A study explored the impact on junior high school females of "don't smoke" public service announcements (PSAs) created by two groups of high school females. The study extended the research on relevance and persuasion by utilizing intimate issues, and by exploring the potential for increasing message relevance by using persuasive messages…

The School Attendance Demonstration Project (SADP) was designed to improve school attendance among teenagers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits in San Diego County, California. An impact study was conducted from March 10, 1996 to March 10, 1998, to evaluate the effects of providing social services and imposing…

Seventeen Southern California school districts participated in a pilot study intended to develop a framework for classifying district policies on retaining students. It was assumed that differences in district policy created varying levels of objectification of standards for decision making and varying degrees of work effort needed to implement…

A replication of an earlier study provided further support for the idea that effective principals are more accurate in their self-assessments than less effective principals. A review of the literature, of ratings made by ten nationally recognized educational experts, and of discussions with principals led to the selection of 33 important…

Methods used to study the cost of public higher education in California were assessed, and eight limitations of previous studies were identified. The intent in reviewing cost-research methodology was to demonstrate that prior studies adopted a narrow approach to the topic. It was proposed that a study of costs must provide an overview of the whole…

A formally conducted field study was used to investigate the work of vice-principals of eight large Southern California high schools and the relationship of their work to the school as an organization. Most of the vice-principals studied deal with student discipline, but four have important discipline responsibilities, which they exercise by…

School environments dominated by high socioeconomic status levels have a negative effect on ethnic self-attitudes and on ethnic salience in self-identification, but Anglo-dominated school environments alone do not. In a test of the effect of different levels of Anglo dominance in schools on the ethnic self-attitudes of Hispanic elementary…

This paper is a preliminary report of findings from a study of racial attitudes toward black/white inequalities, conducted as part of the Social Indicators project at the Survey Research Centers at the University of California at Berkeley. Data were collected from a cross-sectional sample of the adult population of the five county San…

For a number of years, the California community colleges have used data from annual statewide surveys conducted by the Kern Community College District and the California Community College Trustees (CCCT) for comparative faculty salary information. Both the Kern and CCCT studies rely upon the device of selecting benchmark points (such as the…

School environments conducive to equal status relations appear counter-productive to assimilation, according to a study of the relationship between school status characteristics and assimilation levels achieved by Hispanic sixth graders. A prior study provided data for this research from 10 desegregated elementary schools in California regarding…

The "Presidents' Study" is a collection, classification, and analysis of weekly student contact hours (WSCH) and full-time equivalent (FTE) faculty data gathered from a number of participating California community colleges. The data are treated by various formulae, ratios, and graphs to indicate loads, trends, and costs. Unfortunately,…

In response to legislative mandates calling on educational institutions to become more accountable for monies spent, a number of community colleges in California have implemented research and data collection models to help them answer state and local questions about institutional effectiveness. However, there is a significant difference between…