database homework research

Databases for Homework Help

Here are some great places to start. Can’t find what you’re looking for? You can always ask a librarian .

Britannica Online School Edition

Britannica Online School Edition lets you choose your level, with content geared to Elementary, Middle School, High School, and a PreSchool Learning Zone. Each level includes dictionary and thesaurus, atlases, timelines, and other features at the appropriate grade level.

Free for all Massachusetts residents. Provided by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Library System. Want help using this resource? Contact us .

Gale In Context: Elementary

(formerly Kids InfoBits)

Targeting the research needs of grades K-5 students. This resources incudes Blackbirch Press curriculum support references, 100 full-text age appropriate magazines and 2 newswires. Graphs, charts, maps and over 2,500 searchable images.

Learning Express Library

This interactive online database features more than 300 practice tests based on official school and career exams, including ACT, SAT, GED, ASVAB, Firefighter, Police Officer, Paramedic, EMT Basic, U.S. Citizenship, Postal Worker, Cosmetology, and Real Estate Sales Agent & Broker Exams, among others. Includes math & reading practice for 4th grade through high school, school and college admission tests and Advance Placement tests.

Provided by the Boston Public Library and available for free with a BPL eCard. Individuals who live in, own property in, or commute to work in Massachusetts may register for an eCard. Want help using this resource? Contact us .

Little Pim (fun with languages)

Little Pim is an online language learning system for ages 0-6 . It’s a fun way for kids to learn a foreign language!

• Little Pim’s Entertainment Immersion Method makes it fun and easy to learn.
• Kids love Little Pim, the animated panda who teaches each lesson.
• It’s fun for the whole family.

Mango Languages

Mango is an online language learning system that teaches real conversation skills for practical communication. Through fun and engaging interactive lessons, Mango makes learning a new language fast, easy and incredibly effective.

Provided by Forbes Library. Remote access requires a Forbes Library card . Want help using this resource? Contact us .

Opposing Viewpoints

Opposing Viewpoints covers timely issues, from capital punishment to immigration to marijuana. This cross-curricular resource supports science, social studies, current events, and language arts classes. Informed, differing views help learners develop critical-thinking skills and draw their own conclusions.

PebbleGo is a content hub specifically designed for K-2 students. Packed with informational articles, ready-made activities, and literacy supports for students of all abilities, it boosts engagement and fosters independent learning in core subject areas.

Research in Context: Middle School

Designed for middle school students. Includes mainly full-text magazines, newspapers and reference books covering current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, people, government, history, sports and more. This resource has a highly visual design and navigation  combined with the authoritative content and user-focused tool set needed to support middle school assignments and coursework.

Science Database

Science Database is a growing resource of 7.3 million full text articles from over 1,600 sources. In full-text format, researchers have access to all the charts, diagrams, graphs, tables, photos, and other graphical elements so vital to scientific and engineering literature.

Grades 6-12

American Memory

American Memory provides free and open access to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. These materials, from the collections of the Library of Congress and other institutions, chronicle historical events, people, places, and ideas that continue to shape America, serving the public as a resource for education and lifelong learning.

Provided by the Library of Congress 

This is a librarian recommended website. Want help using this resource? Contact us .

Britannica Moderna

A Spanish-language encyclopedia for both Spanish speakers and students of Spanish.

Britannica Online Public Library Edition

Britannica Online Public Library Edition is a powerful resource. In addition to the famous encyclopedia, Britannica Online also includes a dictionary and thesaurus, atlases, timelines, and other features.

Gale in Context: Environmental Studies

Gale in Context: Environmental Studies offers over 400 short articles on environmental topics across the science, social studies, and humanities curriculum. Topics include Water Privatization, Ecotourism, Air Pollution, Green Economy, and more.

Gale Interactive: Science

Going beyond textbooks and traditional science curriculum, Gale Interactive: Science is a highly visual online learning tool. It includes interactive 3D models and is designed for middle and high school students.

Music Online

Music & Performing Arts  from Alexander Street Press combines audio and video that spans all time periods, hundreds of thousands of seminal artists, composers, choreographers, and ensembles to provide an unparalleled learning environment for the teaching of music. Collections include American Music, Classical Music, Jazz, World Music, Theatre, Dance and Opera in video, and classical music scores.

Peterson’s Test Prep

For standardized test preparation, researching and selecting college and graduate schools, finding tuition assistance, and exploring careers.

Salem Online

Online access to a variety of reference works from Salem Press. These are essentially the website versions of the same Salem Press volumes we have in the library. Topics include history, science, health, and careers. A good starting point for elementary and high school research projects.

U.S. History in Context

Gale U.S. History in Context provides contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in U.S. History. Includes reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.

World History in Context

Gale World History in Context provides contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in World History. It offers reference content with full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.

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An online resource containing traditional recipes for 174 countries of the world and a food glossary with over 800 terms.  Includes articles on ingredients, food quotes, and historical timelines.

Thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals such as the Economist, country-and industry-focused reports, and downloadable data.

Contains millions of searchable historic newspaper pages, dating as far back as the 1700s from around the world. Archives are not complete runs of newspapers.

Online version of the standard encyclopedia with updated science and technology news, biographies, learning resources, study guides, and links to related web sites.

Over 400 references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, maps and over 4,000 slave narratives explore their history and contemporary culture in the United States. Includes a timeline and lesson plans.

The New England Historic Genealogical Society database provides access to over 3,000 searchable collections, with information on over 135 million names and their NEHGS Register collection.

The American Indian Experience is a digital resource that illuminates the histories and contemporary cultures of the Native peoples of North America. This resource includes references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps.

Genealogy resource with over 1.5 billion names. Includes records from U.S. census, military, court, land, probate, church records, and passenger lists.

A unique fully-searchable collection, Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity, Part 1: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Rare and unique content from microfilm, newsletters, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more.

This resource presents digital collections of historical documents, supporting the research and study needs of scholars and students at the college and university level.

Art & Architecture Source is the largest full-text art research database covering fine, decorative and commercial art, as well as architecture and architectural design. With strong international coverage, it offers hundreds of full-text art journals, magazines and books, plus detailed indexing and abstracts and thousands of images.

Citations to articles, reproductions, and book reviews in periodicals, yearbooks, and museum bulletins published worldwide. Covers archeology, architecture, film, photography, etc. 1929-1984.

Access free music lessons with your library card!  ArtistWorks provides video based instruction from world class musicians.  Access ArtistWorks via the  Libby app .

The Asian American Experience is a digital resource that illuminates the histories and contemporary culture of Asian Americans. This resource includes references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps.

Contains over 211,000 full-text electronic articles and book reviews, from more than 100 journals selected by leading religion scholars in the United States. Database is produced by the American Theological Library Association.

Index to 1,700 autographs collected from 1905-1910 by former City Librarian Charles Lummis. Lummis sent specially designed library stationery to all the leading men and some women of the day asking them to improve the page with a saying, drawing, or other inspiring example. Call the Rare Books Department at (213) 228-7350 for an appointment to view the collection.

Covers more than 2,500 U.S. and international periodicals on subjects of archaeology, architectural design, city planning, interior design and decoration, landscape architecture, historic preservation, urban planning, plus biographical information about architects.

Banco de contenidos aulaPlaneta- es una base de datos avanzada diseñada para estudiantes de secundaria y estudiantes adultos. Los artículos son altamente visuales y en un nivel avanzado de lectura en español que permiten a los estudiantes encontrar estadísticas mundiales o regionales.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Extensive data on the habitats and ecosystems of more than 1,200 species identified by U.S. Fish and Wildlife service, arranged taxonomically, 6 volumes.

Index to 181 images, mostly photographs, of opera singers and other artists brought to the L.A. musical stage at the turn of the 20th century by impresario L.E. Behymer.

BiblioBoard features books, articles, images, photographs, maps, pamphlets, and documents as well as streaming audio and video content on a wide variety of topics. All content is available on an unlimited multi-user basis with no checkouts or returns. You can access BiblioBoard content from the web or various mobile devices using your library card number. Download the free app using these links:  Web ,  iPad ,  Nexus ,  Kindl e Fire HD   Just choose "Los Angeles Public Library" from the Library Credentials drop down, then enter your library card # and pin.

An index to biographical dictionaries and directories. Each record provides name, birth and death dates, and the titles of the books in which a biographical sketch of the individual can be found.

Offers the in-depth profiles from H.W. Wilson’s Current Biography and World Authors, as well as periodical coverage of Biography Index and the specialist content of Junior Authors & Illustrators. Search this resource to access full-text biographies, articles and images from today’s leading magazines and journals.

This online resource focuses on  African American U.S. history, featuring historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, and correspondence.

The content in this database is sourced from more than 19,000 American and global news sources, including over 400 current and historical Black publications and reflects the experience and impact of African Americans as recorded by the news media.

Read, watch and listen to books and book videos! This fun Scholastic website reinforces reading skills for early readers, reluctant readers and English language learners for grades preK-3.

Index to 1,300 bookplates commissioned by people who wished to identify the books in their libraries through a unique work of art. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", with the images available for online viewing.

Using HelpNow, K-12 students and adults can access free, on-demand, academic tutoring in English, math, science, social studies, writing, and world languages (ESL, Spanish, Tagalog, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (except major holidays). Tutoring is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. HelpNow also offers expert assistance filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®), a diagnostic test center for ACT/SAT, GRE/HiSET, and AP test prep with customized study plans, lessons, videos, and practice tests, and private virtual study rooms.

This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.

Brainfuse VetNow is an all-in-one suite of services designed for a wide range of career and veteran needs including access to live help and links for navigating the Veterans Affairs system.

Una enciclopedia en dos partes con portales para estudiantes de primaria y secundaria.

This digital resource is a three-part multi-subject encyclopedia with portals for elementary, middle, and high school students.

Business Insights: Essentials brings together in a single database company profiles, company brand information, rankings, investment reports, company histories, chronologies, and periodicals.

Index of current magazine subscriptions for the Central Library's Business and Economics Department.

Bibliographies, abstracts, and location of reference tools kept in the reference area of the Central Library's Business & Economics Department.

Get free access to practice tests for Class C, Commercial, and Motorcycle license tests from Driving-Tests.org. Practice tests are available in English, Spanish and Russian, and the CA DMV Handbook is available to download in multiple languages.

Index to adult fiction which takes place in California. Index can be searched by author, title, locale, decade in which the story takes place, and/or major characters.

Indexes information about people, places, and events that have had a significant impact on life in Southern California. Most newspapers, magazines, and books cited here can be found in the Central Library. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", many of the source materials can be viewed online.

