Presents sample research designs for the investigation of questions concerning resilience. Describes hypotheses from specific research designs in the form of odds ratios. (Author)

Misuses of null hypothesis significance testing are reviewed and alternative approaches are suggested for carrying out and reporting statistical tests that might be useful to program evaluators. Several themes, including the importance of respecting the magnitude of Type II errors and describing effect sizes in units stakeholders can understand,…

Makes the case that science is best served when researchers focus on the size of effects and their practical significance. Advocates the use of confidence intervals for deciding whether chance or sampling variability is an unlikely explanation for an observed effect. Calls for more emphasis on effect sizes in the next edition of the American…

Presents a model of creative and critical thinking in which analogical reasoning is used to link planes of thought and generate ideas that are then tested by employing an "if/and/then" pattern of reasoning. Presents data suggesting that such thinking skills develop first in familiar and observable contexts before they can be used in less familiar…

Evaluates three commercial computer-based language translation programs' translation of a university social sciences telephone survey from English to Spanish. The three programs, "Spanish Scholar,""Spanish Assistant," and "Spanish Amigo," were rated as unacceptable in their quality of translations by native and near-native Spanish speakers. (nine…

This study examined the dynamics of cognitive abilities and academic achievement from childhood to early adulthood. Predictions about time-dependent "coupling" relations between cognition and achievement based on R. B. Cattell's (1971, 1987) investment hypothesis were evaluated using linear dynamic models applied to longitudinal data (N=672).…

This study tested the hypothesis that previously reported associations between personality traits and vocational interests can be accounted for by associations between lower order personality traits and interests. Personality traits were explored using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, I992b), which measures the…

The authors examined students' understanding of hypotheses as beliefs that can be empirically verified. Thirty second graders and 30 sixth graders considered cases of disagreement about foods and colors that reflected either alternative hypotheses or different preferences. Their task was to decide whether the validity of each expressed belief…

This article presents confidence interval methods for improving on the standard F tests in the balanced, completely between-subjects, fixed-effects analysis of variance. Exact confidence intervals for omnibus effect size measures, such as or and the root-mean-square standardized effect, provide all the information in the traditional hypothesis…

The objectives of nonprofit managers are not immediately apparent. Indeed, nonprofits may seek to maximize their level of service or their budgets, or they may have undefined or unstable objectives. This paper presents a theoretical model of managerial objectives that yields testable hypotheses, which I test using 2001 data on 190,000 American…

A long-standing and continuing controversy exists regarding the role of induction and deduction in reasoning and in scientific inquiry. Given the inherent difficulty in reconstructing reasoning patterns based on personal and historical accounts, evidence about the nature of human reasoning in scientific inquiry has been sought from a controlled…

The authors provide an overview of data mining, giving special attention to the relationship between data mining and statistics to unravel some misunderstandings about the two techniques. (Contains 1 figure.)

The counterintuitive developmental trend in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) illusion (that false-memory responses increase with age) was investigated in learning-disabled and nondisabled children from the 6- to 14-year-old age range. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that because there are qualitative differences in how younger versus older children…

Life span developmental profiles were constructed for 305 participants (ages 4-95) for a battery of paced and unpaced perceptual-motor timing tasks that included synchronize-continue tapping at a wide range of target event rates. Two life span hypotheses, derived from an entrainment theory of timing and event tracking, were tested. A preferred…

To extend research on fundamental motivational orientations into a new domain, we explored the achievement (positive) and avoidance (negative) orientations of formal organization-based mentors and proteges as joint predictors of personal learning experienced by both parties. We also examined the extent of mentoring functions provided by mentors as…