This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools--which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools)--to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises…

The purpose of this article is to use a facet theory research approach to provide a clear, coherent, and integrated model of international students' experiences based upon the findings of psychological research into students when studying abroad. In research that employs a facet theory approach events are classified in terms of their constituent…

In partnership with Joint School District 2 in Meridian, Idaho, this theory-driven study assessed the impact of Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT™), a professional development program pioneered by Dylan Wiliam and his colleagues at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). A team of Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) researchers surveyed…

Emphasis on neuropsychiatric frameworks of conceptualizing troubled youth is increasing. This focus leads to more biologically-based interventions. As such, the use of psychotropic medications is skyrocketing, while the utilization of psychosocial strategies is diminishing. Yet overall outcomes seem to be faltering. Admissions to outpatient,…

The slope of the z-transformed receiver-operating characteristic (zROC) in recognition memory experiments is usually less than 1, which has long been interpreted to mean that the variance of the target distribution is greater than the variance of the lure distribution. The greater variance of the target distribution could arise because the…

There is little in-depth research that can assist designers to use culture as a catalyst for designing innovative products within Botswana's context. The concept of culture and design are intertwined, thus modifications stemming from cultural evolution both reflect and determine developments in design. The paper discusses an experimental design…

This article proposes an innovative approach to estimating the counterfactual without the necessity of generating information from either a control group or a before-measure. Building on the idea that program participants are capable of estimating the hypothetical state they would be in had they not participated, the basics of the Roy-Rubin model…

Use of multivariate analysis (e.g., multivariate analysis of variance) is common when normally distributed outcomes are collected in intervention research. However, when mixed responses--a set of normal and binary outcomes--are collected, standard multivariate analyses are no longer suitable. While mixed responses are often obtained in…

This article explores a number of key issues with regard to the measurement of creativity in the course of conducting psychological research or when applying various evaluation measures. It is argued that, although creativity is a fuzzy concept, it is no more difficult to investigate than other fuzzy concepts people tend to take for granted. At…

Voluntary shifts of attention are often motivated in experimental contexts by using well-known symbols that accurately predict the direction of targets. The authors report 3 experiments, which showed that the presentation of predictive spatial information does not provide sufficient incentive to elicit voluntary shifts of attention. For instance,…

Accurate indicators of educational effectiveness are needed to advance national policy goals of raising student achievement and closing social/cultural based achievement gaps. If constructed and used appropriately, such indicators for both program evaluation and the evaluation of teacher and school performance could have a transformative effect on…

The impetus for this paper stems from a concern about directions and progress in the measurement of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework for effective technology integration. In this paper, we develop the rationale for using a seven-criterion lens, based upon contemporary validity theory, for critiquing empirical…

Tag clouds generated in social tagging systems can capture the collective knowledge of communities. Using as a basis spreading activation theories, information foraging theory, and the co-evolution model of cognitive and social systems, we present here a model for an "extended information scent," which proposes that both collective and individual…

The rapid pace of change for knowledge workers competing globally necessitates ongoing continuous learning. Increasingly, knowledge workers will need to be ready--willing and able--to engage in self-directed learning. This makes it important to understand what factors in the work environment might be related to the self-directed learning…

Data-mined models often achieve good predictive power, but sometimes at the cost of interpretability. We investigate here if selecting features to increase a model's construct validity and interpretability also can improve the model's ability to predict the desired constructs. We do this by taking existing models and reducing the feature set to…