This paper concerns the identification of teaching strategies that enhance the development of 4th grade students' experimental design skills at a public primary school in Argentina. Students' performance in the design of relevant experiments was evaluated before and after an eight-week intervention compared to a control group, as well as the…

Background: There is evidence showing that fundamental movement skills and physical activity are related with each other. The ability to perform a variety of fundamental movement skills increases the likelihood of children participating in different physical activities throughout their lives. However, no fundamental movement skill interventions…

In an ex post facto causal-comparative research design, this study investigated the effectiveness of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) programs on raising the student writing achievement. Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) writing achievement scores from the 2010 administration were utilized for this study. The independent variable…

In 2009, the National Center for Postsecondary Research (NCPR) launched an evaluation of eight developmental summer bridge programs in Texas to assess whether these programs reduce the need for developmental coursework and improve student outcomes in college. The evaluation uses an experimental design to measure the effects of these programs on…

The gold standard in making causal inference on program effects is a randomized trial. Most randomization designs in education randomize classrooms or schools rather than individual students. Such "clustered randomization" designs have one principal drawback: They tend to have limited statistical power or precision. This study aims to…

Objectives: Substance exposed infants present a major challenge to child welfare and public health systems. Prenatal substance exposure and continued substance abuse in the home are associated with a wide range of adverse social, emotional, and developmental outcomes. The objective of the current study is to evaluate the use of recovery coaches in…

This longitudinal case-study aimed at examining whether purposely teaching for the promotion of higher order thinking skills enhances students' critical thinking (CT), within the framework of science education. Within a pre-, post-, and post-post experimental design, high school students, were divided into three research groups. The experimental…

This paper identifies methodological and practical problems in studies of child maltreatment, including developing classification schemes for multiple forms of maltreatment; distinguishing between chronic maltreatment and isolated incidents; choosing criteria for selecting comparison groups; determining whether comparison groups have experienced…

The possible biasing effects of attrition of subjects in longitudinal experiments is a problem to which social science researchers and evaluators rarely attend. A study of research on Project Follow Through, however, revealed few differences in family income or pretest scores, between students who dropped out of treatment and of comparison groups.…

This paper provides a brief introduction to the New York City Infant Day Care Study, a 5-year, longitudinal study in which children in three different child rearing environments are compared: (1) infants in group day care, (2) infants in family day care, and (3) infants reared at home. Data are being collected on three major aspects of child…

The problem of the appropriate comparison group for bereavement studies is discussed. The use of the retrospective pretest design is illustrated through a longitudinal study of bereavement outcome following pregnancy loss, involving 138 bereaved women and a comparison group of 215 currently pregnant women. (SLD)

The difficulties in evaluating bilingual education appear to have prevented success in all but a few evaluation attempts, but better and more meaningful evaluation is neccessary in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of bilingual programs. Many bilingual programs are undergoing constant modification, adequate assessment instruments have…

Possible causes for the discrepancy between the ABT report on the national Project Follow Through and the Saint Louis, Missouri program were discussed: (1) ABT data were positively biased because of non-random, differential attrition from the program and control groups; (2) positive ABT data were due to use of a particular cohort group; or (3)…

This paper presents a detailed description of the experimental design and the subjects of the Central Institute for the Deaf (Missouri) Sensory Aids Study. Thirteen triads of matched children (ages 2 through 12) with hearing impairments (one child wearing a cochlear implant, one wearing a tactile aid and hearing aids, and one wearing only hearing…

This progress report on the Family Development Research Program for 108 low-income families, conducted at Syracuse University Children's Center, provides information on a longitudinal comparison instituted when the program children reached 36 months of age. The families of the children were matched to control families on a number of variables.…