National Evaluation of the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA): a Review of Methodological Issues

1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Coulson

Large-scale field evaluations of education programs typically present complex and competing design requirements that can rarely be satisfied by ideal, textbook solutions. This paper uses a recently completed national evaluation of the federally-funded Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) Program to illustrate in concrete fashion some of the problems often encountered in major program evaluations, and traces the evolution of efforts in that three-year longitudinal study—both in the original design conceptualization and in the actual implementation and data analysis phases—to resolve competing demands and to provide as much methodological rigor as possible under field conditions. Issues discussed here include the selection of experimental versus quasi-experimental designs; the development of sampling procedures to provide maximum precision in treatment-control comparisons; the selection of achievement tests and difficulties in developing and administering other, non-cognitive outcome measures; and the importance of ascertaining whether the underlying assumptions of a true experimental design have been met before conclusions about program impact are drawn on the basis of treatment-control comparisons.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evava Pietri ◽  
Arispa Weigold ◽  
Lisa M. P. Munoz ◽  
Corinne Alison Moss-Racusin

High-impact interventions are necessary to reduce persistent gender disparities and sexism in STEM. "Picture a Scientist," a popular documentary featuring stories and research about bias and discrimination in STEM, reached a large international audience. And yet, the extent to which this type of high-quality media can impact gender bias remains unclear. In a unique collaboration between film creators and researchers, the current large-scale field studies explored whether “Picture a Scientist” functioned as an online intervention targeting gender bias in STEM. Exploratory Study 1 found that viewers who were more engaged with the film were also more inspired to continue learning about the issues highlighted in the documentary and combating bias and unfair treatment. Employing a quasi-experimental design, preregistered Study 2 demonstrated that compared to those who had not watched the film (but intended to), participants who had viewed the film indicated higher awareness of gender bias and stronger intentions to address this bias through personal actions and new policies. Workshops and panel discussions featuring this documentary (and other similar forms of media) may be relatively low cost, easy to implement, and enjoyable interventions. Thus, the current findings can help inform future organizational policies and workshops, implementing viewings of this documentary or similar films.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Levashina ◽  
Frederick P. Morgeson ◽  
Michael A. Campion

1996 ◽  
Vol 76 (06) ◽  
pp. 0939-0943 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Boneu ◽  
G Destelle ◽  

SummaryThe anti-aggregating activity of five rising doses of clopidogrel has been compared to that of ticlopidine in atherosclerotic patients. The aim of this study was to determine the dose of clopidogrel which should be tested in a large scale clinical trial of secondary prevention of ischemic events in patients suffering from vascular manifestations of atherosclerosis [CAPRIE (Clopidogrel vs Aspirin in Patients at Risk of Ischemic Events) trial]. A multicenter study involving 9 haematological laboratories and 29 clinical centers was set up. One hundred and fifty ambulatory patients were randomized into one of the seven following groups: clopidogrel at doses of 10, 25, 50,75 or 100 mg OD, ticlopidine 250 mg BID or placebo. ADP and collagen-induced platelet aggregation tests were performed before starting treatment and after 7 and 28 days. Bleeding time was performed on days 0 and 28. Patients were seen on days 0, 7 and 28 to check the clinical and biological tolerability of the treatment. Clopidogrel exerted a dose-related inhibition of ADP-induced platelet aggregation and bleeding time prolongation. In the presence of ADP (5 \lM) this inhibition ranged between 29% and 44% in comparison to pretreatment values. The bleeding times were prolonged by 1.5 to 1.7 times. These effects were non significantly different from those produced by ticlopidine. The clinical tolerability was good or fair in 97.5% of the patients. No haematological adverse events were recorded. These results allowed the selection of 75 mg once a day to evaluate and compare the antithrombotic activity of clopidogrel to that of aspirin in the CAPRIE trial.


