Using data on approximately 2,000 low-income welfare recipients in a three-site random-assignment intervention conducted in the early 1990s (the NEWWS), we examine the role of cognitive and non-cognitive factors in moderating experimental impacts of an adult education training program for women who lacked a high school degree or GED at the time of…

Policymakers have been puzzled to observe that food stamp households appear more likely to be food insecure than observationally similar eligible nonparticipating households. We reexamine this issue allowing for nonclassical reporting errors in food stamp participation and food insecurity. Extending the literature on partially identified…

Bell-curve thinking, as a model of distribution of success and failure in society, enjoys a perennial (ahistorical, objective, and law-like) status in education. As such it provides a rationale for sorting (tracking or streaming) practices in education, which has led many educators to criticize both bell-curve thinking and associated sorting…

Community college education is a key component of Canadian postsecondary education, with 21% of the population aged 25-64 having college credentials. In order to understand educational decisions at this level, we estimate a model of choice of field of study and analyze, among other things, the effect of earnings on this choice. In this way, we…

The Monte Carlo study compared the performance of predictive discriminant analysis (PDA) and that of logistic regression (LR) for the two-group classification problem. Prior probabilities were used for classification, but the cost of misclassification was assumed to be equal. The study used a fully crossed three-factor experimental design (with…

A new item analysis index, e, is derived as a function of difficulty and discrimination to represent item efficiency. (Author/RC)

Probabilistic assumptions are added to single and multidimensional versions of the Coombs unfolding model for preferential choice (Coombs, 1950) and practical ways of obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of the scale parameters and goodness-of-fit tests of the model are presented. A Monte Carlo experiment is discussed. (Author/RC)

B. De Finetti's "Fundamental Theorem of Probability" is reformulated as a computable linear programming problem. The theorem is substantially extended, and shown to have fundamental implications for the theory and practice of statistics. It supports an operational meaning for the partial assertion of prevision via asserted bounds. The…

The technique presented accomodates multiple populations and a mixture of variable types. It is based on the linear discriminant function and the sequential concept. Also presented is an example in which the technique is used to obtain the classification rule to predict the career choices of individuals based upon a mixture of variable types.…

Swets' theory of information retrieval allows the threads of document weighting formulae, probabilistic measures of effectiveness, and management theory, to be woven into a coherent pattern. Benefits are: the beginnings of a quantitative description of retrieval languages; destinction between retrieval systems and language; and question generality…

The model assumes that the relevance assigned to a document by a juror is a random variable. (PF)

The controversy regarding the admissibility of one-tailed tests of hypotheses was examined. Rather than taking a stand with regard to whether the one-or the two-tailed test is the most seriously flawed, a procedure is developed which can capitalize on the advantages of each. (RC)

Based on a PhD dissertation (Humphries) submitted to the Louisiana State University.

Understanding of the communications process centers generally around the conduct of the process rather than the content, and particularly the establishment of communication channels. The communications model has three generally agreed upon components: source, channel, and destination. Destination may include questions about the nature of things,…