Much of the current rhetoric in areas of child and family research and in early childhood education emphasizes the importance of listening to children in research that has a direct impact on them. Despite this, there remain qualms in some research contexts and amongst some researchers about the reliability, validity and generalizability of…

This article is the third contribution to a research methods series dedicated to getting good results from survey research. In this series, "good results" is a stenographic term used to define surveys that yield accurate and meaningful information that decision makers can use with confidence when conducting program evaluation and policy assessment…

This paper examines the metatheoretical concepts associated with ethnographic/qualitative educational inquiry and overviews the more commonly utilized research designs, data collection methods, and analytical approaches. The epistemological and ontological assumptions of this newer approach differ greatly from those of the traditional educational…

The accuracy of trait estimates obtained from three vertical equating methods was examined. The procedures studied included two anchor test designs and a single-group design. Data from two content areas and two grade combinations were studied. A three-parameter logistic model was used to perform the equatings. The results obtained were used to…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

The study of teachers as decision-makers is a recent paradigm in educational research. This decision-making approach considers the teacher as an active professional engaged in various decision-making activities prior to and during instruction. This paper describes a naturalistic research design employed in a recent dissertation that investigated…

Discusses reliability and validity of continual response measurement (CRM), a computer-based measurement technique, and its use in social science research. Highlights include the importance of criterion-referencing the data, guidelines for designing studies using CRM, examples typifying their deductive and inductive functions, and a discussion of…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

In behavior research using cognitive and affective measures, there is often incongruity between the statistical analysis employed and the intended inference. This paper argues that incorporating items as levels of a random facet via generalizability theory allows the statistical examination of the inferential question in the desired universe of…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

Given the complexity of classroom reading observations, maintenance of measurement reliability is a concern to researchers. Sources of variation contributing to the unreliability of many measurements may be either (1) lasting and specific, (2) lasting and general, (3) temporary and specific, or (4) temporary and general. Lasting-specific sources…

The nine-volume Survey Kit is designed to help readers prepare and conduct surveys and become better users of survey results. All the books in the series contain instructional objectives, exercises and answers, examples of surveys in use, illustrations of survey questions, guidelines for action, checklists of "dos and don'ts," and…

Research on reading teacher effectiveness has taken several different directions over the past 30 years: during the 1950s and most of the 1960s, research focused primarily on teacher qualities; in the early 1970s attention shifted to the effect of the teaching process on student learning, while in the late 1970s and early 1980s experiments defined…

This paper provides an understanding of the conceptual and operational relationships between evaluation, content analysis, and microcomputers so that evaluation practitioners can better address applied content analysis problems used in their work. The first section presents a general model for conducting an evaluation effort that focuses on…