Selected aspects of the problem of obtaining unbiased program or product evaluation are discussed. An evaluator who is a member of the project staff will have difficulty producing an evaluation which is credible and valid. Project monitors will also have a problem since they are often required to assume the conflicting roles of external evaluator…

To determine the extent to which males and females bring similar or dissimilar attitudes of trust to encounters with members of the same or the opposite sex, a study was conducted that examined attitudes of interpersonal trust according to the subject's perception of the expertness (validity of judgment), reliability, and dynamism of the attitude…

Past historical studies have resulted in contradictory interpretations of the social-philosophical motives underlying the early rationale of the vocational education movement. Contemporary vocational educators argue that early tenets (and the underlying philosophy of providing more equal opportunity and freedom of occupational choice) have not…

A study was conducted for the President's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island to analyze coverage of the accident by ten news organizations: two wire services, three commercial television networks, and five daily newspapers. Copies of all stories and transcripts of news programs during the first week of the accident were examined from…

Observation statements are characterized as being: (1) dependent upon the human senses or other sensory apparatus; (2) specific descriptions' (3) made by speakers who offer as the primary support for their statements the events or things which stimulated their making the statements; (4) used as the foundations for knowledge; and (5) easily…

Ethics in education is a neglected area, yet everything that is good in education springs from ethics while everything that is bad reflects the lack of them. When confronted with ethical questions concerning their administrators, colleagues, or students, educators often adopt the stance that "it is never too wise to be too honest."…

An assumptive, theoretical, and empirical foundation for the development of a formal dissemination model to apply to the introduction of information about educational accountability programs is set forth. If a dissemination model is to be effective, the fundamental assumptions underlying it must be spelled out explicitly. Existing communication…

This study was designed to investigate four problem areas of communication research: source credibility, language intensity, the gender of source as it affects the source's persuasiveness and credibility, and the scarcity of multifactor studies using gender of source as one of the independent variables. Independent variables for the study, which…

This document makes theoretical and methodological assessments of several debut papers in order to discover what they reveal about the nature of interpersonal and small group phenomena and how any particular investigation distorts the phenomena studied. The papers examined discuss such topics as the nature of the attitude change process, small…

The implementation of a district-wide testing program requires careful consideration of credibility issues. These issues have been frequently overlooked or treated casually by test developers and users alike. It is well enough to study the reliability and validity issues involved when selecting instrumentation. It is also necessary to identify…

A factor analytic study which sought to discover the dimensions of credibility in the context of subordinate and supervisor interaction is reported in this paper. It was hypothesized that perceived supervisor credibility is a function of subordinate part participation in decision making, communication reciprocity, feedback perceptiveness, feedback…

Evaluators need new strategies that will support their commitment to science and at the same time preserve the objectivity of the evaluation. The article discusses three strategies, dealing with: philosophical foundations, the subjectivity of the "objects" of the studies, and the subjectivity of the observer. (Author/GDC)

Reports on a Canadian study of the public perception of media accuracy, in which it was determined that respondents perceived television news as more accurate than both newspaper and radio news by a convincing margin. (GW)

Speakers' prespeech perceptions were elicited with reference to expected credibility, the consequences of delivering the speech, speech topic preferences, and message strategy intentions. Relationships are hypothesized among prespeech perceptions and trait and state speech anxiety. (JF)

Investigates four directional hypotheses pertaining to the interactive effects of communicator and message type on attitude change and terminal perceptions of the communicator. (MH)