Working with Low Survey Response Rates: The Efficacy of Weighting Adjustments

National data show a continuing decline in the willingness of people to respond to surveys. This trend is troubling given the central role that survey research plays in collecting data for institutional research purposes. This paper examines the effectiveness of a weighting procedure described by Astin and Molm for adjusting survey results to correct for nonresponse bias. Using data from a Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) follow-up survey, the results indicate that the weighting procedure is highly effective at reducing nonresponse bias in univariate distributions. The effectiveness of the weighting procedure in adjusting correlation and regression analyses is less clear. This may be due in part to the observation that even when individual variables are noticeably biased, their relationships with each other tend not to be.     

The relation of multiple-schedule behavioral contrast to deprivation,time in session,and within-session changes in responding

Pigeons' keypecking was reinforced by food on baseline schedules of multiple variable interval (VI) x VI x and on contrast schedules of multiple VI x VI y. Deprivation of food was varied by maintaining subjects at 75%, 85%, and 95% (+/- 2%) of their free-feeding weights. Positive and negative behavioral contrast were observed. The size of the contrast was not systematically altered by changes in deprivation. Positive and negative contrast were both larger later in the session than they were earlier. Within-session decreases in responding were steeper for the baseline than for the contrast schedules for positive contrast. Within-session decreases were steeper for the contrast than for the baseline schedules for negative contrast. These results were predicted by the idea that different amounts of habituation to the reinforcer during the baseline and contrast schedules contribute to behavioral contrast. The results show that contrast occurs under conditions that reduce the effect of the following component. The results support the assumption that positive and negative contrast are produced by symmetrical theoretical variables.     

How to decide how to decide

This article attempts to characterize the general problem of selecting methods for decision-making. The traditional rational approach to choice is from economics, which offers expected-value maximization. The task environment of decision method selection, however, does not seem to provide the data necessary for carrying out the expected-value calculations. Our approach uses methods from the field of cognitive science. We develop the notion of domain size in fields such as chess, borrowing the concept of a chunk from human memory. We then develop a heuristic rule for choiceamongmethods. We propose this rule as one of many possible rules.     

Subject-matter oriented measurement of achievement motivation

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Effects of identical context on visual pattern recognition by pigeons

The effects of identical context on pattern recognition by pigeons for outline drawings of faces were investigated by training pigeons to identify (Experiment 1) and categorize (Experiment 2) these stimuli according to the orientation of the mouth—an upright U shape representing a smiling mouth or an inverted U shape representing a sad mouth. These target stimuli were presented alone (Pair 1), with three dots in a triangular orientation to represent a nose and eyes (Pair 2), and with the face pattern surrounded by an oval (Pair 3). In Experiment 1, the pigeons trained with Pair 1 were most accurate, those trained with Pair 2 were less so, and those trained with Pair 3 failed to acquire the discrimination within eighty 100-trial sessions. The same ordering was found in Experiment 2 for pigeons trained on the three pairs simultaneously. The authors suggest that a contrasting finding in humans, the face superiority effect, might be due to a gain in discriminability resulting from recognition of the pattern as a face. An exemplar model of information processing that excludes linguistic coding accounts for the present results.     

Early Childhood Services in Ireland

This paper gives background information on early childhood services in Ireland and presents the results of a survey of the preschool experiences of 1065 children. The results of the survey suggest that the majority of children experienced some form of early childhood service before starting school. The most common service was a playgroup although a significant proportion of the children had experienced home‐based care with a relative or family day care provider. The implications of the findings for the development of a policy on early childhood services are discussed.     

Blurring the color line: The desegregation of the Baltimore city public schools, 1954–1994

Perched on the Mason-Dixon line, Baltimore ignored calls for resistance from its southern neighbors by becoming one of the first cities in the country to comply withBrown. By the beginning of the 1955 school year, leaders had implemented a desegregation plan, and Baltimore was being applauded for the early and peaceful integration of its public schools. Within a few years, however, the praise faded as it became clear that Baltimore still suffered from de facto segregation. Faced with this reality, the school board refused to take the steps necessary to remedy the problem, instead shifting the blame to society at large. This failure by the board started a pattern of abandonment by school leadership that culminated in 1991 with the privatization of several of Baltimore's public schools. The result of this abandonment is a crippled school system that still has not dealt with issues of race and equality.     

Context-sensitive regularities in English vowel spelling

The predictive value of rime spellings in English was compared directly to other types of regularities beyond the level of the single letter. A computer-assisted analysis of a list of twenty-four thousand written words, each paired with its corresponding pronunciation, reveals that only a small number of rime spellings are highly regular in their pronunciations. The conventional division of vowel letter pronunciations into short and long in closed and open written syllables is the most reliable key to English pronunciation. Our findings support the notion that English spelling is based at least in part on syllable structure. In addition, prefixes and suffixes provide very reliable clues to pronunciation, which suggests that their regularity should be exploited in the teaching of reading.     

Appropriability of innovation benefit as a predictor of the source of innovation

It has been empirically observed that, in some industries product users are the most frequent sources of product innovations while, in other industries, product manufacturers are. I hypothesize that such differences are caused by differences in the ability of these two “functional” categories of innovators to appropriate innovation benefit. I explore this hypothesis by examining the real-world effectiveness of mechanisms (such as patents and lead time) used for the appropriation of innovation benefit and the dependence of this effectiveness on the functional relationship between innovator and innovation.