2010 ◽  
Vol 108-111 ◽  
pp. 1158-1163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Cheng Nie ◽  
Di Wu ◽  
Weiong Zhang ◽  
Yan Yang ◽  
Yong He

In order to improve the information management of the modern digital agriculture, combined several modern digital agriculture technologies, namely wireless sensor network (WSN), global positioning system (GPS), geographic information system (GIS) and general packet radio service (GPRS), and applied them to the information collection and intelligent control process of the modern digital agriculture. Combining the advantage of the local multi-channel information collection and the low-power wireless transmission of WSN, the stable and low cost long-distance communication and data transmission ability of GPRS, the high-precision positioning technology of the DGPS positioning and the large-scale field information layer-management technology of GIS, such a hybrid technology combination is applied to the large-scale field information and intelligent management. In this study, wireless sensor network routing nodes are disposed in the sub-area of field. These nodes have GPS receiver modules and the electric control mechanism, and are relative positioned by GPS. They can real-time monitor the field information and control the equipment for the field application. When the GPS position information and other collected field information are measured, the information can be remotely transmitted to PC by GPRS. Then PC can upload the information to the GIS management software. All the field information can be classified into different layers in GIS and shown on the GIS map based on their GPS position. Moreover, we have developed remote control software based on GIS. It can send the control commands through GPRS to the nodes which have control modules; and then we can real-time manage and control the field application. In conclusion, the unattended automatic wireless intelligent technology for the field information collection and control can effectively utilize hardware resources, improve the field information intelligent management and reduce the information and intelligent cost.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3571
Author(s):  
Bogusz Wiśnicki ◽  
Dorota Dybkowska-Stefek ◽  
Justyna Relisko-Rybak ◽  
Łukasz Kolanda

The paper responds to research problems related to the implementation of large-scale investment projects in waterways in Europe. As part of design and construction works, it is necessary to indicate river ports that play a major role within the European transport network as intermodal nodes. This entails a number of challenges, the cardinal one being the optimal selection of port locations, taking into account the new transport, economic, and geopolitical situation that will be brought about by modernized waterways. The aim of the paper was to present an original methodology for determining port locations for modernized waterways based on non-cost criteria, as an extended multicriteria decision-making method (MCDM) and employing GIS (Geographic Information System)-based tools for spatial analysis. The methodology was designed to be applicable to the varying conditions of a river’s hydroengineering structures (free-flowing river, canalized river, and canals) and adjustable to the requirements posed by intermodal supply chains. The method was applied to study the Odra River Waterway, which allowed the formulation of recommendations regarding the application of the method in the case of different river sections at every stage of the research process.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Tim Jurisch ◽  
Stefan Cantré ◽  
Fokke Saathoff

A variety of studies recently proved the applicability of different dried, fine-grained dredged materials as replacement material for erosion-resistant sea dike covers. In Rostock, Germany, a large-scale field experiment was conducted, in which different dredged materials were tested with regard to installation technology, stability, turf development, infiltration, and erosion resistance. The infiltration experiments to study the development of a seepage line in the dike body showed unexpected measurement results. Due to the high complexity of the problem, standard geo-hydraulic models proved to be unable to analyze these results. Therefore, different methods of inverse infiltration modeling were applied, such as the parameter estimation tool (PEST) and the AMALGAM algorithm. In the paper, the two approaches are compared and discussed. A sensitivity analysis proved the presumption of a non-linear model behavior for the infiltration problem and the Eigenvalue ratio indicates that the dike infiltration is an ill-posed problem. Although this complicates the inverse modeling (e.g., termination in local minima), parameter sets close to an optimum were found with both the PEST and the AMALGAM algorithms. Together with the field measurement data, this information supports the rating of the effective material properties of the applied dredged materials used as dike cover material.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (15) ◽  
pp. 7773
Author(s):  
Neann Mathai ◽  
Conrad Stork ◽  
Johannes Kirchmair

Experimental screening of large sets of compounds against macromolecular targets is a key strategy to identify novel bioactivities. However, large-scale screening requires substantial experimental resources and is time-consuming and challenging. Therefore, small to medium-sized compound libraries with a high chance of producing genuine hits on an arbitrary protein of interest would be of great value to fields related to early drug discovery, in particular biochemical and cell research. Here, we present a computational approach that incorporates drug-likeness, predicted bioactivities, biological space coverage, and target novelty, to generate optimized compound libraries with maximized chances of producing genuine hits for a wide range of proteins. The computational approach evaluates drug-likeness with a set of established rules, predicts bioactivities with a validated, similarity-based approach, and optimizes the composition of small sets of compounds towards maximum target coverage and novelty. We found that, in comparison to the random selection of compounds for a library, our approach generates substantially improved compound sets. Quantified as the “fitness” of compound libraries, the calculated improvements ranged from +60% (for a library of 15,000 compounds) to +184% (for a library of 1000 compounds). The best of the optimized compound libraries prepared in this work are available for download as a dataset bundle (“BonMOLière”).


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