UNC School of Education

>> Ware, William

William Ware’s scholarship follows three modes, each characterized by collaboration.  He completed “basic” work on the ways in which several statistical procedures actually perform in practice (e.g., analysis of covariance) with James McLean of the University of Alabama and James T. McClave of InfoTech; randomization tests with John Ferron of the University of South Florida; and bootstrapped confidence intervals. With colleagues Ferron and Linda Althouse of the American Board of Pediatrics, he has also developed two statistical tests for measuring departures from the normal distribution.

Ware applies his extensive background in mathematics to a second area of scholarship: translating mathematical/statistical literature to help applied researchers employ statistical procedures. His work with Jeri Benson of the University of Florida helped elucidate the relationship between scales of measurement and statistical analyses. Working with McLean and Maria Llabre of the University of Miami, he explored the analysis of covariance.  Most recently, Ware collaborated with school of education professor John Galassi in writing a paper now in press that shows how school counselors can use archival data and Microsoft ™ Excel to examine patterns of growth and their relationships with gender, ethnicity, sense of belonging, parent involvement and other variables.  Currently, he is working with a colleague in the School of Journalism on an article about the nature of structural equation modeling and how it might be appropriately used in the field of public relations research.

Ware’s third area of scholarship – and the field in which he feels he has made the most contribution – includes collaboration with researchers across disciplines.  Serving as the research/statistical “expert” in the planning, implementing, analysis and communication of his collaborators’ research, he has worked with scholars in school and counseling psychology, early childhood education, special education, public health and social work.  “In one sense, my impact on education is mediated by the work of the many principal investigators with whom I have worked,” Ware says. “Hopefully, my participation has made their good work even better.”