Hana Vonkova, a researcher at Charles University in Prague, will give a lecture titled "Anchoring Vignette Method and (Possibilities of) its Use in Educational Research" from 10:30 a.m. to noon Thursday, March 12 on the University of Arkansas campus.

The lecture will take place in Room 239 of the Graduate Education Building. It is free and open to the public.

The Department of Education Reform is presenting the lecture but it is different than others in the department's series because lunch will not be provided. RSVP is not necessary. People who attend are welcome to bring a brown bag lunch.

Vonkova's research focuses on using the anchoring vignettes method to increase the validity of surveys that use students' assessments of teacher quality, school discipline, their skills in communication and technology, and their English language knowledge. In addition, she is researching possibilities and limits of universal prevention interventions at schools and measurement of well-being.

The term anchoring vignette refers to a question or item in a survey that helps researchers understand how survey participants think about a subject, said Collin Hitt, a doctoral student in education policy and an organizer of the lecture series. For example, a common survey question asks the participant whether he or she is a hard worker. But the concept of "hard work" means different things to different people. An anchoring vignette attempts to collect information on a person's understanding of hard work so that researchers can then "anchor" a person's self-assessment of hard work to that person's understanding of hard work.