Index to 456 images in various media including wood engraving from the mid-20th century.

The Los Angeles Public Library has partnered with Smart Horizons to offer grants so adult learners can obtain a free high school diploma and career certificate with Career Online High School. This innovative curriculum offers the convenience of an anytime-anywhere online learning platform and interactive, engaging content that can help you achieve your educational goals.

Salem Career ebook. Profiles describing specific fields of interest available to those who wish to work overseas, including information about opportunities and prospects, training, advancement, earnings, working conditions, etc.  Also covers requirements for working overseas such as visas, vaccinations, work permits, and residency requirements.

Index to The Joseph E. Casey Fashion Plate Collection, which contains over 6,000 handcolored fashion plates from British and American magazines dating from the 1790s to the 1880s. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", the images are available for online viewing.

The largest source of web-based California legal commentary and analysis

Access provided by the L.A. Law Library. Access available only at the Van Nuys Branch Library.

Gain access to English Language Learning/ESL courses, Spanish literacy for Spanish speakers with little to no reading or writing ability in Spanish and The SkillBuilder program—a series of courses in reading, writing and social studies for native English speakers preparing to take one of the high school equivalency tests, such as the HiSET or GED. All lessons provided with the aid of a cellphone.

Statistics on demographics, social, economic and housing characteristics for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura Counties compiled by Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC).

Statistics on demographics, social, economic and housing characteristics compiled by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC).

Standard auto repair manuals online with photographs, diagnostics, step-by-step repair procedures, maintenance schedules, wiring diagrams, recalls and Technical Service Bulletins for automobiles and light trucks

This selection of Los Angeles-Area City and Street-Address Directories spans from 1875-1987 and can be searched by name or address. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections," the directories have been digitized and can be viewed online.

A listing of paper and microform U.S. city, county state, and regional directories located in the History & Genealogy Department. The collection also includes some Canadian Directories.

Get access to ConsumerReports.org with your library card and read expert reviews on thousands of products from lawnmowers to laundry detergents. ConsumerReports.org includes links to commercial retailers. The Los Angeles Public Library does not endorse or have an arrangement with any retailer listed.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Covers over 450 designers, milliners, footwear designers, and fashion houses that have been active throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Index to over 2,500 promotional booklets on food and cooking from commercial and non-commercial sources. The booklets date from the late 19th. century and show the development of advertising art as well as the stated purpose. Call the Rare Books Department at (213) 228-7350 for an appointment to view the booklets.

Annual series from U.S. Census Bureau provides national economic data by industry and county, uses SIC and NAICS classification systems.

Craftsy is an online resource for all creative makers that includes over 3,000 hours of diverse video instruction for patrons that are just getting started or looking for advanced techniques. Access Craftsy via the Libby app .

Brief country reports with concise information on the history, people, customs, lifestyle, society, travel information and more for over 175 countries.

Browse daily life in the ancient world, medieval world, 15th and 16 centuries, 17th and 18th centuries, 19th century, and modern world and find out what it was like.

U.S. directory with regularly updated listings and profiles for over 60 million current and new businesses, over two million job listings, 320 million people, and two million new movers.  Look up addresses and telephone numbers. Find and check consumer businesses.  Seek job openings.  Identify business competition or support services.  Research potential customers and markets.  Search options include name, location, type or size of business, consumer demographics and lifestyles.  Report options include lists, data charts and maps.

Streaming films available to watch online, mostly foreign language but also has some classic American cinema. Includes feature films as well as documentaries.

Offering Spanish language e-books that can be read online or downloaded to devices, as well as language courses for Spanish, English, and "Quick Languages", a course in simple words and phrases in 12 languages. Also offers multimedia sections with art, music and PC instruction.

Más de 100 clases prácticas en video, con explicaciones paso a paso, para dominar desde las herramientas más básicas hasta las más avanzadas de tu PC.

PC Discovery Course offers more than 100 practical video courses in Spanish, with step by step instructions to master everything from the most basic to the most advanced tools on your PC.

This is not a Library Collection. It is hosted for El Pueblo

The majority of these photographs reflect the early history of the Department of Water and Power, such as the establishment of the Los Angeles Aqueduct and the work of William Mulholland.

Ebony Magazine Archive  covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014. Originally published by John H. Johnson beginning in November 1945,  Ebony  has served as an influential African-American magazine promoting stories important to the black community and focusing on the achievements of African-American leaders.

Profiles the U.S. economy every 5 years, from national to local level providing business statistics, data by SIC and NAICS.

The majority of the photographs owned by El Pueblo Monument concern the history of Olvera Street, the Mexican marketplace that was founded in 1930, and its traditional yearly events, such as the Blessing of the Animals, Cinco de Mayo, Las Posadas, and Mexican Independence Day.

Enciclopedia Estudiantil Hallazgos- contiene miles de artículos fáciles de leer y repletos de ilustraciones, videos, mapas interactivos y una gran variedad de juegos y actividades para niños y jóvenes. Diseñado para desarrollar habilidades clave de lenguaje y las habilidades de investigación a lo largo de su educación.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Updated edition of Judaism that features more than 21,000 entries on Jewish life, culture, history, and religion, written by Israeli, American and European subject specialists, 22 volumes.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. General essays that historically trace the major religious families and traditions of more than 2,500 North American religious groups in the U.S. and Canada, from Adventists to Zen Buddhists.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Intended for the student and layperson, covers the social, medical and political issues related to drugs and alcohol, 4 volumes.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Over 7,000 biographies on notables from every part of the world and from all time periods, includes photos, 23 volumes.

The Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive is a full-color, article-level indexed resource for researching the history of film and the entertainment industry.  Titles include core US and UK trade publications together with film fan magazines.

An index of environmental impact reports available in the Central Library's Science & Technology Department. The file is particularly useful for locating materials in their review period.

Produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), site searches genealogical records worldwide including Ancestral Files, International Genealogical Index, census, and other vital statistics sources. Provides genealogical search advice.

You will be required to log in with a free FamilySearch ID and password to use.

The Farewell to Manzanar portal accesses the Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946, Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers, Perspectives on Day-to Day Life: Personal Justice Denied, and Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, 1981. Additionally the portal links to Japanese-American information from a variety of reference sources and details the author, Jeanne Houston, biography.

Ferguson’s Career Guidance Center is an electronic resource for lifelong career exploration and planning. It offers resources for career goals, education planning, workplace skills, finding apprenticeships and internships, conducting job searches, and much more .

Detailed film information on over 100,000 films from more than 170 countries from 1900 through 2003.

Historical Information Gatherers own the world's largest online digital collection of color fire insurance maps, real estate atlases and similar land use maps for North America.  FIMo includes map research tools and search tips to assist users in finding maps for a specific location.

Fold3 Library Edition by Ancestry supports genealogists and researchers interested in military history. The resource combines official military records with deep first-person content, including bios, photos, letters and more. More than 500 million searchable records span hundreds of years.

* Parts of this resource will not work from the Library's Information Express terminals. All functions are available when using 15-Minute and Reservation PCs.

Freegal allows users to download up to 5 music track downloads a week from the Sony Music catalog, plus unlimited streaming music. All selections are DRM-free in mp3 format. Patrons use their library card to download items.

A collection of over 200 vibrantly-colored labels, designed for citrus growers throughout Southern California, mainly during the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the labels illustrate specific locations in the region, and are an excellent example of commercial graphic design from the period, as well as documenting the industry itself. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", the images have been digitzed and can be viewed online.

Search for an individual, a friend, a relative or create a market research list from over 206 million people. Search for an individual company or create a mailing list of multiple companies from over 23 million businesses households! Access a demographic report on any geography - or compare multiple geographies - for information including income, housing, race, age, education, retail spending, consumer expenditures, businesses and more.

An online business planning tool, offering step-by-step guidance and templates for creating an entrepreneur profile. Assists you in developing a business idea, doing a break-even analysis, building a business plan, and making financial projections for both for-profit businesses and nonprofits.

Offers a wide range of highly interactive online courses. All of the courses are free, and led by expert instructors. Courses run for six weeks and new sessions begin every month. Subjects offered are Career and Professional, Computers and Technology, Personal Development and Writing and Publishing.*These courses have been designed for learners over 13 years of age.

Selection of Gale directories and other reference titles.  Search a single volume or cross-search multiple titles and editions with digital options to view, store and export the data you find.  Titles available include: Biography and Genealogy Master Index, the Encyclopedia of Associations, Market Share Reporter and, National Directory of Nonprofit Organizations.

A collection of reference eBooks on a wide variety of topics. Portions of the books can be downloaded onto eReader devices.

News and periodical articles on a wide range of topics: business, computers, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health, hobbies, humanities, law, literature and art, politics, science, social science, sports, technology with many full-text articles.

Full text medical encyclopedias, nearly 400 health and medical journals, more than 800 pamphlets and nearly 2,100 health articles from general interest publications.

Covers the world's most influential people, merging reference content with periodicals and multimedia, allowing users to search for people based on name, occupation, nationality, ethnicity, birth/death dates and places, gender, keyword and full text.

Digital resource designed for kindergarten - grade 5 students  Provides full-text, age-appropriate magazine & news articles, videos, images, graphs and reference content.  Students can dive into elementary subjects by exploring categories  like Animals, Arts, Geography, Health, Literature, People, Social Studies, Technology and more. 

Gale In Context: Environmental Studies is updated daily with news, reference materials, academic journals, videos, and more. This resource offers nearly 400 authoritative resources across the science, social studies, and humanities curriculum, including Water Privatization, Ecotourism, Air Pollution, Green Economy, and more.

Authoritative content is provided from over 800 geographically diverse newspapers, magazines, and journals, including 334 newspapers that are published in countries other than the United States

Contains information on core subjects from Science to Literature to History of student-focused subject material. Includes content of Discovering Collection database.

Periodical database designed for students in junior high and middle school, with magazines, newspapers and reference books on current events, the arts, science, popular culture, health, government, sports and more.

Pro and con arguments with contextual information and opinions on hundreds of today's hottest social issues drawn from news articles, journals, primary source documents, statistics, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites.

Information on subjects ranging from earth science and life science, to space, technology, mathematics, science history, and biography for assignments and projects.

Covers all areas of U.S. history focusing on the most significant people, events and topics from pre-colonial times to the present day seen through primary documents, original reference sources, newspaper/journal articles, images, videos, audio files, and links to vetted websites.

Contextual information on hundreds of the most significant people, events and topics in world history from full-text magazines, academic journals, news articles, primary source documents, images, videos, audio files and links to vetted websites

Gale Interactive: Science helps students better visualize and understand concepts in biology, chemistry, earth, and space science. Students and instructors can manipulate and explore 3D models that are paired with reference and periodical content for further understanding. This resource supports high school curricula and university coursework.

