This paper critically explores how survey and routinely collected data could aid in assessing the generalisability of public health evidence. We propose developing approaches that could be employed in understanding the relevance of public health evidence, and investigate ways of producing meta-analytic estimates tailored to reflect local…

Conventional wisdom in education has suggested that students who are classified as learning disabled (LD) will exhibit inordinate difficulties learning a foreign language (FL). Even when not explicitly stated, the notion that those classified as LD have a disability for FL learning is implied. However, while beliefs about this purported disability…

This article reviews some of the strengths and limitations of the comparative use of meta-analysis findings, using examples from the Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning "Toolkit" which summarizes a range of educational approaches to improve pupil attainment in schools. This comparative use of quantitative…

The field of education is increasingly committed to adopting evidence-based practices. Although randomized experimental designs provide strong evidence of the causal effects of interventions, they are not always feasible. For example, depending upon the research question, it may be difficult for researchers to find the number of children necessary…

Any research study can only be fully appreciated once it is situated in relation to existing work. This is no mean feat, however, given the sheer quantity and variety of publications to date. Simply relying on one's background and experience as an expert in the field, coupled with a few internet searches and following up individual references, is…

In a recent article published in "EM:IP," Kingston and Nash report on the results of a meta-analysis on the efficacy of formative assessment. They conclude that the average effect of formative assessment on student achievement is about 0.20 SD units. This would seem to dispel the myth that effects between 0.40 and 0.70 can be attributed to…

A meta-analysis of the reliability of the scores from a specific test, also called reliability generalization, allows the quantitative synthesis of its properties from a set of studies. It is usually assumed that part of the variation in the reliability coefficients is due to some unknown and implicit mechanism that restricts and biases the…

Recent interest in studying social aspects of leadership has brought attention to the relationship between leadership and social capital. There is also growing interest among stakeholders (researchers, practitioners, funders, and program participants) to improve evaluation methods for leadership development programs (LDPs). The purpose of the…

This chapter introduces theory that undergirds the role of testing adaptations in assessment, provides examples of item modifications and testing accommodations, reviews research relevant to each, and introduces a new paradigm that incorporates opportunity to learn (OTL), academic enablers, testing adaptations, and inferences that can be made from…

The current review addresses the validity of published meta-analyses in education that determines the credibility and generalizability of study findings using a total of 56 meta-analyses published in education in the 2000s. Our objectives were to evaluate the current meta-analytic practices in education, identify methodological strengths and…

The authors describe the relative benefits of conducting meta-analyses with (a) individual participant data (IPD) gathered from the constituent studies and (b) aggregated data (AD), or the group-level statistics (in particular, effect sizes) that appear in reports of a study's results. Given that both IPD and AD are equally available,…

A recent report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, "America's Private Public Schools," has received considerable attention and includes some controversial recommendations. The report's authors suggest the existence of what they term "private public schools," and they argue that the existence of these "exclusive" public schools justifies the…

"Expanding Choice in Elementary and Secondary Education: A Report on Rethinking the Federal Role in Education" presents a seemingly egalitarian prescription for the federal government to expand school choice. An examination of the arguments and evidence for increasing choice, however, reveals at least three important shortcomings. First, the…

This review considers both the content and methodologies of 5 single-subject and 2 group experimental design studies investigating the effects of cognitive strategy instruction on the mathematical problem solving of students with disabilities, using quality indicators proposed by Horner et al. (2005) and Gersten et al. (2005). Findings indicated…

The originally proposed multivariate meta-analysis approach for correlation matrices--analyze Pearson correlations, with each study's observed correlations replacing their population counterparts in its conditional-covariance matrix--performs poorly. Two refinements are considered: Analyze Fisher Z-transformed correlations, and substitute better…