Institutional researchers are often tasked with assessing why college-wide initiatives succeed or fail. This can be a difficult task: researchers need to discriminate between multiple feasible explanations, work with limited data, and produce compelling narratives. Process tracing is a qualitative methodology that enables researchers to make valid…

This research focuses on ePortfolio assessment strategies that yield important accountability and reporting information. Under foundational categories of reliability, validity, and fairness, we present methods of gathering evidence from ePortfolio scores and their relationship to demographic information (gender, race/ethnicity, and socio-economic…

This article details the construction of a computer program to test cognitive processing differences in adolescents engaged in a standard presentation of tests versus a fantasy-based game presentation. The article will discuss the challenges of creating a replication of traditional psychological tests into a new medium which holds comparable…

The present article focuses on data collection through web questionnaires, as opposed to the traditional pen-and-paper method for research in second language acquisition and bilingualism. It is argued that web questionnaires, which have been used quite widely in psychology, have the advantage of reaching out to a larger and more diverse pool of…

As a result of the generally low quality of child care in the United States and the increased emphasis on accountability in education policy, quality rating systems (QRSs) are proliferating in the child-care arena. QRSs assess child-care providers on multiple dimensions of quality and integrate these assessments into an easily understood summary…

Reviews the rationale for and implications of case study research in therapeutic recreation, examining: what can be learned from studying a single case; issues of validity and reliability; ethical conduct of research; and the practice of case study research (case protocol, case selection, collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, and…

Provides information about single case experimental research methodologies, and delineates a rationale for their use in certain types of reading research. (MG)

In this volume, researchers, practitioners, participants, and scholars address the proliferation of methodologies, ethical and disciplinary concerns, and issues of equity and diversity such research raises from a wide variety of viewpoints. "Acts of Inquiry in Qualitative Research" also presents a broad assortment of articles by authors…

This book offers a resource guide for qualitative researchers in education, discussing data collection techniques, data analysis, reporting, and the issues of validity, reliability, and ethics. Part 1 reviews the nature and design of qualitative research; it discusses various types of qualitative research (including case studies), and how to…

If feedback from educational research is not properly related or interpreted, it can often be more detrimental than beneficial. Five factors that should be kept in mind regarding feedback are: (1) varying interpretations of research findings depending on the user, (2) ethical-human aspects, (3) validity problems, (4) interaction effects, and (5)…

Documents about adult education in Latin America at the Survey and Analysis Center of the Adult Education Association of the U.S.A. were reviewed to identify promising research directions. A theoretical framework for research should be developed and should include definitions of concepts and variables in different settings and identification of…