The question of how agricultural education students and faculty define and hope to foster student success was studied at a large southeastern land-grant university with a college of agriculture that included 1,497 students and 193 faculty. The study questions were explored in 2 focus groups containing a total of 7 faculty members and 8 focus…

An assessment identifying the leadership education needs of three groups of leadership program alumni was developed through focus group interviews. Respondents (386 of 1,063 or 36%) were most interested in training on: engaging others in a common vision, inspiring others, attracting the right people for the task, and influencing others. They…

This study explored how preservice teachers perceived and utilized the Online Learning Support System designed and developed to provide a platform for presenting utilities like content, news, and course assignments, and facilitating communication among students and instructor. In this research, a qualitative method was used. The data was obtained…

This report contains summary information and conclusions from the pilot workshops, focus groups, and the NEI (NASA Explorer Institutes) Planning and Evaluation Conference which united representatives of the workshops, focus groups, and NASA education. The culmination of these NEI pilot initiatives resulted in the identification of strategies that…

The decision to conduct a "Needs Assessment of the Haitian-American Community in Hillsborough County" was made to provide a quasi-scientific or a research foundation to our future intervention in this community. More specifically, the needs assessment aimed to: (1) Identify the priorities in the needs of the Haitian-American community,…

In the fall of 2003, PACER Center's Parent Partnership Project for Children's Mental Health conducted a survey to better understand what parents and families need from the children's mental health system in Minnesota. The research team developed a survey questionnaire, a telephone interview, and a focus group session directed at learning what was…

This report examines minority faculty and the representation of female faculty and faculty with disabilities. The report includes a close examination of the state's two fellowship programs for minority graduate students, the Illinois Minority Grant Incentive Program and the Illinois Consortium for Educational Opportunity Program. To address the…

This manuscript is the outcome of the first year of a two-year project designed to explore what works in reading instruction for students who are highly mobile. The project includes several components. The first was to conduct an extensive literature review to identify what is already known (the focus of this document). In addition to the…

As part of the "Assessing the New Federalism" project monitoring and assessing the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels, this report examines the child care providers upon whom the child care subsidy system depends. The report relies on data collected from subsidy agency administrators, key child…

Public Agenda has compiled this review of survey research on the affordability of higher education. Relevant survey findings from research conducted by Public Agenda and by other organizations were reviewed and two focus groups were conducted in Philadelphia, one with members of the general public and one with parents of high school and college…

This paper describes data from focus groups conducted with elementary teacher mentors at two Professional Development School (PDS) sites. The focus group sessions emphasized four themes: teachers' decisions to get involved in a PDS, teachers' perceived barriers to PDS success, how teachers benefit from PDSs, and recommendations for improvement.…

Responding to an increasingly urgent need for collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators, the study reported in this paper engages mathematicians as educational co-researchers in a series of themed Focus Group interviews where a pre-distributed sample of mathematical problems, typical written student responses, observation…

The growing popularity of focus group measurements can be traced to any one of four factors: (1) the economics associated with focus groups; (2) the speed at which data can now be collected; (3) the need to understand customer motivations; and (4) the desire to improve subsequent qualitative research activities and programs. Market researchers are…

This paper summarizes a subset of the findings of a study of digital image distribution that focused on the Museum Educational Site Licensing (MESL) project--the first large-scale multi-institutional project to explore digital delivery of art images and accompanying text/metadata from disparate sources. This Mellon Foundation-sponsored study…

This report presents the results of a survey of Digital Library Federation members that examined the kinds of assessments they were conducting, what they did with the results, and what worked well or not so well. The first section of the report is an introduction that describes the report structure and summarizes challenges in assessment. The…