Collection provides over 150 full-text academic journals and magazines focusing on topics in economics, good for business classes.

Provides coverage of all business disciplines, including accounting, economics, finance, marketing, management and strategy, as well as business theory and practice. Research activities of companies and industries worldwide through business and trade publications, complemented by a selection of international, U.S., and regional news publications.

Collection of 250 subject-appropriate full-text periodicals geared to business schools and entrepreneurs, giving insights, tips, strategies, and success stories.

Collection contains more than 100 full-text magazines and journals providing resources for research in drama, music, art history, and filmmaking.

Multimedia content source that provides access to full text of nursing and allied health journals. Similar content to Health & Wellness Resource Center with emphasis on academic journals and periodicals.

Collection of over 500 industry journals with coverage of the hospitality and tourism field including cultural aspects of travel, leisure activities, and economic aspects of tourism.

Collection of nearly 100 leading industry journals for information professionals that includes such topics as information infrastructure, data processing techniques, and metadata architectures.

Base de datos que ofrece índices, imágenes y texto completo de artículos publicados en periódicos y revistas en idioma español.

Collection of nearly 40 journals with a broad view of the protection of assets industry that covers such topics as labor relations, mortgage banking, and legal issues.

Collection of nearly 400 titles that cover all aspects of the nursing profession.

Collection of nearly 400 journals from career guides to specialized industry journals on searching for and maintaining a career.

A genealogy file that contains local history information, selected history resources, and an index of family names in published genealogies located in the History & Genealogy Department.

Collection provides 150 of the major cooking and nutrition magazines that include thousands of searchable recipes, restaurant reviews, and industry

Collection of original illustrations for children's books. Index to over 200 pieces in various media, representing some of the treasures of American children's book illustration, including pieces from more than twenty Caldecott Medal recipients.

Finding aids and federal information of interest in the areas of business, science, demographics, and diplomacy.

Stream video courses led by some of the world's greatest professors on LAPL's hoopla platform.  Each course is broken into multiple easy-to-watch video lessons so you can choose how much you want to learn at a time from a wide range of topics, from Art to Zoology.  If you don't already have an LAPL hoopla account you will be prompted to create one with your library card number and email address.

Salem History e-Book. Chronicles events and people who defined the GLBT experience, from 1848-2006.

Salem History e-Book. World's most important events and developments from 1801-1900.

Salem History e-Book. More than 600 biographies from ancient times to present, worldwide.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Major reference work on the study of the animal kingdom with illustrations, 11 volumes.

Law journals, the Federal Register, CFR, USC, and US Treaties.

Collection of genealogical research materials for tracing family history and American culture. Includes the U.S. Federal Census Records, 1790-1930 and over 25,000 family and local histories.

The content in Hispanic Life in America is sourced from more than 17,000 American and global news sources, including over 700 Spanish-language or bilingual publications and reflects the experience and impact of Hispanic Americans as recorded by the news media.

HistoryGeo.com caters to history, genealogy, and land-researchers, and at its heart, displays a map with over 12.3 million original U.S. landowners from the indexes of the BLM/GLO in a single, searchable presentation along with populated places, cemeteries, waterways and more. The First Landowners project encompasses 29 public-land states and Texas, while the "Antique Maps" collection has of over 4000 maps displaying land-owners drawn from a variety of sources and time periods.

The HistoryMakers is the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive. More than 3,000 African Americans have been interviewed for this video oral history archive. The collection consists of African Americans by descent, who have made a significant contribution in some area of American life or culture, or who has been associated with a particular movement or organization that is important to the African American community.

hoopla is a digital media platform that gives access to digital entertainment content from either mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets and/or via any browser. hoopla offers e-books, e-comics, full-length feature movies, episodic television programming, full musical albums and unabridged e-audiobooks.

This service is not available from catalog computers.

Information about more than 40,000 public and non-public companies and 225,000 key executives.

ProQuest History Vault provides a wealth of key archival materials with a single search.  The Immigration Records module covers Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese immigration, to California, Hawaii, and other states; Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1906-1930; and European immigration.

Salem Press History ebook. Biographies of engineers, entrepreneurs, mathematicians, programmers, software developers, media moguls, and others who contributed to the development and expansion of the Internet.

Index to 287 prints, mostly originals, some reproductions, by various artists including Hiroshige and Utamaro.

Jet Magazine Archive  covers art, news, politics and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes over 3,100 issues providing a broad view of culture, fashion and entertainment from its first issue in 1951 through 2014. Jet was originally published as a sister publication to  Ebony Magazine  by John H. Johnson beginning in 1951. It was published weekly and covered art, fashion, entertainment, culture and news related to the African-American community.

An extensive, user-friendly archive including hundreds of photographs and transcriptions of headstones from Jewish cemeteries around the world, immigration documents, and digitized books.

Kanopy is a video streaming platform for libraries with one of the largest collections in the world - over 26,000 documentaries and feature films featuring over 1,000 producers including Criterion Collection, Kino Lorber, and the BBC.

To use Kanopy, create an account with your email address on their site. After you verify the account you will be asked to add your library card to it to begin using the service.

Consumer-friendly health education materials written for patients on diagnosis, treatment options, surgeries and procedures, wellness and safety and on-going self-care strategies. Also available in Spanish.

Nearly one million volume equivalents with Federal and State materials, a comprehensive California collection and one of the nation’s largest foreign and international law collections.

Digitized reproduction of the LA Weekly, 1978-1999.  Searchable by keyword and date range, or browse complete issues by date.  Print and download articles and images in PDF format.

Readers' advisory resource for adults that is prepared and maintained by Los Angeles Public Library Librarians.

Guide to the many resources LAPL offers for our local author community.

Over 200 volumes of content, from encyclopedias to biographies, and primary documents dating from pre-Colonial civilizations that explore their history and contemporary culture in the United States. Includes a timeline, images, maps, and lesson plans.

LawDepot provides guided, step-by-step instructions on creating over 150 state-specific legal forms and documents on estate planning, rental properties, starting a business, and more. Access LawDepot via the Libby app .

Online interactive practice exams covering adult basic, academic, job related, civil service and more. Now includes ESL Spanish Basic Skills Course.

Indexing for more than 1,500 major law reviews, legal newspapers, and international legal journals.

Access provided by the L.A. Law Library. Access available only at the Van Nuys Branch Library..

Lexis' newly designed research platform has been described as 'cleaner and easier to use' with their 'big red search box' and other features. This database includes coverage of state and federal cases and statutes, Matthew Bender California treatises, and Shepard's.

Libby is an innovative in-browser and mobile app from  OverDrive  designed to make borrowing and enjoying e-books, magazines, streaming services and audiobooks from the library easier than ever. Libby is available on your  browser  and for   Android  and  iOS .

Index to 110 large-format photos and architect renderings of the Central Library and branches. Call the Rare Books Department at (213) 228-7350 for an appointment to view the images.

Life Magazine Archive  presents an extensive collection of the famed photojournalism magazine, spanning its very first issue in November 1936 through December 2000 in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format. Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek.  Life Magazine Archive  is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.

LinkedIn Learning is an award-winning online learning site taught by recognized industry experts, offering more than 3,000 courses and 150,000 videos on business, technical and creative skills. Videos, tutorials, and courses are offered in the following languages: English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish, Mandarin, and Portuguese. When using the LinkedIn Learning app the Library ID to enter is lapl.

Access to thousands of full-text poems, stories, essays, plays and speeches.

Broad range of subject content containing criticisms, biographies, primary sources, reviews, and multimedia on writers and works around the world.

Browse a selection of local Los Angeles papers by date or search by keyword. Titles include the California Eagle (1914-1964), the Daily News (1923-1954), the Evening Post-Record (1896-1936), the Los Angeles Evening/Hollywood Citizen News (1907-1970), and a variety of others.

Browse complete issues, cover to cover, from 1934 to 2010. Search by more than 20 article types, keyword, date ranges, specific dates, author, and more. View news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, and more for added context. Print and download articles and images in PDF format.

Extensive coverage of national, international, and local news, 1985-current.

Digitized reproduction of the Los Angeles Times from its beginnings. Currently contains 1881-2015. Searchable by (keywords, author's names, articles, dates, etc.) or browseable by full page or issue. Includes photos, graphics and advertisements.

MakeMake es una plataforma de libros digitales, interactivos y animados que ofrece acceso a una colección de literatura infantil y juvenil única, proveniente de América Latina. En MakeMake encontrarás más de 300 cuentos ilustrados, historietas, novelas, mitos y leyendas para lectores desde los 3 años en adelante.

Free, online language-learning in languages that include Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Arabic, Korean, Russian, Tagalog, Greek, Latin and more. Mango has English language courses for speakers of 19 different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Russian. Access to Pimsleur's Little Pim content for children ages 0-5 is also included. Learn on the go with the Mango Mobile app for iPhone and Android.

The map collection is over one hundred years old, contains more than 100,000 items and represents a wide scope, including local, national and international cartography. The online archive focuses on maps depicting Los Angeles and the West. The online archive is part of the Library's "Visual Collections", with the maps available for online viewing.

Up-to-the-minute biographies of leaders and achievers from around the world in the areas of business, law, science, medicine, the arts, government, entertainment and more. Access to all biographies that have appeared in 24 Marquis Who's Who print titles since 1985, and Who Was Who in America volumes from1607-1985.

medici.tv’s on-demand streaming platform boasts the largest online catalog of over 1,800 videos including concerts, ballets, operas, documentaries, master classes, behind-the-scenes footage and artist interviews.

List of menus from Los Angeles, other cities, steamships, airlines, and banquets. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", images of the actual menus are being added to the records.

Mergent Archives is an online database featuring a vast, indexed collection of corporate and industry related documents. The database contains hundreds of thousands of reports covering over 100 countries and industries.

Access private and public U.S and international business data, industry news, facts and figures, executive contact information, the ability to access industry profiles and much more.

Salem History e-Book. Primary source documents with expert analysis and commentary covering the Revolutionary era to the 21st century.

Salem History e-Book. Examines key sacred texts and fundamental documents of the world's primary religions, from ancient times to present.

Miss Humblebee's Academy  is an interactive kindergarten-readiness program that introduces children ages three to six to key concepts in math, science, social studies, language and literacy, art, and music. It’s as challenging as it is fun!

‘Moazine’ is a Korean language E-magazine platform that provides access to more than 215 Korean language magazines in politics, economics, lifestyle, fashion, travel, sports, etc Download or read on-line on any electronic device with internet access.

