Recent Research Reports

In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, Ninth Edition, offers clear and practical guidance on how to write research proposals, reports, theses, and dissertations. The book describes the types of information that should be included, how this information should be expressed, and where various types of information should be placed within a research report. The organization is designed to walk students through all the elements required when writing an original research report for a class, for a thesis/dissertation, or for publication. Most guidelines are illustrated with examples from actual (and recent) research reports published in peer-reviewed journals across the social and behavioral sciences. The new edition includes fully updated examples and chapter exercises, expanded material on qualitative methods, significant new material on research ethics, and new content on online research including social media. Accompanied by online resources for students and instructors, Writing Empirical Research Reports is ideal for use in research methods courses, thesis/dissertation preparation courses, research seminars where writing a research report is a culminating activity, and any graduate-level seminar in which the instructor covers the vital components necessary to prepare a research manuscript for submission for publication.

One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.

There is a big difference between assigning complex texts and teaching complex texts No matter what discipline you teach, learn how to use complexity as a dynamic, powerful tool for sliding the right text in front of your students’ at just the right time. Updates to this new edition include How-to’s for measuring countable features of any written work A rubric for analyzing the complexity of both literary and informational texts Classroom scenarios that show the difference between a healthy struggle and frustration The authors’ latest thinking on teacher modeling, close reading, scaffolded small group reading, and independent reading