Descriptive analyses of socially important or theoretically interesting phenomena and trends are a vital component of research in the behavioral, social, economic, and health sciences. Such analyses yield reliable results when using representative individual participant data (IPD) from studies with complex survey designs, including educational…

Multisite research designs involving cluster randomization are becoming increasingly important in educational and behavioral research. Researchers would like to compute effect size indexes based on the standardized mean difference to compare the results of cluster-randomized studies (and corresponding quasi-experiments) with other studies and to…

The use of statistical methods to combine the results of independent empirical research studies (metanalysis) has a long history, with work mainly divided into tests of the statistical significance of combined results and methods for combining estimates across studies. Methods of metanalysis and their applications are reviewed. (SLD)