Uses data from a national survey and from the 1998 National Communication Association Summer Conference to examine how achievement is measured among public-relations students. Finds that few academic programs assess learning outcomes and used the results to enhance their students' educational experiences. Suggests that educators place too much…

Explores some reasons why information and communication technologies are difficult to evaluate. Discusses 10 reasons why information technologies require new evaluation approaches. Discusses two ways to look at any educational innovation: in terms of its uniform impact and its unique uses. Notes inequities in access to technology. (SR)

Suggests improvements for implementation of the "Views on Science-Technology-Society" instrument. Analyzes the scaling properties of some scoring procedures within the unique response model and discusses ways to produce "best fidelity" measurements. Presents a multiple-response model that could take advantage of all the…

Discusses methodological issues that emerged in evaluating a three-year paternal involvement demonstration project for poor inner-city noncustodial fathers. The dilemmas that arose from the contradictory goals of program evaluation and the need to meet federal and state waiver goals are discussed, and the tradeoffs needed to ensure a meaningful…

Documents the practice of and attitudes to teacher assessment by Year Two teachers in England. Discusses assessment of process skills and the effects of assessment of children's learning and teachers' practice. Links findings with previous research and proposes a developmental model that describes and explains assessment approaches. (DSK)

Discusses five fallacies that can arise in the design and analysis of student questionnaires regarding teaching materials used in Australian distance education courses, including student objectivity, student subject knowledge, notions of relevance, author responsibility for student learning, and faulty generalization in evaluating student…

Reviews issues and methods in the evaluation and assessment of families. Methods of categorizing and organizing family assessment information are presented. Discusses methodological issues. Reviews important family constructs identified through research for assessment. Evaluates various methods, self-reports, observations, and clinician ratings…

Explores implications for evaluation practice of using five different perspectives on organizations, drawing on the four models of social program implementation developed by R. F. Elmore (1978). It is argued that evaluation will only really be effective when its focus, methods, and management reflect realistic assumptions about how organizations…

Examined performance funding, specifically one common performance measure--student persistence--at three institutions within a single state: a flagship university, a historically black university, and a regional, comprehensive institution. Sought to determine if the outcomes were those intended by policy makers. Uncovered variables that affected…

During the last few years, a national quality assessment system for evaluation of the core activities of universities has been established in Sweden. Beyond participating in these national efforts, Lund University has also participated in the European benchmarking programme managed by ESMU (European Centre for Strategic Management of…

In this article, the author takes a critical look at current assessment practices in social studies education, especially those at the state level. He defines some key assessment terms, then considers the major issues of statewide assessment, focusing on the reliability and validity of the means by which government agencies across the United…

Value-added models in education research allow researchers to explore how a wide variety of policies and measured school inputs affect the academic performance of students. Researchers typically quantify the impacts of such interventions in terms of "effect sizes", i.e., the estimated effect of a one standard deviation change in the…

Purpose: While state policy and market factors are known to have contributed to the increased supply of residential care, little is known about efforts to accommodate demand from lower-income consumers. This study describes participation and expenditure trends for residential care services funded by Medicaid waivers and examines variation across…

A product of the United Kingdom's Primary Assessment, Curriculum and Experience (PACE) project, this report presents interview, observation, and survey findings concerning primary school teachers' attitudes toward and experiences of the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs). In 1991, students were observed taking SATs at nine schools. Afterwards,…

Computer-assisted testing (CAT) in counseling and therapy is becoming increasingly common due to dramatic improvements in cost-effectiveness and increased counselor familiarity with computer applications. The assumption underlying the use of CAT is that the effectiveness of counseling is improved by allocating repetitive computational and…