Quantitative Research in Education

Stephen Gorard is the Professor of Education Research at the University of Birmingham, Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, introducer for the ESRC Grant Awarding Panel A, and a methods expert for the US Institute of Education Science panel on Mathematics and Science. His research concerns the robust evaluation of education as a lifelong society-wide process, focused on issues of equity and effectiveness. He has successfully conducted over 70 projects funded by government and other sources, and is the author of hundreds of research books and articles. His work appears regularly in the media, and is much used by local and international policy-makers. He is currently an evaluator for the European Commission Directorate-General for Regional Policy, the Educational Endowment Foundation, the Learning and Skills Information Service, the Department of Work and Pensions, and the Food Standards Agency.

VOLUME ONE: KEY ISSUES IN EDUCATION RESEARCH PART ONE: MEASURING SCHOOL AND TEACHER EFFECTS Cognitive Outcomes in Public and Private Schools - J. Coleman, T. Hoffer and S. Kilgore Improving Text Comprehension Strategies in Upper Primary School Children: A design experiment - E. de Corte, L. Verschaffel and V. van De Ven Differential School Effectiveness - D. Nuttall, H. Goldstein, R. Presser and H. Rasbash Test Scores, Dropout Rate, and Transfer Rates as Alternative Indicators of High School Performance - R. Rumberger and G. Palardy PART TWO: SCHOOL ORGANISATION Relationships Between Class Size and Teaching: A multimethod analysis of English infant schools - P. Blatchford, V. Moriarty, S. Edmonds, and C. Martin Meta-analysis of Research on Class Size and Achievement - G. Glass and M. Smith Effects of Single-sex Secondary Schools on Student Achievement and Attitudes - V. Lee and A. Bryk The Tennessee Study of Class Size in the Early School Grades - F. Mosteller PART THREE: INEQUALITIES IN SCHOOLING Trends in Social Class Segregation Between Schools in England, Wales and Scotland Since 1984 - L. Croxford and L. Paterson Are Schools Drifting Apart? Intake stratification in English secondary schools - S. Gibbons and S. Telhaj The Differential Attainment of Boys and Girls at School: Investigating the patterns and their determinants - S. Gorard, G. Rees and J. Salisbury Urban Size, Spatial Segregation and Inequality in Educational Outcomes - I. Gordon and V. Monastiriotis Explaining Socioeconomic Inequalities in Student Achievement - G. Marks, J. Cresswell and J. Ainley The Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effects of Selective High Schools on Self-concept after Graduation - H. Marsh, U. Trautwein, O. Ludtke, J. Baumert and O. Koller Self-selection in the State School System - D. Robertson and J. Symons Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment - A. Sullivan Racial Segregation Among Public and Private Schools - K. Taeuber and D. James PART FOUR: LONGER TERM OUTCOMES OF EDUCATION Routes of Success: Influences on the occupational attainment of young British males - R. Bond and P. Saunders Class, Mobility and Merit: The experience of two British birth cohorts - R. Breen and J. Goldthorpe Family Background and Returns to Schooling in Spain - M. San-Segundo and A. Valiente The Standardised Admission Ratio for Measuring Widening Participation in Medical Schools: Analysis of UK medical school admissions by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex - K. Seyan, T. Greenhalgh and D. Dorling Certifying the Workforce: Economic imperative or failed social policy? - A. Wolf, A. Jenkins and A. Vignoles VOLUME TWO: KEY TECHNIQUES FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH PART FIVE: EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES Design Experiments: Theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings - A. Brown Causal effects in Nonexperimental Studies: Reevaluating the evaluation of training programs - R. Dehejia and S. Wahba An Empirical Assessment of the Absolute Effect of Schooling: Regression-discontinuity applied to TIMSS-95 - H. Luyten The Incidence of 'Casusal' Statements - D. Robinson, J. Levin, G. Thomas, K. Pituch and S. Vaughn The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects - P. Rosenbaum and