Morningstar Investment Research Center (MIRC) provides independent analysis and real-time data on over 14,500 stocks, 24,800 mutual funds, 1,500 exchange-traded funds and 700 closed end funds, plus analyst reports on over 3,500 securities. MIRC also provides screening tools, current articles and videos and financial educational resources.

From the special collections of the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Branch Library, this collection spans from the earliest years of the motion picture industry to the World War II era. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", these selected posters have been digitized and may be viewed online.

My China Roots is a genealogy resource for researching Chinese ancestry.  Users can research ancestral villages, surname origins, and digitized zupus (documents compiled by families to record the names and details of ancestors.) 

MyHeritage Library Edition  is one of the largest, most internationally diverse genealogy databases of its kind in the world. It includes billions of historical documents from over 48 countries, millions of historical photos, public records, indexes and additional resources.

National Geographic Kids includes the complete run of the magazine from 2009 to the present, as well as books, videos, and images. High-quality informational texts are available for primary, upper elementary, and middle school in English, Language Arts, social studies, and science. Best for children aged 6 - 14.

An index to books, periodical articles and vertical file holdings of the Central Library's History & Genealogy Dept. on the tribes of North, Central, and South America.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book. Articles on theology, philosophy, history, literary figures, saints, musicians, and answers to questions related to Catholicism and the humanities, 15 volumes.

Access to the New York Times digital site.

You must create an account for access. Click Create Account to create an account with your personal email address, or Sign In if you already have created an account.

The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-1993) provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.

U.S. news from local, regional, and national sources. Diverse sources included are printed and online newspapers, blogs, journals, broadcast transcripts, and videos. Topics are wide and varied, such as politics, business, health, sports, and cultural activities.

Financial, contact, and hierarchy reporting details (including subsidiaries, affiliates, and divisions) on 137,000 companies and their key professionals worldwide.

An online resource for finding great books. Reviews, book discussion guides and annotated book lists are constantly updated. Find books by the same author, or similar books by another author. Browse by subject, genre, and theme for over 150,000 titles. 

An online resource for finding great fiction books for kids, especially pre-K through eighth grade.

Provides date, place, cause of death and obituary citation for noted actors, authors, journalists, and librarians. Coverage is more comprehensive after 1970's.

Online Book Clubs allow you to receive chapters from popular books in your daily email. Every day, Monday through Friday, you'll get a portion of a book that takes only five minutes to read. Each Monday begin a new book and by Friday you will have the chance to read 2 or 3 chapters. A variety of books are available such as fiction, nonfiction, romance, business, teen and mystery books. Sign-up for free with an e-mail address.

An index to over 2,000 orchestral scores (with parts) available for loan to orchestras in Southern California from the Central Library.

OUTWORDS captures, preserves, and shares the stories of LGBTQIA2S+ elders, to build community and catalyze social change. The site contains a free, searchable collection of original video interviews.

Theoutwordsarchive.org includes links to commercial retailers. The Los Angeles Public Library does not endorse or have an arrangement with any retailer listed.

OverDrive offers e-books, audiobooks, and videos. Additional software is required for all files. Patrons use their library card to check-out items.

Note that the OverDrive mobile app will be discontinued in early 2023, and will be replaced by Libby .

Online version of the multivolume Oxford English Dictionary

Quick reference and scholarly articles from a broad range of subjects in over 100 titles that include key titles from the Oxford Companion series and the complete Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Over 300 practice tests and courses, information on over 4,000 accredited schools, e-books containing study materials and practice tests, scholarship search, resume builder, and career modules with subjects from career change to salary negotiations.

An index to plays which remain unpublished or have only been published in periodicals. Includes references to reviews.

Pop Culture Universe is an irresistible yet authoritative digital database on popular culture in America, both past and present—in a package as dynamic as the topic it covers. Included are references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps.

Interested in getting your novel, memoir, poetry collection, children's book and more in eBook and print-ready formats? Pressbooks Public is an easy-to-use online tool that allows you to create professional quality versions of your book in ePUB, MOBI, PDF and more.

Instant access to over 2000 newspapers from 100 countries in 60 languages.

In addition to being able to read them online, users who install the PressReader app on their mobile device can download papers for offline reading without subscribing. Get the app here .

For the website, click on Sign In and then select the library card option (not necessary at library computers). After you sign in with your card, you can finish creating an account that can be used on the app. You will need to sign into the site every few days to keep the app account active.

This resource is not available from catalog computers.

Including coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak, this database curates openly available content related to coronaviruses. It includes thousands of open-access articles from the world’s leading publishers as well as current research from pre-print repositories such as arXiv and will continue to grow and evolve as more is learned about the pandemic.

This database serves as a resource for researchers at all levels. Covering more than 160 subjects areas, ProQuest Central is the largest aggregated database of periodical content. Includes both Proquest Newsstand and Research Library.

International Newsstream provides the most recent news content outside of the US and Canada, with archives which stretch back decades featuring newspapers, newswires, and news sites in active full-text format

Full text of U.S.news sources, including trade Journals, Magazines, Blogs, Podcasts, Websites and Newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Sentinel, Orange County Register, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Boston Globe, Atlanta Journal/Constitution, and the Sacramento Bee.

Access a diverse collection of music, dance and theatre content, covering hundreds of genres and a wide range of content types including audio drama from L.A. Theater Works, Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries, and a video collection with films from The Royal Shakespeare company, Broadway and The National Theatre.

Inventory forms, photographs, and other supporting documentation on outdoor sculpture found in Southern California. The Index was prepared for the Save Outdoor Sculpture! (SOS!) project of the National Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Property and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Rafu Shimpo is the longest running Japanese American newspaper in the United States and is based in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles. It began in 1903 and by the 1940s it was the most widely circulated paper in the region and included a weekly English section for second generation Japanese Americans. The Digital Archive contains all obtainable Rafu Shimpo published issues from 1914 through 2018 and includes access to rafu.com for current issues.

Students and researchers alike will benefit from this collection of statistical databases from federal and state sources covering broad subject areas such as, Population & Demographics; Education, Business & Economics; Environment & Weather; Health & Health Care' Crime, Prisons & Courts; Labor force, Employment and Earnings, and Income, Wealth and Poverty. In all, RAND State Statistics contains nearly 200 statistical databases covering all 50 states, plus an additional 80 databases on detailed information of California. 

General interest magazines on a broad range of subjects from arts, business, children, health, humanities, international, law, military, psychology, social sciences, women's interests and more.

Contains descriptive and financial data on U.S. and non-U.S. corporations. Three files are provided: Executives, Private Companies, and Public Companies.

A collection of reference eBooks and databases on Business, Careers, History, Literature, Science and Social Science. 

Digitized reproduction of theSan Francisco Chronicle, 1865-1922. Searchable by (keywords, author's names, articles, dates, etc.) or browseable by full page or issue. Includes photos, graphics and advertisements.

Digitized California maps from the Sanborn Map Company, the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years.

ScienceFlix combines curriculum-driven, leveled content, interactive features, and intuitive navigation into a single, highly-engaging digital resource for students in grades 4 through 9. ScienceFlix is available for use on PCs, Macs and most tablets and mobile devices

A listing created by the Central Library's Literature & Fiction Dept. of fiction books for adults which are part of a series or are sequels to earlier novels.

An index created by the Central Library's Literature & Fiction Dept. to short stories in collections and anthologies in the Los Angeles Public Library.

Salem History e-Book. Comprehensive coverage of the impact of the 1960's on the U.S. & Canada.

An index of songs appearing in books located in the Central Library Art & Music Department.

Get online access to local newspapers including  The Daily Bulletin , Los Angeles Daily News, Press-Telegram, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News, The Sun, The Press-Enterprise, Redlands Daily Facts, Pasadena Star-News, The Orange County Register,  and  Daily Breeze .

ProQuest History Vault provides a wealth of key archival materials with a single search. Researchers can access digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary sources. Collections are organized into three modules: Slavery and the Law,  Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Part 1 and Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantation Records, Part 2.

SRDS provides essential data on more than 125,000 media brands including digital, consumer magazines, business publications, direct marketing, newspapers, radio, TV/cable and more. Entries include publication profile, contact information, advertising rates, mechanical requirements, copy regulations and circulation.

Statista includes Quantitative data and statistics from 21 market sectors, with data on over 80,000 topics from over 18,000 sources. The focus is on business data that caters to small businesses and entrepreneurs in an easy to use format and includes eCommerce data, analysis of specific markets, and a global consumer survey. The platform is also accessible in Spanish, French, and German.

This online resource is a wealth of multimedia resources about K-12 books to support reading and library activities for all grades and content areas.

This teen digital resource features content to reflect today’s most urgent issues:  mental & emotional health, bullying, suicide, opioid abuse, gender identity, school safety, sexual harassment, college & career readiness, and more.

Tessa is the home of Los Angeles Public Library's digitized rare and historical collections. The site provides instant access to over 150,000 digitized items, including photographs, maps, prints, and more.

The Theater Program Collection contains over 11,000 programs from local and national productions.

The  Time Magazine Archive  presents an extensive collection of the prominent weekly news magazine dating back to its first issue in March 1923 through December 2000, presented in a comprehensive cover-to-cover format. Intended to be read in under an hour, each issue of  Time  contains reports of national and international current events, politics, sports, and entertainment. Capturing the relevant news for a given week, the magazine remains an important resource for researchers studying just about any aspect of 20th-Century history and life.

The Toy Movable Database contains information on Toy Moveable (also known as "pop-up") books owned by LAPL. This is a reference collection, and the items do not circulate

Available in 110+ languages, including ESL, Transparent Language Online gives learners the flexibility they need to learn a new language anytime, anywhere.

Over 100 always available Lonely Planet travel guides accessible via  Libby .

Selected travel posters of exotic destinations are from the collection housed in the International Languages Department and Rare Books at Central Library. The artwork finely demonstrates the sensibilities of 1920s and 1930s Art Deco and early Futurism. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", the posters have been digitzed and can be viewed online.

An online collection of animated, talking picture books which teach young children the joys of reading in a format they'll love.

This collection, contains photographs, documents, props, and costumes, has been cataloged. Part of the Library's "Visual Collections", the images are available for online viewing.

Free one-on-one online homework help provided by expert tutors from 11 a.m. - 11 p.m. every day. Provides assistance in English & Spanish for students in grades K-12, college intro and adult learners covering Math, Science, English, Social Studies, and Proof Point (writing review). The SkillsCenter Resource Library, available 24/7, offers worksheets, tutorials, study guides, plus an Adult Education and Career Center!

