A Follow-Up Note on Prescriptive Statements in Nonintervention Research Studies

Robinson Levin Thomas Pituch and Vaughn (2007) examined 74 articles reporting nonintervention studies (i e studies with no researcher manipulated variables) that appeared in 5 educational journals in 1994 Of these articles 22 contained prescriptive statements (e g if teachers or students did X then student outcome Y would result) In the present study we examined 243 journal articles published between 1995 and 2005 that cited any of the 22 earlier studies and found that (a) 25 articles (10%) repeated the prescriptive statement and (b) 411 subsequent articles between 2005 and mid 2008 cited the 25 articles that contained repeated prescriptions with 1 article alone cited 132 times Thus recommendations based on nonintervention research were found to some extent to be perpetuated by educational researchers Implications of these findings for educational researchers and consumers are discussed as well as future directions for this type of research