Predicting federal research funding at colleges and universities

The relationships between federal research funding and institutional commitments and characteristics are assumed to be at certain levels, but such assumptions appear to be founded mainly upon subjective observations. This study examined the relationships between federal research funding and the following institutional characteristics: institutional research funds; doctors, masters, first professional, and bachelor's degrees awarded; and graduate, first professional, and undergraduate student headcount. Data was gathered from 60 research performing universities for fiscal year 1975. Multiple regression, simple correlation and partial correlation analyses were used to ascertain the strength of the relationships. Results showed that doctor's degrees awarded and institutional research funds possessed the strongest correlations to federal research funding, with doctorates being the strongest relationship at private institutions and institutional research funds the strongest relationship at public institutions.     

Urban Teachers’ Perspectives of Strengths and Needs: The Promise of Teacher Responsive Professional Development

The Urban Review - This study examines urban high school teachers’ perceptions (N?=?50) of their strengths and needs in supporting diverse students in their classrooms....     

The Causal Effect of Survey Mode on Students’ Evaluations of Teaching: Empirical Evidence from Three Field Experiments

In recent years many universities switched from paper- to online-based student evaluation of teaching (SET) without knowing the consequences for data quality. Based on a series of three consecutive field experiments—a split-half design, twin courses, and pre–post-measurements—this paper examines the effects of survey mode on SET. First, all three studies reveal marked differences in non-response between online- and paper-based SET and systematic, but small differences in the overall course ratings. On average, online SET reveal a slightly less optimistic picture of teaching quality in students’ perception. Similarly, a web survey mode does not impair the reliability of student ratings. Second, we highlight the importance of taking selection and class absenteeism into account when studying survey mode effects and also show that it is necessary and informative to survey the subgroup of no-shows when evaluating teaching. Third, we empirically demonstrate the need to account for contextual setting of the survey (in class vs. after class) and the specific type of the online survey mode (TAN vs. email). Previous research either confounded contextual setting with variation in survey mode or generalized results for a specific online mode to web surveys in general. Our findings suggest that higher response rates in email surveys can be achieved if students are given the opportunity and time to evaluate directly in class.     

Season of birth distribution of elite tennis players

In many competitive sports, the use of a cut-off date for junior competition has been associated with a skewed birth date distribution in junior and senior players. The International Tennis Federation uses a junior competition year that commences on 1 January. The purpose of the current investigation was to describe the birth date distribution of 448 elite senior tennis players and 476 elite junior tennis players. There was a significant season of birth bias among elite senior players (P < 0.001), with 58.9% being born in the first 6 months of the year. There was also a significant season of birth bias among elite junior players (P < 0.001), with 59.5% being born in the first 6 months of the year. This pattern was observed in both male and female players as well as in players from different regions. The results provide evidence that it is the cut-off date for the junior competition year that is responsible for the skewed birth date distribution in tennis rather than regional or climatic factors.     

Ask Dr. Discovery: the impact of a casual mobile game on visitor engagement with science museum content

Educational technology research and development - This study examines the impact of a mobile game app on science museum visitors’ level of engagement with exhibit content, compared to a non...     

The logic of university students' misunderstanding of natural selection

Misunderstanding of the idea of evolution (natural selection) was assumed to occur because students were basing their explanations on the following mistaken assumptions: (1) variations in a population have little importance in its change process; (2) when nature changes, it is not at random. From these assumptions, hypotheses were developed and tested by analyzing the responses of 322 university sophomores (education majors) on an evolution problem “How could the bat have evolved wings?”. A classification system that was developed required judgments on whether a population or typological focus was used, whether the change process was open or closed to environmental information and how the selection process functioned. The contention that misunderstanding is logical was supported by acceptance of the following hypotheses: (1) students adopting a population focus also used a closed-change process; (2) students seeing change as more directed used less functional selection processes, with one exception; (3) students using acquired traits did not use a functional idea of selection.