Udemy provides access to self directed video courses on job skills, software applications and also personal development topics like time management, emotional intelligence and various hobbies. The interface can be toggled to display in multiple languages, and users can filter for course offerings in languages including Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Chinese.

Bibliographic and ordering information on over 300,000 serials worldwide--covering print, electronic, and microform resources from more than 90,000 publishers and providers. Updated weekly.

Over 500 online non-credit Continuing Education Courses.  These courses are led by expert instructors and are provided for your personal enrichment. Business, Career Training, Cooking, Real Estate, Crafts and Hobbies and Psychology are a few of the subjects covered by these courses. *These courses have been designed for learners over 13 years of age.

Value Line Library grants access to a vault of investment research, approximately 3,400 stocks, data, expert analysis, and unbiased commentary with a time-tested and performance-proven Ranking System.

Salem Press History ebook. Collection of price history tables for goods, services, wages, investments, along with economic and historical chronologies in the United States,1860-2014.

Salem Press History ebook. Collection of price history tables for goods, services, wages, investments, along with economic and historical chronologies for the American colonies and the United States, 1600-1865.

A complete searchable archive of American Vogue, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month, reproduced in high-resolution color page images.

Access to the Wall Street Journal digital site.

Access to The Washington Post newspaper digital site.

Gale Virtual Reference e-Book.In-depth weather records for 18 major U.S. cities and overview of the country with information on hurricanes, tornadoes and more weather resources

Coverage of State and Federal statutes and case opinions; selected California secondary sources published by West, a Thomson Reuters Business.

Offers information on a range of topics.

With thousands of articles on a wide range of subjects, multimedia content, and a collection of biographies, World Book Kids will help kids do age-appropriate research. Designed for children, grades 1 through 4. 

World Geography provides authoritative content and online tools that develop global literacy, focusing on the geographic, political, social, economic, and cultural forces that are increasingly important in our globalized world. Included are references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps

Salem Press History ebook. World Geography by Salem Press is arranged into six volumes by world region. Each region covers the following interconnected categories to present a global view of how geography affects our world: Geographical Concepts and Worldview, Human Geography, including Political Geography, Regional Breakdown, Physical Geography, Economic Geography, Biogeography, and Natural Resources, and a Gazetteer. This resource is found by scrolling down to the bottom of its designed webpage.

This digital resource covers early human history around the globe—from prehistoric times to the beginnings of the Renaissance including references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps.

This digital resource covers history from the Renaissance to today including references, scholarly works, primary documents and papers, photographs, audio clips, and maps.

OCLC catalog of books and other materials in libraries worldwide back to 1000 BC

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Articles & Databases

Explore our collection of hundreds of online resources and databases. Use our free online content to help with your research, whether it's finding a single article, tracing a family tree, learning a new language, or anything in between.

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Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of African Americans, as well as the greater Black Diaspora. Great resource for middle school, high school, and undergraduate users. Browse by type of content and by era. 

.css-1t84354{transition-property:var(--nypl-transition-property-common);transition-duration:var(--nypl-transition-duration-fast);transition-timing-function:var(--nypl-transition-easing-ease-out);cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;outline:2px solid transparent;outline-offset:2px;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-primary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-underline-offset:2px;}.css-1t84354:hover,.css-1t84354[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:hover[data-theme=dark],.css-1t84354[data-hover][data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354:focus,.css-1t84354[data-focus]{box-shadow:var(--nypl-shadows-outline);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-primary);}.css-1t84354:visited{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-tertiary);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:visited[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-tertiary);}.css-1t84354 a:hover,.css-1t84354 a[data-hover]{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354 screenreaderOnly{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute!important;width:1px;word-wrap:normal;} American Indian Experience

Full-text digital resource exploring the history and culture of American Indians. Ideal resource for middle school, high school, and undergraduate research on American Indian history. Fully searchable, or browsable by era, tribe, state, and region. 

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Provides biographical information on 650,000+ people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines. For more in-depth biographies of figures from American history, consult American National Biography . 

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BookFlix pairs classic fictional video storybooks from Weston Woods with nonfiction eBooks from Scholastic. (PreK - 3)  

.css-1t84354{transition-property:var(--nypl-transition-property-common);transition-duration:var(--nypl-transition-duration-fast);transition-timing-function:var(--nypl-transition-easing-ease-out);cursor:pointer;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;outline:2px solid transparent;outline-offset:2px;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-primary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-underline-offset:2px;}.css-1t84354:hover,.css-1t84354[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);text-decoration-style:dotted;text-decoration-thickness:1px;}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:hover:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354[data-hover]:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:hover[data-theme=dark],.css-1t84354[data-hover][data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354:focus,.css-1t84354[data-focus]{box-shadow:var(--nypl-shadows-outline);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-primary);}.css-1t84354:visited{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-tertiary);}.chakra-ui-dark .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),[data-theme=dark] .css-1t84354:visited:not([data-theme]),.css-1t84354:visited[data-theme=dark]{color:var(--nypl-colors-dark-ui-link-tertiary);}.css-1t84354 a:hover,.css-1t84354 a[data-hover]{color:var(--nypl-colors-ui-link-secondary);}.css-1t84354 screenreaderOnly{clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);height:1px;overflow:hidden;position:absolute!important;width:1px;word-wrap:normal;} Brainfuse HelpNow

Brainfuse HelpNow eLearning is an easy, intuitive and engaging resource for all ages and levels. Consists of homework help, skills building, writing lab, foreign language lab, robust lessons from a broad range of subjects.

Now includes Online Resume Lab, Career Resources, and Adult Learning Center.

Access to this resource is open to all NYPL cardholders linked to to any of NYPL's neighborhood branches.

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Watch fun animated online movies that help with school assignments. Hundreds of BrainPOP videos explain a wide variety of concepts in Math, Science, Social Studies, English, Art & Music, Health and Technology.  

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Searches across content geared toward elementary school students, such as Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia and American Heritage Children's Dictionary.  Includes material previously accessed through Searchasaurus and Kids Search.

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Searches across content geared toward high school students, such as Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier. 

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Searches across content geared toward middle school students, such as Middle Search Plus and Newspaper Source.  Includes material previously accessed through Kids Search. 

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A child-friendly database which searches across reference books and periodicals covering history, current events, sports, government, and people. 

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Covers history and culture from all the countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Iberian Peninsula, including content on modern-day Latin American countries, the history of the Hispanic Diaspora, and indigenous peoples. Features peer-reviewed essays, reference sources, primary documents, media, newspapers, and magazines.

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NoveList K-8 Plus is especially for younger readers with reading recommendations for both fiction and nonfiction, for kids in grades K-8. 

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Opposing Viewpoints offers material to support differing views and help students develop critical thinking skills on thousands of current social topics in the forms of primary source documents, statistics, websites and multimedia.

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Pixton is a digital comic creation website for kids and teens. No drawing skills are required—just select from preset characters and backgrounds from a variety of pop culture, literary, scientific, and historical themes. Personalize the character appearances and costumes, choose poses and facial expressions, and write dialogue to tell a story. Comics are saved automatically to a user’s account and can be easily shared or printed from the Pixton site.

Patrons will need a library card to sign in through the NYPL website and access their NYPL Pixton account.

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Scholastic GO! offers the most comprehensive source of nonfiction content targeted for grades 3 and up – Includes 8 encyclopedia databases: Encyclopedia Americana, Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, The New Book of Knowledge, La Nueva Enciclopedia Cumbre, America the Beautiful, Lands and Peoples, Amazing Animals of the World, and The New Book of Popular Science

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ScienceFlix combines curriculum-driven, leveled content, interactive features, and intuitive navigation into a single, highly-engaging digital resource for students in grades 4 through 9. **Patrons should read the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy of this resource before searching.*

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Animated, talking picture books. Story books, puzzles and games, audiobooks, and books in other languages are all offered through the NYPL site.  

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Coverage of the most-studied U.S. history topics including from the arrival of Vikings in North America, American Revolution, Civil Rights movement, 9/11, and the War on Terror through a web-like experience that supports the development of critical thinking and information literacy skills. Noted for access to primary source documents.  

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Comprehensive access to encyclopedia articles, web links, periodical articles, animations, maps and more.

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From antiquity to the present day, search a broad collection of scholarly analysis and full-text periodicals, reference works and primary documents that cover the events, movements, and individuals that have shaped world history.

The following navigation utilizes arrow, enter, escape, and space bar key commands. Left and right arrows move through main tier links and expand / close menus in sub tiers. Up and Down arrows will open main tier menus and toggle through sub tier links. Enter and space open menus and escape closes them as well. Tab will move on to the next part of the site rather than go through menu items.

Homework Resources

When wikipedia won’t do..

• Don’t settle for just any content you find on the internet to complete your homework
• The library’s online research databases come from reliable and authoritative sources
• You can trust the content has been vetted and that it will keep your teacher happy

History Find historical documents, primary sources, research articles and maps for U.S. and world history with History Reference Center . Missions of California ebooks  are always available even when the print book isn’t on the shelf at your library. *Psst! The secret login and password are Missions and Missions.

Homework: Facts and Fiction

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 09 November 2021
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Rubén Fernández-Alonso 4 , 5 &
• José Muñiz 6  

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

262 Accesses

4 Citations

Homework is a universal student practice. Despite this universality, the role that homework plays in student academic performance is complex and open to various interpretations. This chapter reviews the current available evidence about the relationships between homework and achievement. We begin by examining the differences between countries and follow that by reviewing the influence of variables related to student homework behavior, teaching practices around assigning homework, and the role of the family in helping with homework. The results indicate that the relationship between time spent on homework and school results is curvilinear, and the best results are seen to be associated with moderate amounts of daily homework. With regard to student homework behavior, there is abundant evidence indicating that the “how” is much more important than the “how much.” Commitment and effort, the emotions prompted by the task, and autonomous working are three key aspects in predicting academic achievement. Effective teaching practice around homework is determined by setting it daily and systematic review. Although family involvement in the educational process is desirable, in the case of homework, direct help has doubtful effects on student achievement.

