Problems with conducting randomized field experiments in education are explored. Focus is on problems encountered while evaluating a group of dropout prevention projects. Project planners were asked to manipulate the subject eligibility criteria until they identified as eligible three to four times as many students as they could serve. They were…

Designed to alleviate the confusion caused by the existence of a multiplicity of approaches to writing research, the four parts of this book present explicit discussions of research principles and methods used by researchers actively working within a variety of disciplines. The two chapters in Part 1 describe very broad views of the entire…

This study weighs the validity of current arguments about the efficiency of public versus private schooling by critically examining the research that has compared the expenditures of public and private schools and by questioning common assumptions in the debate. Simple comparisons of per-pupil costs are found to be misleading as indicators of…

This study attempted to determine what difference, if any, participation in adult basic education (ABE) programs makes in the lives of undereducated adults. The nature of the impact was examined on two dimensions: (1) the qualitative impact in terms of changes in the quality of student lives and (2) the financial impact in terms of changes in the…

Current theories of intellectual development claim that such development proceeds through invariant sequences of increasingly more adequate cognitive structures. According to the two dominant theories on changes in intellectual functioning during adulthood, intellectual development is essentially accomplished by adolescence, although sharpening…

Three major themes distilled from a review and analysis of research on learning from interactive video are discussed in this paper: (1) interactive video as an instructional delivery system, including research on instructional effectiveness, cost effectiveness, and instructor/learner attitudes; (2) principles of learning applied to interactive…

When students choose postsecondary vocational education programs, they pay, in both money and in income lost during the time they are in the program. The public also pays by tax support for many educational programs. However, students often have little information about the effectiveness of these programs in terms of job placement, wage rates, and…

The implementation of research design in studies on substance abuse education is discussed in this meta-analysis. Findings indicate that the quality of research design is constrained by negative feedback from evaluation stakeholders. This finding is applied to an evaluation of the Here's Looking at You, 2000 drug education program currently…

This brochure highlights the role of the school counselor in using educational research, and emphasizes the relationship between bias (racism and sexism) and past and present research. The tests counselors use, the ways test results are interpreted, and counseling techniques are all based on educational research. Counselors are cautioned to…

A project was undertaken to develop and field-test new methodologies for collecting follow-up and placement data on completers of Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC). Strategies used in the study included exploration of such nontraditional data sources as in- and out-of-state private university transfers, state university system tapes for all…

This issue of the journal includes these papers on contrastive linguistics: "A Systematic Typological Contrast Between English and Portuguese" (Mary Aizawa Kato); "An Accuracy Order of English Sentential Complements for Native Speakers of Persian and Spanish" (Janet I. Anderson); "Remarks on 'Particle Movement' and…

This document is intended to provide evaluation researchers with information about vocational education as a substantive area to be evaluated, existing methodologies for evaluating vocational education programs, and the theoretical basis for a proposed evaluation method termed critical inquiry. Addressed in the individual chapters of the monograph…

This paper provides a general overview of a major study of student absenteeism as well as a narrower look at the problems associated with measuring student absences. The study data came from questionnaires completed by students, teachers, and administrators at six high schools in two urban districts in the western United States; interviews with…

The suspected sources of confounding in current meta-analytic studies of computer based instruction (CBI) are uncontrolled effects of instructional method and/or the John Henry Effect (i.e., compensatory rivalry). To determine which confounding is most plausible, a random 30% sample of the 128 studies which formed the original Kulik meta-analyses…

This presentation uses the premise that educational practice currently derives little benefit from the mass of ongoing research as a starting point for a reassessment of the values and goals of research. Particular emphasis is placed on the relation between research and educational practices involving 4-year-olds. The first part of the discussion…