Robert Murphy

Senior Research Social Scientist

Bob's research focuses on the design of experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations of educational programs and technologies. Bob's research interests also extend to the design of theory-driven instrumentation to assess program implementation and instructional practice and the analytical models used to examine the linkages between program implementation, practice and outcomes. Bob also has considerable experience in the management of large scale evaluations in educational settings.

Recently Bob has played key technical and project management roles on two large-scale random assignment control studies funded by the U.S. Department of Education, one examining the effectiveness of instructional software to support reading and math skills and another examining the effectiveness of different early elementary mathematics curricula: the Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Educational Technology Interventions (EETI) studies a variety of instructional software products and involves the participation of 33 school districts, 144 schools, 440 classroom teachers and 12,000 students over a four year time period; and the Evaluation of Mathematics Curricula (EMC), a four year study assessing the relative impact of four different math curricula in grades 1 and 2 and involves 12 school districts, 108 schools, 600 classroom teachers and 6,000 students. In addition to his project management responsibilities, Dr. Murphy's technical responsibilities on the EETI study include the development of the conceptual framework for the study, the design and piloting of classroom observation and teacher interview protocols, the design of a protocol to monitor vendor training of teachers, the design and implementation of training sessions for field staff on use of the field instrumentation, and the design of the analytical models used to assess the impact of conditions and practices on product effectiveness. On the EMC study, Dr. Murphy is overseeing SRI's contributions to the development of a classroom observation protocol, teacher survey, and the implementation of an assessment of teacher knowledge for teaching math.

In addition, Bob is also currently co-leading a 3-year study for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that involves the systematic assessment of the quality of teacher assignments and student work in 24 high schools supported by the Foundation. In 2000, Bob was a task leader on a Department of Education task order A Review of the Evidence on the Effectiveness of Discrete Educational Technology and produced a research synthesis of the extant evaluation literature (1993-2000) on the effectiveness of educational software supporting skill development in language arts and mathematics. As part of this same task order, Bob and SRI colleagues developed a Web-based consumer guide to help district and school practitioners evaluate the validity of research-based claims of program effectiveness made by the producers and distributors of educational software.

Prior to joining SRI, Dr. Murphy was a Research Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University where he worked with Dr. Thomas Cook on a randomized field trial of Dr. James Comer's School Development Program in Chicago.

Education 

Professional Experience 

Research Areas at CTL

Evaluation

Past Projects at CTL

Publications