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Bembenutty, H., & White, M. C. (2013). Academic performance and satisfaction with homework completion among college students. Learning and Individual Differences, 24 , 83–88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2012.10.013

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Castro, M., Expósito-Casas, E., López-Martín, E., Lizasoain, L., Navarro-Asencio, E., & Gaviria, J. L. (2015). Parental involvement on student achievement: A meta-analysis. Educational Research Review, 14 , 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2015.01.002

Cooper, H. (1989). Homework . Longman. https://doi.org/10.1037/11578-000

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Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987–2003. Review of Educational Research, 76 , 1–62. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543076001001

Cooper, H., & Valentine, J. C. (2001). Using research to answer practical questions about homework. Educational Psychologist, 36 (3), 143–153. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326985EP3603_1

Corno, L. (1996). Homework is a complicated thing. Educational Researcher, 25 (8), 27–30. www.jstor.org/stable/1176489

De Jong, R., Westerhof, K. J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (2000). Homework and student math achievement in junior high schools. Educational Research and Evaluation, 6 (2), 130–157. https://doi.org/10.1076/1380-3611(200006)6:2;1-E;F130

Dettmers, S., Trautwein, U., Lüdtke, M., Kunter, M., & Baumert, J. (2010). Homework works if homework quality is high: Using multilevel modeling to predict the development of achievement in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102 , 467–482. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018453

Dettmers, S., Trautwein, U., & Lüdtke, O. (2009). The relationship between homework time and achievement is not universal: Evidence from multilevel analyses in 40 countries. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 20 (4), 375–405. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243450902904601

Dettmers, S., Trautwein, U., Lüdtke, O., Goetz, T., Pekrun, R., & Frenzel, A. (2011). Students‘ emotions during homework in mathematics: Testing a theoretical model of antecedents and achievement outcomes. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36 , 25–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.10.001

Dumont, H., Trautwein, U., Nagy, G., & Nagengast, B. (2014). Quality of parental homework involvement: Predictors and reciprocal relations with academic functioning in the reading domain. Journal of Educational Psychology, 102 , 144–161. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034100

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Fernández-Alonso, R., Muñiz, J. (2021). Homework: Facts and Fiction. In: Nilsen, T., Stancel-Piątak, A., Gustafsson, JE. (eds) International Handbook of Comparative Large-Scale Studies in Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38298-8_40-1

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Is Homework Good for Kids? Here’s What the Research Says

A s kids return to school, debate is heating up once again over how they should spend their time after they leave the classroom for the day.

The no-homework policy of a second-grade teacher in Texas went viral last week , earning praise from parents across the country who lament the heavy workload often assigned to young students. Brandy Young told parents she would not formally assign any homework this year, asking students instead to eat dinner with their families, play outside and go to bed early.

But the question of how much work children should be doing outside of school remains controversial, and plenty of parents take issue with no-homework policies, worried their kids are losing a potential academic advantage. Here’s what you need to know:

For decades, the homework standard has been a “10-minute rule,” which recommends a daily maximum of 10 minutes of homework per grade level. Second graders, for example, should do about 20 minutes of homework each night. High school seniors should complete about two hours of homework each night. The National PTA and the National Education Association both support that guideline.

But some schools have begun to give their youngest students a break. A Massachusetts elementary school has announced a no-homework pilot program for the coming school year, lengthening the school day by two hours to provide more in-class instruction. “We really want kids to go home at 4 o’clock, tired. We want their brain to be tired,” Kelly Elementary School Principal Jackie Glasheen said in an interview with a local TV station . “We want them to enjoy their families. We want them to go to soccer practice or football practice, and we want them to go to bed. And that’s it.”

A New York City public elementary school implemented a similar policy last year, eliminating traditional homework assignments in favor of family time. The change was quickly met with outrage from some parents, though it earned support from other education leaders.

New solutions and approaches to homework differ by community, and these local debates are complicated by the fact that even education experts disagree about what’s best for kids.

The research

The most comprehensive research on homework to date comes from a 2006 meta-analysis by Duke University psychology professor Harris Cooper, who found evidence of a positive correlation between homework and student achievement, meaning students who did homework performed better in school. The correlation was stronger for older students—in seventh through 12th grade—than for those in younger grades, for whom there was a weak relationship between homework and performance.

Cooper’s analysis focused on how homework impacts academic achievement—test scores, for example. His report noted that homework is also thought to improve study habits, attitudes toward school, self-discipline, inquisitiveness and independent problem solving skills. On the other hand, some studies he examined showed that homework can cause physical and emotional fatigue, fuel negative attitudes about learning and limit leisure time for children. At the end of his analysis, Cooper recommended further study of such potential effects of homework.

Despite the weak correlation between homework and performance for young children, Cooper argues that a small amount of homework is useful for all students. Second-graders should not be doing two hours of homework each night, he said, but they also shouldn’t be doing no homework.

Not all education experts agree entirely with Cooper’s assessment.

Cathy Vatterott, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, supports the “10-minute rule” as a maximum, but she thinks there is not sufficient proof that homework is helpful for students in elementary school.

“Correlation is not causation,” she said. “Does homework cause achievement, or do high achievers do more homework?”

Vatterott, the author of Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs , thinks there should be more emphasis on improving the quality of homework tasks, and she supports efforts to eliminate homework for younger kids.

“I have no concerns about students not starting homework until fourth grade or fifth grade,” she said, noting that while the debate over homework will undoubtedly continue, she has noticed a trend toward limiting, if not eliminating, homework in elementary school.

The issue has been debated for decades. A TIME cover in 1999 read: “Too much homework! How it’s hurting our kids, and what parents should do about it.” The accompanying story noted that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to a push for better math and science education in the U.S. The ensuing pressure to be competitive on a global scale, plus the increasingly demanding college admissions process, fueled the practice of assigning homework.

“The complaints are cyclical, and we’re in the part of the cycle now where the concern is for too much,” Cooper said. “You can go back to the 1970s, when you’ll find there were concerns that there was too little, when we were concerned about our global competitiveness.”

Cooper acknowledged that some students really are bringing home too much homework, and their parents are right to be concerned.

“A good way to think about homework is the way you think about medications or dietary supplements,” he said. “If you take too little, they’ll have no effect. If you take too much, they can kill you. If you take the right amount, you’ll get better.”

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Write to Katie Reilly at [email protected]

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Effects of homework creativity on academic achievement and creativity disposition: Evidence from comparisons with homework time and completion based on two independent Chinese samples

Huiyong fan.

1 College of Educational Science, Bohai University, Jinzhou, China

2 Research Center of Brain and Cognitive Neuroscience, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China

Jianzhong Xu

3 Department of Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Foundations, College of Education, Mississippi State University, MS, United States

Shengli Guo

Associated data.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

During the past several decades, the previous studies have been focusing on the related theoretical issues and measuring tool of homework behaviors (mainly including homework time, completion, and homework creativity). However, the effects of these homework behaviors on general creativity remain unknown. Employing a number of questionnaires, this study investigated two samples from middle schools of Mainland China. The results showed that (1) the eight-item version of Homework Creativity Behaviors Scale had acceptable validity and reliability; (2) compared with homework completion and homework time, homework creativity explained less variety of academic achievement (3.7% for homework creativity; 5.4% for completion and time); (3) homework creativity explained more variance of general creativity than that of homework completion and homework time accounted (7.0% for homework creativity; 1.3% for completion and time); and (4) homework creativity was negatively associated with grade level. Contrary to the popular beliefs, homework completion and homework creativity have positive effects on the students’ general creativity. Several issues that need further studies were also discussed.

Introduction

Homework is an important part of the learning and instruction process. Each week, students around the world spend 3–14 hours on homework, with an average of 5 hours a week ( Dettmers et al., 2009 ; OECD, 2014 ). The results of the previous studies and meta-analysis showed that the homework time is correlated significantly with students’ gains on the academic tests ( Cooper et al., 2012 ; Fan et al., 2017 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2019 ).

Homework is a multi-faceted process which has many attributes – each attribute can be identified, defined, and measured independently ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Some attributes, such as homework time ( Núñez et al., 2013 ; Kalenkoski and Pabilonia, 2017 ), homework frequency ( Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), homework completion ( Rosário et al., 2015 ), homework effort ( Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ; Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), homework purpose ( Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2009 ; Xu, 2010 , 2021 ), homework performance and problems ( Power et al., 2007 ), homework management behavior ( Xu, 2008 ), homework expectation ( Xu, 2017 ), and self-regulation of homework behavior ( Yang and Tu, 2020 ), have been well recorded in the literature, and operationally defined and measured.

Recently, a research community has noticed the “creativity” in homework (in short form, “homework creativity”) who have raised some speculations about its effects on students’ academic achievement and general creativity disposition ( Kaiipob, 1951 ; Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ; Guo, 2018 ; Guo and Fan, 2018 ; Chang, 2019 ). However, the scientific measurement of homework creativity has not been examined systematically. The relationship between homework creativity, academic achievement, and general creativity disposition, as well as the grade difference in homework creativity, are still in the state of conjectures consequently.

As a scientific probe to homework creativity, this study included three main sections. In the “Literature Review” section, the conceptualization and relevant measurement of homework creativity were summarized; the relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievements, general creativity, and the grade difference in homework behaviors and general creativity were also evaluated. These four main results related to the four research questions were also presented in the body of this article. They are reliability and validity of homework creativity behavior scale (HCBS), the relationships between the scores of HCBS and those of general creativity and academic achievement, and the grade effects of scores of HCBS. In the “Discussion” section, the scientific contributions and interpretations of the findings of this study were elaborated.

Homework creativity

Conceptual background of homework creativity.

As an attribute of homework process, homework creativity refers to the novelty and uniqueness of homework ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Specifically, the ways relating to homework creativity with extant theoretical literature are presented below.

First, creativity is a natural part of homework process which serves as a sub-process of learning. Guilford (1950) is the first psychologist who linked creativity with learning, pointing out that the acquisition of creativity is a typical quality of human learning, and that a complete learning theory must take creativity into account.

Second, according to the Four-C Model of Creativity (e.g., Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ), the homework creativity can be divided mainly into the category of “Transformative Learning” (Mini-C creativity), which is different from the “Everyday Innovation” (Little-C creativity), “Professional Expertise” (Pro-C creativity), or “Eminent Accomplishments” (Big-C creativity, Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ; Kozbelt et al., 2011 ).

The Mini-C is defined as a type of intrapersonal creativity which has personal meaning, not solid contribution or breakthrough in a field ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 , p. 76, Table 1 ). The most important point which distinguishes Mini-C from other types of creativity is the level of novelty of product. The Mini-C creativity involves the personal insight or interpretation which is new to a particular individual, but may be ordinary to others. The Little-C creativity refers to any small, but solid innovation in daily life. The Pro-C creativity is represented in the form of professional contribution which is still not a breakthrough. The Big-C creativity generates a real breakthrough appears in some field which is considered as something new to all human beings. The other difference is related with the subjects of sub-types of creativity. The Mini-C creativity mainly happens in all kinds of students. The Little-C creativity can be widely found in normal people. The Pro-C creativity’s masters are those who are proficient in some field. The Big-C creativity is related frequently with those giants who has made eminent contribution to human being.

