Schuyler W. Huck

University of Tennessee | UTK · Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling

Randomly assigned graduate and senior undergraduate research students to an experimental (n = 10) or a control (n = 9) group. One group received a list of precise instructional objectives, while the other discussed an unrelated topic. The 2 groups were reunited, exposed to the same lecture, and then administered a 12-item quiz covering the day's le...

In analyzing the data associated with a Solomon Four-Group Design, the posttest scores are initially subjected to a 2x2 factorial ANOVA, with the two main effects being a.) pretest versus no pretest and b.) treatment versus no treatment. Campbell and Stanley (2) maintain that if this analysis yields non-significant F-ratios for both the main effect...

Responses invited. While the issues raised in the following paper by Franks and Huck are not new ones, reminding readers to consider these points is important. Exactly how a scholar handles these issues depends on the questions asked, the resources available, as well as other considerations. I invite reaction to this paper. If some are received, I...

Statistical tools are delicate instruments. When used properly, they help quantitative researchers illuminate relationships important to both practitioners and theorists; when used carelessly, they can bring about unjustified, distorted, and/or misleading claims. Almost every statistical tool has underlying assumptions (ie, prerequisite conditions)...

Two questions are considered in this article: (a) What should professionals in school psychology do in an effort to stay current with developments in applied statistics? (b) What should they do with their existing knowledge to move from surface understanding of statistics to deep understanding? Written for school psychologists who have completed th...

Many students have difficulty seeing the conceptual ‘link’ between bivariate data displayed in a scatterplot and the statistical summary of the relationship, r. This article shows how to teach (and compute) r such that each datum's ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ influences are made apparent and used in a new formula for calculating Pearson's r.

For many who deal with correlation (as students, teachers, or applied researchers), the connection between group heterogeneity and the magnitude of Pearson's r is difficult to pin down. Confusion abounds because factors that increase score variability do not have a similar effect on r. Three such factors are considered in this paper, with the point...

For many students, the connection between spread and Pearson's r is elusive. Confusion arises because different factors that increase score variability do not have the same effect on r. To help students understand that increases in a may lead to an increase or a decrease in r or to no change whatsoever, we devised a simple and enjoyable classroom e...

This research is an assessment of the physiological correlates of Type A behavior in college-aged women. Subjects were monitored while they took a midterm statistics examination; the dependent variables were systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and heart rate variability. Type A or B behavior was assessed with the student form of the...

Classroom demonstrations, if well designed, can help students gain insights into statistical concepts and phenomena. Unfortunately, however, some instructors choose not to use this instructional device for fear that the data generated will turn out to be "uncooperative"; other instructors use demonstrations but use them unscientifically, ending up...

Classroom demonstrations, if well designed, can help students gain insights into statistical concepts and phenomena. Unfortunately, however, some instructors choose not to use this instructional device for fear that the data generated will turn out to be "uncooperative"; other instructors use demonstrations but use them unscientifically, ending up...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of computational examples on research-methods students' ability to interpret research. Thirty individuals in an experimental group, who were presented detailed computational examples in class, were compared with 25 students in a control group. A pretest given to all students served as the cova...

Based upon the belief that examinee-by-item interaction should be conceptualized as true score variability rather than as a result of errors of measurement, Lu (1971) proposed a modification of Hoyt's analysis of variance reliability procedure. Lu claims that his approach is free from the "impurities" and "entanglements" inherent in Hoyt's procedur...

In applying the Bartlett-Kendall test for equal variances, an arbitrary decision must be made as to how samples should be divided into subsamples. Since this decision is not always clear-cut, the purpose of this study was to compare nine different procedures which the researcher might employ in accomplishing the aforementioned purpose. Since previo...

A common statistical error in educational psychology involves the failure to treat language materials (e.g., words, sentences, prose passages) as a random effect in the analysis of variance. The fallacy of treating language items as a fixed effect limits the generalizability of research findings to the particular items used in an experiment, thus q...

The present paper generalizes the t ratio used in testing the difference between two independent regression coefficients to the multivariate case of testing the difference between two vectors of regression coefficients. The generalized statistic is particularly useful when one wishes to determine which of two variables is the best predictor of a nu...

Given a set of n individuals and k test items, Hoyt's analysis of variance procedure for estimating reliability assumes that the residual mean square estimates error variability. Based on the assumption that an individual's true score should be allowed to vary across items (rather than remain constant), the present author argues that the residual m...

In an earlier article published in this journal, Gordon (1973) demonstrated how to compute an ANOVA F-ratio from nothing more than a table of means and standard deviations. Here, it is shown how to accomplish this same goal in two-factor designs. To point out the value of the simple formulas presented, a table from a recently published article is f...

Based upon the belief that examinee-by-item interaction should be conceptualized as true score variability rather than as a result of errors of measurement, Lu (1971) proposed a modification of Hoyt's analysis of variance reliability procedure. Although Lu claims that his approach is free from the "impurities" and "entanglements" inherent in Hoyt's...

Researchers have long been aware that "pretest sensitization" is a potential threat to the external validity of experimental studies. Only recently, however, has it been suggested that "posttest sensitization" might also limit the generalizability of results. This latter phenomenon would exist if the administration of a posttest caused the treatmen...

In his discussion of two-factor experiments, Winer (1971) points out that it may be desirable to remove the interaction (and thus obtain additivity of effects) through a monotonic data transformation. The present authors extend Lubin's (1961) discussion of ordinal and disordinal interactions by introducing the concept of "dual-ordinal." This concep...

The pretest-posttest control group design (or an extension of it) is a highly prestigious experimental design. A popular analytic strategy involves subjecting the data provided by this design to a repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA). Unfortunately, the statistical results yielded by this type of analysis can easily be misinterpreted, sin...

If the cell frequencies (i.e., the n's) in a factorial ANOVA are not equal to one another, the researcher must determine whether or not the condition of proportionality is satisfied. Although the authors of several texts demonstrate how to test for proportionality, their discussions (a) give the impression that every cell must be tested and (b) are...

Replicated a 1958 investigation by W. Kephart and M. Bressler which demonstrated that the response rates to mailed questionnaires could be significantly increased by including a monetary incentive of $.25. In an experiment with 200 undergraduates, findings were that (a) a quarter ($.25) is still an effective incentive, despite its devaluation durin...

Administered the Alpert-Haber Achievement Anxiety Test to 312 undergraduates using the original version (multiple-choice) and 2 revisions of the test (one using a horizontal continuum for responses and eliminating the 19 buffer items, the other using a Likert-type response format). An analysis of covariance showed significant differences between th...

Certain testing authorities have implied that the proportion of examinees who answer an item correctly may be influenced by the difficulty of the immediately preceding item. If present, such a “sequence effect” would cause p (as an estimate of item difficulty level) to misrepresent an item's “true” level of difficulty. To investigate this hypothesi...

Various empirical studies have demonstrated the limitations of essay examinations as compared with objective tests. More than 50 years ago, studies by Starch and Elliott (1912, 1913a, 1913b) revealed that the grades assigned to essay papers are highly unreliable. More recently, research has shown that good grades are assigned to essay papers for re...