D. Rubin Avoiding Bias in Randomised Controlled Trials in Educational Research - D. Torgerson and C. Torgerson PART SIX: MODELLING Loglinear Analysis: A new tool for educational researchers - J. Burnett Random Effects Probit and Logistic Regression Models for Three Level Data - R. Gibbons and D. Hedeker Structural Equation Modelling: A guide for the perplexed - J. Matrin New Statistical Models for Analysing Social Structures: An introduction to multilevel models - L. Paterson and H. Goldstein A Hierarchical Model for Studying School Effects - S. Raedenbush and A. Bryk PART SEVEN: POLITICAL ARITHMETIC The Political Arithmetic Tradition in the Sociology of Education - A. Heath Analysis of Large-Scale Secondary Data in Higher Education Research: Potential perils associated with complex sampling designs - S. Thomas and R. Heck PART EIGHT: META-ANALYSIS The Implications of Meta-analysis for Educational Research - C. Fitz-Gibbon Distribution Theory for Glass's Estimator of Effect Size and Related Estimators - L. Hedges Practical Significance: A concept whose time has come - R. Kirk PART NINE: QUESTIONS AND QUESTIONNAIRES Fitting into Categories or Falling Between them? Rethinking ethnic classification - A. Bonnett and B. Carrington Rescaling Ordinal Data to Interval Data in Educational Research - M. Harwell and G. Gatti Education Moderates some Response Effects in Attitude Measurement - S. Narayan and J. Krosnick The Revised Cambridge Scale of Occupations - K. Prandy Ward-level Deprivation and Individual Social and Economic Outcomes in the British Household Panel Survey - A. McCulloch PART TEN: SPATIAL ISSUES The Modifiable Areal Unit Problem: Segregation between school and levels of analysis - C. Taylor, S. Gorard and J. Fitz PART ELEVEN: ASSESSMENT Assessment and the Improvement of Education - W. Harlen, C. Gipps, P. Broadfoot and D. Nuttall The Validity of Assessments - D. Nuttall VOLUME THREE: DEBATES IN THE CONDUCT OF EDUCATION RESEARCH PART TWELVE: BAYESIAN APPROACHES The Proof of the Pudding: An illustration of the relative strengths of null hypothesis, meta-analysis, and Bayesian analysis - G. Howard, S. Maxwell and K. Fleming Bayes for Beginners? Some reasons to hesitate - D. Moore PART THIRTEEN: RASCH MODELLING Relationships Between the Thurstone and Rasch Approaches to Item Scaling - D. Andrich Does the Rasch Model Really Work for Multiple Choice Items? Not if you look closely - D. Divgi Five Decades of Item Response Modelling - H. Goldstein and R. Wood PART FOURTEEN: CLUSTER SAMPLING The Dubious Benefits of Multi-level Modelling - S. Gorard Multilevel Modelling Might not be the Answer - R. Mitchell PART FIFTEEN: THE SIGNIFICANCE DEBATE Mindless Statistics - G. Gigerenzer Towards a Judgement-based Statistical Analysis - S. Gorard Theory-testing in Psychology and Physics: A methodological paradox - P. Meehl Why Summaries of Research on Psychological Theories are often Uninterpretable - P. Meehl An Interview with Gene Glass - D. Robinson Shaping up the Practice of Null Hypothesis Significance Testing - H. Wainer and D. Robinson PART SIXTEEN: THE HEALTH OF QUANTITATIVE METHODS Making our Measurements Count - M. Brighton Standard Errors in Educational Assessment: A policy analysis perspective - G. Camilli Randomized Experiments in Educational Policy Research: A critical examination of the reasons the educational evaluation community has offered for not doing them - T. Cook Mixed Methods Research: A research paradigm whose time has come - R. Johnson and A. Onwuegbuzie Difficulties Experienced by Education and Sociology Students in Quantitative Methods Courses - M. Murtonen and E. Lehtinen Making Friends with your Data: Improving how statistics are conducted and reported - D. Wright PART SEVENTEEN: QUESTIONING WHAT WE KNOW What Should an Index of Segregation Measure? - R. Allen and A. Vignoles International Surveys of Educational Achievement: How robust are the findings? - G. Brown, J.Micklewright, S. Schnepf, and R. Waldman Revisiting a 90-year-old Debate: The advantages of the mean deviation - S. Gorard Is the School Composition Effect Real? A discussion with evidence from the UK PISA data - R. Nash Measuring Comparability of Standards Across Subjects: Why our statistical techniques do not make the grade - P. Newton