This manual describes the fact-finding conference and provides guidelines for determining when to use one, for planning one, and for conducting one. Defined first are various types of conferences, including the information-giving conference, the problem-solving or decision-making conference, the information-exchange conference, and the…

In 1978 the U.S. Congress passed the Control of Paperwork Amendments to control education-related paperwork and reduce unnecessary reporting. A study by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that by 1981 the requirements of the law had yet to be met. According to the GAO, the Secretary of Education should reactivate the Federal Education Data…

Far too many students handle a research assignment through the tear and glue approach, a wholesale--though usually not quite so literal--copying of materials from books followed by a heavy handed plastering of the foreign material into their papers. Their papers are foredoomed to mediocrity or worse. By overstressing the dichotomy between critical…

This paper introduces an artistic model of planning and problem solving. The model is based on a case study of processes engaged in by a college art student during the course of producing a senior thesis in batik (a wax-resist fabric dyeing process). Based on the premise that knowledge of the creative process is essential to understanding the…

This handbook presents a secondary program evaluation system to improve the quality of Oregon state-approved, secondary vocational education programs. Section 1 describes this evaluation system. It discusses the three levels of evaluation. The design includes provisions for review of Oregon minimum standards, federal and state vocational education…

The topics discussed in this resource book include not only how to assess the long-term impact of early childhood Title I programs, but also how to develop and use a longitudinal information system for a variety of routine operations. The book is designed to help evaluators decide what a particular information system should look like. For…

This two-part paper describes the working assumptions approach to early program evaluation and illustrates the approach with a study of a new social science curriculum in American ethnic pluralism for community colleges. Part I begins by providing a rationale for early program evaluation and describing the working assumptions approach as a model…

The overall purpose of the national Head Start evaluation is to assess the impact, on the children and parents being served, of: (1) the educational services component of Head Start, and (2) a new demonstration program within Head Start, Basic Educational Skills. The evaluation deals with a total of 65 Head Start programs and their families. This…

The development of new instructional organizations has placed demands on school facilities that cannot be met adequately with the procedures currently used for school design. Organizational methods, for example, that stress small-group and individual work in non-age-graded settings are not accommodated easily by either of the two common forms of…

A survey was conducted to identify the information needs of a five percent sample of men and women incarcerated in seven Maryland State Correctional Facilities for use in planning relevant library services to this population. Findings indicated a lack of basic information concerning rules for correct institutional behavior, with one third of the…

Papers from a forum sponsored by the Association for Institutional Research address the role problems of institutional researchers and the special position of institutional research in institutions of higher education and the issues that lead to conflict between institutional research, data gathering activities, and the faculty. In "Dilemmas in…

The inputs to mathematical models of library operations require periodic updating. The data collection effort necessary for such updating can be quite expensive; however, if the data collected can serve multiple purposes, the costs can perhaps be justified. A management information system (MIS) offers a vehicle for multiple uses of data, and thus…

There are four steps in obtaining test data, each requiring planning and decision-making: assembling students, administering tests, scoring, and recording scores. In assembling students, two cautions are in order. First, for norm referenced tests, students in the treatment group should take the test at the same time of the year as the students in…

This paper examines the effects of Privacy laws on the conduct of legitimate social research. The report focuses on national legislation dealing with individual privacy, in particular the Privacy Act of 1974, and considers several new statutes which concern the privacy of participants in research. A large portion of the paper discusses (1)…

Requests to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for postsecondary education data were analyzed and compared to previously identified issues. Summaries of telephone requests (log entries) and files of letter requests from January 1977 through December 1977 were studied. A single coding scheme was developed for both letter and phone…