (1940). The publication discusses the seventeenth (1950),…

The National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies (NLS and NNS) represent a major government initiative to improve classroom practice and student learning in literacy and mathematics in elementary schools across England. National targets were intended to increase the percentage of 11-year-olds reaching the "expected level"--Level 4--in…

A collaborative publication between Harvard Family Research Project and The Finance Project, this brief offers guidance in documenting progress and demonstrating results in local out-of-school-time programs. Following introductory remarks providing a rationale for program evaluation, discussing principles of program evaluation, and clarifying key…

The Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling (PRISM) project at Arizona State University (ASU) developed modeling and analytic tools to respond to the limitations of two-dimensional (2D) data representations perceived by affiliated discipline scientists, and to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of three-dimensional (3D) data that…

This report examines how Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) sites used data to plan reforms and assess reform success, noting where and how they gathered data. Chapter 1, "The Need for Data," discusses: assessing data utilization, using data to enhance communication, and using this report to support reform. Chapter 2,…

LIBECON2000 is a project funded by DG13 of the European Commission within the Telematics Applications Programme that will run for three years (until early 2001). The project collects and publishes library statistics of 29 European countries on its World Wide Web site, http://www.libecon2000.org. This paper gives an account of the project's…

An evaluation was conducted to study the fiscal section of the State Library Agencies Survey of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), examining Parts K, L, and M. The evaluation was designed to check for duplication of data collection between the survey and the compliance materials of the Office of Library Programs (OLP), a former…

The Teacher Followup Survey (TFS) is a 1-year followup of a sample of teachers who were originally selected for the Teacher Questionnaire of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) of the National Center for Education Statistics. There have been three data cycles for the SASS and three TFS versions. This data file user's manual enables the user to…