There is considerable concern that the majority of adolescents do not develop the competence in writing they need to be successful in school, the workplace, or their personal lives. A common explanation for why youngsters do not write well is that schools do not do a good job of teaching this complex skill. In an effort to identify effective…

This research project is focused on theoretical and empirical works analyzing the effects of career counseling. This experimental and longitudinal study has been carried out in France; it compares a sample of individuals having undertaken competence assessment with a control group and deals with self-esteem, self-analysis, self-concept, and the…

Operating on the premise that different approaches to computer-assisted instruction (CAI) may use different configurations of hardware and software, different curricula, and different organizational and personnel arrangements, this study explored the feasibility of collecting evaluations of CAI to evaluate the comparative cost-effectiveness of…

Parametric measures to estimate J. Cohen's effect size (1966) from a single experiment or for a single study in meta-analysis are investigated. The main objective was to examine the principal statistical properties of this effect size--delta--under variance homogeneity, variance heterogeneity with known variance ratios, and for the Behrens-Fisher…

Monte Carlo studies explored the sampling characteristics of Cohen's d and three approximations to Cohen's d when used as average effect size measures in meta-analysis. Reviews of 10, 100, and 500 studies (M) were simulated, with degrees of freedom (df) varied in seven steps from 8 to 58. In a two independent groups design, samples were obtained…

The use of measures of magnitude of effect has been advocated as a way to go beyond statistical tests of significance and to identify effects of a practical size. They have been used in meta-analysis to combine results of different studies. Describes problems associated with measures of magnitude of effect (particularly study size) and…

A meta-analysis including nine samples of mothers in home visiting programs (N=1,600) examined differences in the effects of home visitor programs on maternal behavior. Although effect sizes varied, programs with more frequent visitation had higher success rates. This dosage effect explained all of the variance in effect sizes. Other significant…

Meta analysis of 21 studies investigated type of person-environment fit measure, method of calculating fit, fit dimensions, and use of established measures. Subjective fit measures, use of correlations to calculate fit, value congruence as the fit dimensions, and use of an established measure increased effect sizes. (Contains 64 references.) (SK)

Findings from meta-analyses of outdoor education, psychotherapy, and educational innovations are presented to help determine the relative efficacy of adventure therapy programs. While adventure therapy effects are stronger than those of outdoor education, they are not nearly as strong as those of individual psychotherapy. Benchmarks are derived…

Reviews the historical findings of computer-based instruction research and 47 evaluations of web-based courses in higher education published 1996-2002. Tabulates results in terms of content area, educational level, sample size, use of comparison group, and course characteristics. Assesses experimental designs, effect sizes, and use of features…

The utility of the fail-safe "N" statistic was evaluated by computing it for studies in three organizational research domains in which discrepant conclusions were reached by initial and subsequent meta-analyses. Calculation of the fail-safe "N" may have led to more cautious interpretations. Implications for meta-analyses are…

A review and meta-analysis were made of placebo control groups in educational experiments. In all, 125 studies were clustered into procedures that included (1) explicit manipulation of attentional elements; (2) explicit description of the placebo activity plus implied reference to attention; and (3) exclusive reference to the activity. (SLD)

A meta-analysis of the difficulty and discrimination of the "none-of-the-above" (NOTA) test option was conducted with 12 articles (20 effect sizes) for difficulty and 7 studies (11 effect sizes) for discrimination. Findings indicate that using the NOTA option does not result in items of lesser quality. (SLD)

The use of p-values in combining results of studies often involves studies that are potentially aberrant. This paper proposes a combined test that permits trimming some of the extreme p-values. The trimmed statistic is based on an inverse cumulative normal transformation of the ordered p-values. (SLD)

Shares three ideas concerning how to evaluate the practical importance of developmental findings to make them more useful to policymakers: (1) statistical significance tests need to be accompanied by effect size estimates; (2) meta-analyses are helping in using all existing data when examining issues involved in policy debates; and (3) researchers…