This study examined factors predictive of dropping out of high school for students with learning disabilities (LD) and mental retardation (MR). The sample was composed of 228 students with LD or MR who dropped out of school and 228 students with LD or MR who had not dropped out. Two sets of pre- dictor variables (student demographics and interview…

Background: Previous studies on instructional importance show that individual students and their teachers differ in the topics that they consider important in the context of an upcoming teacher-made test. Aims: This study aimed to examine whether such differences between students' test expectations and teachers' intended task demands can be…

Findings from a single research study can tell a lot, but a meta-analysis of findings from a number of studies can tell even more. In "A Theory-Based Meta-Analysis of Research on Instruction," Robert J. Marzano analyzed the results of more than 100 research reports on instruction, involving more than 1.2 million subjects. The goal of the analysis…

From a unique data set identifying the school attended prior to university for a full cohort of UK university students; we examine the determinants of final degree classification. We exploit the detailed school-level information and focus on the influence of school characteristics; such as school type; on subsequent performance of students at…

From individual-level data for nine entire cohorts of undergraduate students in UK universities; we estimate the probability that an individual will drop out of university during their first-year. We examine the 1984-85 to 1992-93 cohorts of students enrolling full-time for a 3 or 4-year course; and focus on the sensitivity of the probability of…

This research investigated the relationship between the magnitude or scope of a stimulus and its subjective value by contrasting 2 psychological processes that may be used to construct preferences: valuation by feeling and valuation by calculation. The results show that when people rely on feeling, they are sensitive to the presence or absence of…

A model of cue-based probability judgment is developed within the framework of support theory. Cue diagnosticity is evaluated from experience as represented by error-free frequency counts. When presented with a pattern of cues, the diagnostic implications of each cue are assessed independently and then summed to arrive at an assessment of the…

Transitions are critical times for both teachers and students. Efficient between-task and within-task transitions can greatly improve academic learning time. The purpose of this article was to review one intervention, high-probability (high-p) task sequences, as a method to promote more effective transitions. High-p sequences involve presenting a…

The recognition heuristic is a prime example of a boundedly rational mind tool that rests on an evolved capacity, recognition, and exploits environmental structures. When originally proposed, it was conjectured that no other probabilistic cue reverses the recognition-based inference (D. G. Goldstein & G. Gigerenzer, 2002). More recent studies…

A special but common type of scenario is one in which a company has a promotion that is designed to make the customer purchase more of their product than they otherwise might. Although this can be aimed specifically at children, it really applies to all persons. The basic premise is that the company issues a "set" of different items or…

The author derives the probability that price discrimination improves social welfare, using a simple model of third-degree price discrimination assuming two independent linear demands. The probability that price discrimination raises social welfare increases as the preferences or incomes of consumer groups become more heterogeneous. He derives the…

Despite its intuitive appeal and popularity, Thorndike's constant ratio (CR) model for unbiased selection is inherently inconsistent in "n"-free selection. Satisfaction of the condition for unbiased selection, when formulated in terms of success/acceptance probabilities, usually precludes satisfaction by the converse probabilities of…

The multiple segment factorial vignette design (MSFV) combines elements of experimental designs and probability sampling with the inductive, exploratory approach of qualitative research. MSFVs allow researchers to investigate topics that may be hard to study because of ethical or logistical concerns. Participants are presented with short stories…

We present a theory of decision by sampling (DbS) in which, in contrast with traditional models, there are no underlying psychoeconomic scales. Instead, we assume that an attribute's subjective value is constructed from a series of binary, ordinal comparisons to a sample of attribute values drawn from memory and is its rank within the sample. We…

Prominent views of implicit priming agree that repetition of category exemplars should increase the probability of the exemplar coming to mind on a category production test. This prediction has been borne out in the data of numerous experiments that have used relatively high-frequency exemplars, but experiments that have used lower frequency…