Three issues must be addressed when discussing the standards needed to judge the methodological rigor of naturalistic approaches to administrative research. The first issue involves defining naturalistic inquiry. In contrast to the scientific paradigm, naturalistic inquiry emphasizes, first, the inseparability of variables or events from their…

The study of the role parents play in the reading development of their children requires a methodology that is unobtrusive, humane, objective, and natural. Ethnography, with its corresponding technique of participant observation, offers these characteristics. The distinctive features of an ethnographic research design include: formulation of the…

The act of composing is best described as a set of distinguishable processes that interact. There are four methods for researching these processes: (1) behavior protocols, in which subjects are observed but are not asked to report their thought processes verbally; (2) directed reports, in which subjects are asked to explain how they performed a…

The net result of the social-scientific developments in the 19th and 20th centuries is that educational research has inherited a science that is assumed to constitute a disinterested technology of social engineering and a benevolent source of positive social advance. Unfortunately, the social experiment conducted on traditional lines depends upon…

Noting that in Europe there is a growing criticism of the largely American communication research tradition that focuses on individuals, this paper examines European-style "critical analysis," which looks at social systems. The paper first examines the criticism of American-style "administrative" research, and then discusses…

The paper reviews the state of the art in evaluation research of direct instruction projects with handicapped students. The first section delineates research designs used (including norm referenced comparisons, nonequivalent comparison groups, and quasi experimental designs); major findings; and problems with each. A distinction is made between…

This brief paper presents a sequential walk through a simple research setting--a two group experiment--to indicate common but avoidable design difficulties that may jeopardize the usefulness of the data obtained. The six flaws examined are the failure to select subjects from the population to which generalizations are to be made; failure to use…

Third stream evaluation, the fusing of the ecological perspective with experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation design, is described. The ecological perspective necessitates that the conceptualization and analysis of a setting and the design of the study emphasize the interdependent relations among organisms, behavior and environment in…

Offers characterization of sign-transmission which is more general than conventional signal-transmission theory. Concepts and terminology, formal description of individual communications process, reconciliation with classical signal-detection theory, applications of sign-detection formalism to information retrieval on MEDLINE database, and a…

In this article, which is part of an ongoing research, a classification is proposed for ratio comparison problems, according to their context, their quantity type, and their numerical structure. Deriving from this classification, an interview protocol was designed, and guidelines for the interpretation of answers into strategies were decided. A…

In an effort to create a polyphonic critical response to the roles of the researcher and the researched in classroom-based literacy research, this paper is formatted as a play--indented parts are direct quotes from others spoken by the speakers. It articulates questions of classroom literacy research as it considers the methods, goals, and…

The utility of the three-form design coupled with maximum likelihood methods for estimation of missing values was evaluated. Simulation studies demonstrate that maximum likelihood estimation and multiple imputation methods produce the most efficient and least biased estimates of variances and covariances for normally distributed and slightly…

Most studies of mail survey methodology focus on specific design elements, but several major reviews of research have attempted to synthesize the findings of independent empirical studies. This study examined the review articles for what they have to say about factors influencing response rates and for their methodology. A literature review…

A large number of pairwise multiple comparisons (P-MCPs) have been introduced recently to the educational research community. The use of these P-MCPs with single group repeated measures data was studied through an exploratory Monte Carlo study of P-MCPs that have been shown to control different types of Type 2 error and Type 1 familywise error…

Recently, several industrialized nations have engaged in extensive and expensive assessments of adult literacy using door-to-door surveys and tests of "functional" reading. A study examined the use of simple checklists of author's names, magazine titles, famous people's names, and vocabulary works used earlier by West, Stanovich and Miller (1993)…