A conversational approach is developed to explain the ubiquitous presence of rumors, urban legends, and gossip as arising from their conversational properties rather than from side effects of cognitive processing or "effort after meaning." It is suggested that the primary function of telling rumors, gossip, and urban legends is not to impart…

In this paper we ask whether individuals decide that people are generally trustworthy or untrustworthy by extrapolating from their experiences in localized interactions or whether a more fixed predisposition drives assessments of trustworthiness. These two contrasting theoretical perspectives on generalized trust can be translated into empirically…

Princeton University Press recently published the American moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit", which quickly made the New York Times best seller list. Originally published in the journal "Raritan" in 1986, Frankfurt's book has been heralded as an important theoretical development in the study of what he (and society)…

This paper uses evidence from focus groups with consumers in England to consider how consumers understand and evaluate a range of proxies or intermediary organisations that offer assurance about food and consumer products, particularly voluntary certification schemes. This addresses the current concern in developed economies about providing…

This article presents an interview with Eric Barela, a K-12 school district internal evaluator who conducted the Title I Best Practices study for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Research and Planning Division (formerly known as the Program Evaluation and Research Branch). In this interview, the author focuses not only on the…

In this article, the authors examine the effects of style of dress, forms of address, and gender of the stimulus person on business students' perceptions of professors' attributes. Student participants (125 women, 132 men) rated the stimulus person on indexes of attractiveness, trustworthiness, credibility, and likeability. Style of dress and form…

The development and use of a research tool to guide fourth-grade students' use of information sources during a research project is described in this article. Over a period of five weeks, 21 fourth-grade students in an international school in Singapore participated in a study investigating the extent to which the use of a "research resource…

Community-based initiatives have become a popular approach to addressing the health needs of underserved populations, in both low- and higher-income countries. This article presents findings from a study of female peer facilitators involved in a community-based maternal and newborn health intervention in urban slum areas of Mumbai. Using…

Teaching mixed methods research is difficult. This longitudinal explanatory study examined how two classes were designed, taught, and evaluated. Curriculum, Research, and Teaching (EDCS-606) and Mixed Methods Research (EDCS-780) used a research proposal generation process to highlight the importance of the purpose, research question and…

The authors explored the credibility of using informal reading inventories and writing samples for 138 students (K-4) to evaluate the effectiveness of a summer literacy program. Running Records (a measure of a child's reading level) and teacher experience during daily reading instruction were used to estimate the reliability of the more formal…

The authors investigated the differences between 8-year-olds (n = 80) and adults (n = 80) in recognition of felt versus faked enjoyment smiles by using a newly developed picture set that is based on the Facial Action Coding System. The authors tested the effect of different facial action units (AUs) on judgments of smile authenticity. Multiple…

As part of the accountability movement, schools are increasingly called upon to provide interventions that are based on sound scientific research and that provide measurable outcomes for children. Brain Gym[R] is a popular commercial program claiming that adherence to its regimen will result in more efficient learning in an almost miraculous…

Advanced Placement (AP) Chemistry and the National AP Chemistry Examination are both critical to secondary level institutions nationwide. The use of a national embossing stamp to attest to successful completion of an AP Chemistry course and exam to ensure college credit is a novel idea worth consideration. Moreover, the concept could be expanded…

This study explores the use and presentation of information and research on education by the news media. Using content analysis, this study compares four types of think tanks--contract research, academic, advocacy, and mixed academic and advocacy--and shows how the news media represented each one as a source of research, facts, and figures on…

A study of attitudes related to varied information exposure styles. (CH)