Basic information of samples 1 and 2 included.

The Mini-C creativity frequently happens in learning process. When the contribution of the Mini-C creativity grows big enough, it can move into the category of the Little-C creativity, or the Big-C creativity. Most homework creativity is of Mini-C creativity, and of which a small part may grow as the Little-C and Big-C creativities. For example, when students independently find a unique solution to a problem in homework which has scientific meaning, a Little-C or Big-C occurs.

Third, the education researchers have observed homework creativity for many years and been manipulating them in educational practice. Kaiipob (1951) described that homework is a semi-guide learning process in which homework such as composition, report, public speech, difficult and complex exercises, experiments, and making tools and models consumes a lot of time and accelerate the development of students’ creativity disposition (p. 153).

In the recent years, creativity has become a curriculum or instruction goal in many countries (the case of United Kingdom, see Smith and Smith, 2010 ; Chinese case, see Pang and Plucker, 2012 ). Homework is the most important way that accomplish this goal. Considering Chinese in primary and secondary schools in China as an example, the curriculum standards have clearly required homework to cultivate students’ creative spirit, creative thinking, and ability to imagination since the year 2000. The results of Qian’s (2006) investigation revealed that the percent of these creative homework items in each unit fluctuates between 29 and 45%.

Previous instruments of homework behaviors

Those existent instruments measuring homework behavior can be divided into the following two categories: The single-indicator instruments and the multi-dimension instruments ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). The single-indicator instruments employ only one item to measure homework attributes, such as homework time (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ), homework frequency (e.g., De Jong et al., 2000 ), homework completion (e.g., Xu et al., 2019 ), and effort (e.g., Liu et al., 2013 ).

The typical multi-dimension instruments include Homework Process Inventory ( Cooper et al., 1998 ), Homework Purpose Scale ( Xu, 2010 ), Homework Performance Questionnaire ( Pendergast et al., 2014 ), Homework Management Scale (HMS; Xu and Corno, 2003 ), Homework Evaluating Scale ( Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015 ), Homework Problem Checklist ( Anesko et al., 1987 ), Science Homework Scale ( Tas et al., 2016 ), Homework Expectancy Value Scale ( Yang and Xu, 2017 ), and Online Homework Distraction Scale ( Xu et al., 2020 ).

Although the previous tools measured some dimensions of homework ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ), there is hardly any tool that can be employed to gauge the homework creativity. Guo and Fan (2018) extracted several attributes (i.e., time, completion, quality, purpose, effort, creativity, sociality, liking) represented in the existent instruments of homework behaviors, and put forth a multi-faceted model of homework behaviors which intuitionally predicts the existence of homework creativity.

Under the guideline of the multi-faceted model ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ), Guo (2018) developed a multi-dimensional homework behavior instrument, which detected the homework creativity as a dimension in the homework behavior of middle school students. A typical item of homework creativity in Guo (2018) is “The way I do my homework is different from others.” The subscale homework creativity reported by Guo (2018) needs to be improved because it has a small number of items with lower reliability.

Following Guo’s (2018) work, Chang (2019) conducted a new investigation focusing on homework creativity behavior. Using an open-ended questionnaire, a total of 30 students from primary, middle, and high schools were invited to answer this question, that is, “What characteristics can be considered as creative in the process of completing the homework?” Here, “creativity” refers to novelty, uniqueness, and high quality. A group of 23 specific behaviors were reported, among which the top 10 are as follows: Learning by analogy, open minded, one question with multiple solutions, unique solution, summarizing the cause of errors, constructing a personal understanding, analyzing knowledge points clearly, classifying homework contents, making more applications, having rich imagination, and a neat handwriting (see Chang, 2019 , Table 4 , p. 14). Based on these results of open-ended questionnaire, Chang (2019) invented a nine-item scale (see Table 1 and Supplementary Table S3 for details) called as the HCBS which has a good reliability coefficient (α = 0.87).

Regression analyses of homework creative behavior on academic achievement and general creativity.

AA, academic achievement; WCAPt, total score of WCAP; TWk, time spent on homework in week days; TWw, time spent on homework in weekend; HCp, homework completion; HCb, homework creativity behavior.

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievement

In the literature, homework behaviors is one cluster of variables typically including homework time, homework completion, effort, purpose, frequency, etc. Academic achievement is an outcome of homework which is operationally measured using the scores on the standardized tests, or non-standardized tests (including final examinations, or teachers’ grades, or estimations by participants themselves, those forms were used widely in the literature, see Fan et al., 2017 ). Academic achievement may be affected by a lot of factors inherited in the process of learning (see Hattie, 2009 for an overview of its correlates). The relationship between homework behaviors and academic achievement is one of the most important questions in homework field, because it is related to the effectiveness of homework ( Cooper et al., 2006 , 2012 ; Fan et al., 2017 ).

Most of the previous studies focused on the relationship between homework time and academic achievement. Cooper et al. (2006) synthesized the primary studies published from 1989 to 2003, and found that the correlation between homework time of America students and their academic achievement was about 0.15. Fan et al. (2017) reviewed those individual studies published before June 2015, and reported that the averaged correlation between homework time of international students and their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academic achievement was about 0.20. Fernández-Alonso et al. (2017) investigated a representative sample of Spanish students (more than 26,000), and the results of multi-level analysis indicated that the correlation between homework time and academic achievement was negative at student level, but positive at school level ( r = 0.16). Fernández-Alonso et al. (2019) took a survey on a big sample from 16 countries from Latin America, and reported that the relationship between homework time and academic achievement was very weak. Valle et al. (2019) analyzed the homework time, time management, and achievement of 968 Spain students finding that homework time management was positively related to academic achievement. Taken all these together, we will find that the homework has some small significant correlations with academic achievement, the average r = 0.15.

The correlation between homework completion and academic achievement has also been investigated for decades. Based on a review of 11 primary studies, Fan et al. (2017) reported a high correlation of 0.59 between them. Rosário et al. (2015) investigated 638 students, and demonstrated a correlation of 0.22 between amount of homework completed and math test scores. Xu et al. (2019) took a survey using a sample of 1,450 Chinese eighth graders, and found that the correlations between homework completion and the gains in math test scores ranged from 0.25 to 0.28. Dolean and Lervag (2022) employed the Randomized Controlled Trial design, and demonstrated that amount of homework completed has immediate effect on writing competency in which the effect of moderate amount of homework can last for 4 months. Integrating the aforementioned results, we can find that the averaged correlation between homework completion and academic achievement was higher than that between homework time with academic achievement.

Homework effort was also found to be correlated with academic achievement. Fan et al. (2017) reviewed four primary studies and returned that a medium correlation ( r = 0.31) between homework effort and academic achievement. Two recent investigations showed that this relationship is positively and reciprocally related ( r = 0.41–0.42) ( Xu, 2020 ; Xu et al., 2021 ).

The effect of homework purpose was also correlated with the academic achievement. Fan et al. (2017) summarized four existent primary studies and reported an averaged correlation of 0.11 between them. Later, Rosário et al. (2015) found a similar correlation coefficient of these two variables on a sample of 638 students. Xu’s (2018) investigation revealed that the correlation between purpose and academic achievement was about 0.40. Sun et al. (2021) investigated a larger sample ( N = 1,365), and found that the subscales of homework purpose had different correlation patterns with academic achievement (academic purpose is 0.40, self-regulatory purpose is 0.20, and approval-seeking purpose is 0.10).

Considering the case of homework creativity, there is only one study preliminarily investigated its relationship with academic achievement. Guo (2018) investigated a sample of 1,808 middle school students, and reported a significant correlation between homework creativity and academic achievement ( r = 0.34, p < 0.05).

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and general creativity

General creativity refers to the psychological attributes which can generate novel and valuable products ( Kaufman and Glăveanu, 2019 ; Sternberg and Karami, 2022 ). These psychological attributes typically included attitude (e.g., willing to take appropriate risk), motivations (e.g., intrinsic motivation, curiosity), abilities (e.g., divergent thinking), and personality (e.g., independence) ( Kaufman and Glăveanu, 2019 ; Long et al., 2022 ). These attributes can be assessed independently, or in the form of grouping ( Plucker et al., 2019 ; Sternberg, 2019 ). For instance, the divergent thinking was measured independently ( Kaufman et al., 2008 ). Also, the willing to take appropriate risk was measured in tools contain other variables ( Williams, 1979 ). There are many studies examined the relationship between learning and general creativity in the past several decades indicating that the correlation between them was around 0.22 (e.g., Gajda et al., 2017 ; Karwowski et al., 2020 ).

Regarding the relationship between homework behaviors and general creativity, there are few studies which presented some contradictory viewpoints. Kaiipob (1951) posited that homework could accelerate development of students’ general creativity disposition, because the tasks in homework provide opportunities to exercise creativity. Cooper et al. (2012) argued that homework can diminish creativity. Furthermore, Zheng (2013) insisted that homework will reduce curiosity and the ability to challenging – the two core components of creativity. The preliminary results of Chang (2019) indicated that the score of HCBS is significantly correlated with scores of a test of general creativity, Williams’ creativity packet ( r = 0.25–0.33, p < 0.05).

Previous studies on the relationship between homework behaviors and homework creativity

In Guo and Fan’s (2018) theoretical work, homework creativity was combined from two independent words, homework and creativity, which was defined as a new attribute of homework process and was considered as a new member of homework behaviors. Up till now, there are two works providing preliminary probe to the relationship between homework behaviors and homework creativity. Guo (2018) investigated a sample of 1808 middle school students, and found that homework creativity was correlated significantly with liking ( r = 0.33), correctness ( r = 0.47), completion ( r = 0.57), and purpose ( r = 0.53). Based on another sample of Chinese students (elementary school students, N = 300; middle school students, N = 518; high school students, N = 386), Chang (2019) showed that the score of homework creativity was correlated significantly with homework time ( r = 0.11), completion ( r = 0.39), correctness ( r = 0.63), effort ( r = 0.73), social interaction ( r = 0.35), quality ( r = 0.69), interpersonal relation purpose ( r = 0.17), and purpose of personal development ( r = 0.41).

Previous studies on grade differences of homework behaviors and general creativity

Grade differences of homework behaviors.

As a useful indicator, homework time was recorded frequently (e.g., Cooper et al., 2006 ; Fan et al., 2017 ). A recent meta-analysis included 172 primary studies (total N = 144,416) published from 2003 to 2019, and demonstrated that time Chinese K-12 students spent on homework increased significantly along with increasing of grades ( Zhai and Fan, 2021 , October).

