A grounded meta-analytic technique for comparing organizational interventions derived from rational-based strategies (e.g., management-by-objectives, planned change) with organizational culture-based strategies (organizational culture, climate) is described. The method is seen as useful for integrating qualitative and quantitative research.…

Importance-performance analysis, a marketing research technique using analysis of consumer attitudes toward salient product or service attributes, is found useful for colleges and universities in developing marketing strategies, particularly when competition is considered as an important dimension. Data are drawn from a survey of 252 students at 1…

The No Child Left Behind Act has brought research, particularly scientific based research, beyond discussions in graduate schools and back into the consciousness of educators in the field. For many educators, it has been a long time since those discussions, and key concepts about educational research may have become hazy. In this fourth article of…

One important aim of social science research is to provide unbiased information that can help guide public policies. However, social science is often construed as politics by other means. Nowhere is the polarized nature of social science research more visible than in the heated debate over charter schools. In "Spin Cycle", noted political…

Proxies typically serve as information providers in studies of persons with intellectual disabilities. However, little is known about the concordance between different proxy categories and how proxy characteristics influence the information provided. We compared 89 pairs of relative and staff reports on the living conditions of persons with…

For many years, university based educational research has been blamed for being dominated by positivistic research tradition at the near exclusion of field based ethnographic work. Several findings have also portrayed this domination among the major explanations for practitioners' lack of interest in educational research literature. With the…

This report describes and evaluates the initial data collection system of the Department of Labor's Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and focuses on recently proposed revisions to reporting requirements. Focus is placed on the collection of data on the Title II program for disadvantaged youths and adults. After describing the system generally,…

Summarizes the recommendations of the Computer Network Study Planning Group formed by the Office of Science and Technology Policy under the provisions of PL99-383 to study the networking needs of the nation's academic and federal research computer programs. The benefits and importance of the recommended National Research Network are discussed.…

This article suggests the limited success in meeting goals of the Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act is due to a misunderstanding of the phrase "knowledge development." The differences between the public and private sector's ability to improve work attitudes, skills, and youths' chances to find unsubsidized jobs are…

This research uses the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS) to examine student misbehavior in the context of individual, familial, and institutional influences. The NELS is the third longitudinal study of students and schools conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, and the NELS surveys encompass not only students…

A rigorous method is outlined for using information from a previous study and explicitly taking into account the variability of an effect size estimate when determining sample size for a chi-squared test. This approach assures that the average power of all experiments in a discipline attains the desired level. (SLD)

Developments in humanities scholarship are moving in surprisingly congruent directions. Far from competing with proper attention to pedagogy, they provide solid bases for curricular coherence and teaching effectiveness. New integrative themes crossing disciplinary lines in humanities, focusing here on history, can help fulfill several humanities…

Commentary from the point of view of an applied psychologist considers the findings of five papers in this special issue on cognitive development, exploring how the contributions of each study or analysis could be used in real instruction. Some areas on which to focus applied research are discussed. (SLD)

A research course introduced nursing students to reading and critiquing research, learning by doing research, research utilization, and qualitative and quantitative methods. A six-month evaluation showed lasting effects on practice. (SK)

Examined the education indicators used in the "Quality Counts" report published by Editorial Projects in Education in 1998. Discusses the degree to which persuasive or normative uses stemmed from the value judgments being made on the basis of the indicator data. (SLD)