Regarding homework managing time, some studies reported the grade difference was insignificant. Xu (2006) surveyed 426 middle school students and found that there was no difference between middle school students and high school students. Xu and Corno (2003) reported that urban junior school students ( N = 86) had no grade difference in homework Managing time. Yang and Tu (2020) surveyed 305 Chinese students in grades 7–9, and found that in managing time behavior, the grade differences were insignificant. The rest studies showed that the grade effect is significant. A survey by Xu et al. (2014) based on 1799 Chinese students in grades 10 and 11 showed that the higher level the grade, the lower level of time management.

Grade differences of general creativity

The findings from the previous studies suggested that the scores of general creativity deceases as the grade increases except for some dimensions. Kim (2011) reviewed the Torrance Tests of Creative thinking (TTCT) scores change using five datasets from 1974 to 2008, and reported that three dimensions of creative thinking (i.e., “Fluency,” “Originality,” and “Elaboration”) significantly decreased along with grades increase, while the rest dimension (i.e., “Abstractness of titles”) significantly increased when grades increase. Nie and Zheng (2005) investigated a sample of 3,729 participants from grades 3–12 using the Williams’ Creativity Assessment Packet (WCAP), and reported that the creativity scores decreased from grades 9–12. Said-Metwaly et al. (2021) synthesized 41 primary studies published in the past 60 years, and concluded that the ability of divergent thinking had a whole increase tendency from grades 1 to 12 with a decrease tendency from grades 8 to 11 at the same time.

The purpose and questions of this study

What we have known about homework creativity hitherto is nothing except for its notation and a preliminary version of measurement. To get deeper understanding of homework creativity, this study made an endeavor to examine its relationships with relevant variables based on a confirmation of the reliability and validity of HCBS. Specifically, there are four interrelated research questions, as the following paragraphs (and their corresponding hypotheses) described.

(i) What is the reliability and validity of the HCBS?

Because the earlier version of the HCBS showed a good Cronbach α coefficient of 0.87, and a set of well-fitting indices ( Chang, 2019 ), this study expected that the reliability and validity will also behave well in the current conditions as before. Then, we present the first set of hypotheses as follows:

H1a: The reliability coefficient will equal or greater than 0.80.

H1b: The one-factor model will also fit the current data well; and all indices will reach or over the criteria as the expertise suggested.

(ii) What degree is the score of the HCBS related with academic achievement?

As suggested by the review section, the correlations between homework behaviors and academic achievement ranged from 0.15 and 0.59 (e.g., Fan et al., 2017 ), then we expected that the relationship between homework creativity and academic achievement will fall into this range, because homework creativity is a member of homework behaviors.

The results of the previous studies also demonstrated that the correlation between general creativity and academic achievement changed in a range of 0.19–0.24 with a mean of 0.19 ( Gajda et al., 2017 ). Because it can be treated as a sub-category of general creativity, we predicted that homework creativity will have a similar behavior under the current condition.

Taken aforementioned information together, Hypothesis H2 is presented as follows:

H2: There will be a significant correlation between homework creativity and academic achievement which might fall into the interval of 0.15–0.59.

(iii) What degree is the relationship between HCBS and general creativity?

As discussed in the previous section, there are no inconsistent findings about the relationship between the score of HCBS and general creativity. Some studies postulated that these two variables be positive correlated (e.g., Kaiipob, 1951 ; Chang, 2019 ); other studies argued that this relationship be negative (e.g., Cooper et al., 2012 ; Zheng, 2013 ). Because homework creativity is a sub-category of general creativity, we expected that this relationship would be positive and its value might be equal or less than 0.33. Based on those reasoning, we presented our third hypothesis as follows:

H3: The correlation between homework creativity and general creativity would be equal or less than 0.33.

(iv) What effect does grade have on the HCBS score?

Concerning the grade effect of homework behaviors, the previous findings were contradictory ( Xu et al., 2014 ; Zhai and Fan, 2021 , October). However, the general creativity decreased as the level of grade increases from grade 8 to grade 11 ( Kim, 2011 ; Said-Metwaly et al., 2021 ). Taken these previous findings and the fact that repetitive exercises increase when grades go up ( Zheng, 2013 ), we were inclined to expect that the level of homework creativity is negative correlated with the level of grade. Thus, we presented our fourth hypothesis as follows:

H4: The score of HCBS might decrease as the level of grades goes up.

Materials and methods

Participants.

To get more robust result, this study investigated two convenient samples from six public schools in a medium-sized city in China. Among them, two schools were of high schools (including a key school and a non-key school), and the rest four schools were middle schools (one is key school, and the rest is non-key school). All these schools included here did not have free lunch system and written homework policy. Considering the students were mainly prepared for entrance examination of higher stage, the grades 9 and 12 were excluded in this survey. Consequently, students of grades 7, 8, 10, and 11 were included in our survey. After getting permission of the education bureau of the city investigated, the headmasters administrated the questions in October 2018 (sample 1) and November 2019 (sample 2).

A total of 850 questionnaires were released and the valid number of questionnaires returned is 639 with a valid return rate of 75.18%. Therefore, there were 639 valid participants in sample 1. Among them, there were 273 boys and 366 girls (57.2%); 149 participants from grade 7 (23.31%), 118 from grade 8 (18.47%), 183 from grade 10 (28.64%), and 189 from grade 11 (29.58%); the average age was 15.25 years, with a standard deviation (SD) of 1.73 years. See Table 1 for the information about each grade.

Those participants included received homework assignments every day (see Table 1 for the distribution of homework frequency). During the working days, the averaged homework time was 128.29 minutes with SD = 6.65 minutes. In the weekend, the average homework time was 3.75 hours, with SD = 0.22 hours. The percentage distribution here is similar with that of a national representative sample ( Sun et al., 2020 ), because the values of Chi-squared (χ 2 ) were 7.46 (father) and 8.46 (mother), all p -values were above 0.12 (see Supplementary Table S1 for details).

Another package of 850 questionnaires were released. The valid number of questionnaires returned is 710 with a valid return rate of 83.53%. Among them, there were 366 girls (51.50%); 171 participants from grade 7 (24.23%), 211 from grade 8 (26.06%), 190 from the grade 10 (22.96%), and 216 from grade 11 (26.76%); the average age was 15.06 years, with SD = 1.47 years.

Those participants included received homework assignments almost each day (see Table 1 for details for the distribution of homework frequency). During the working days, the averaged homework time was 123.02 minutes with SD = 6.13 minutes. In weekend, the average homework time was 3.47 hours, with SD = 0.21 hours.

The percentage distribution here is insignificantly different from that of a national representative sample ( Sun et al., 2020 ), because the values of χ 2 were 5.20 (father) and 6.05 (mother), p -values were above 0.30 (see Supplementary Table S1 for details).

Instruments

The homework creativity behavior scale.

The HCBS contains nine items representing students’ creativity behaviors in the process of completing homework (for example, “I do my homework in an innovative way”) ( Chang, 2019 , see Supplementary Table S3 for details). The HCBS employs a 5-point rating scale, where 1 means “completely disagree” and 5 means “completely agree.” The higher the score, the stronger the homework creative behavior students have. The reliability and validity of the HCBS can be found in Section “Reliability and validity of the homework creativity behavior scale” (see Table 2 and Figures 1 , ​ ,2 2 for details).

Results of item discrimination analysis and exploratory factor analysis.

**p < 0.01, two side-tailed. The same for below.

a Correlations for sample 1; b Correlations for sample 2. c Seventh item should be removed away according to the results of CFA (see section “Reliability and validity of the HCBS” for details).

Parallel analysis scree plots of the HCBS data.

The standardized solution for HCBS eight-item model. hcb, homework creativity behavior; it 1∼9, item1 ∼6, 8∼9.

Homework management scale

The HMS contains 22 items describing specific behaviors related to self-management in homework (for example, “I will choose a quiet place to do my homework” or “Tell myself to calm down when encountering difficulties”) ( Xu and Corno, 2003 ; Xu, 2008 ). The HMS employs a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 5 (completely agree). All items can be divided into five dimensions, i.e., arranging environment, managing time, focusing attention, monitoring motivation, and monitoring and controlling emotion. Among them, the monitoring and controlling emotion dimension adopts a method of reverse scoring.

Except for the internal consistency of arranging environment in sample 1, which is 0.63, the internal consistency coefficients of the five dimensions based two samples in this study are all greater than 0.7, ranging from 0.70 to 0.79. The Cronbach’s coefficients of the overall HMS-based two samples are 0.88 and 0.87, respectively. The ω coefficients of the dimensions of HMS ranged from 0.64 to 0.80. The ω coefficients of the HMS total scores were 0.88 and 0.87 for samples 1 and 2, respectively. Those reliability coefficients were acceptable for research purpose ( Clark and Watson, 1995 ; Peterson and Kim, 2013 ).

Williams’ creativity assessment packet

The WCAP including a total of 40 items is a revised version to measure general disposition of creativity (for example, “I like to ask some questions out of other’s expectation” or “I like to imagine something novel, even if it looks useless”) ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). The WCAP uses a 3-point Likert scales, in which 1 = disagree, 2 = uncertain, and 3 = agree. The higher WCAP score, the higher is the general creativity level. All items of WCAP can be scattered into four dimensions: adventure, curiosity, imagination, and challenge ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ). In this study, the Cronbach’s α coefficients of adventure, curiosity, imagination, challenge, and total scale are 0.62, 0.71, 0.78, 0.64, and 0.90, respectively. The ω coefficients were in sequence 0.61, 0.70, 0.77, 0.63, and 0.90 for adventure, curiosity, imagination, challenge, and the total score of WCAP. The correlations between the four dimensions of WCAP are between 0.47 and 0.65. The patterns of reliability coefficients and correlations between dimensions are similar to those results reported by the previous studies ( Williams, 1979 ; Wang and Lin, 1986 ; Liu et al., 2016 ) which stand acceptable reliability and validity ( Clark and Watson, 1995 ; Peterson and Kim, 2013 ).

Homework indicators

Homework time.

The participants were asked to report the time spent on homework in the past week. This technique has been employed widely in many international survey programs, such as PISA from OECD (e.g., Trautwein and Lüdtke, 2007 ). The items are as follows: (1) “Every day, from Monday to Friday, in last week, how many minutes you spent on homework?” The options are as follows: (A) 0–30 min; (B) 31–60 min (C) 61–90 min (D) 91–120 min; (E) 121–180 min; (F) 181 min or more. (2) “In last weekend, how many hours you spent on homework?” The options are as follows: (A) 0–1 h; (B) 1.1–3 h; (C) 3.1–5 h; (D) 5.1–7 h; (E) 7.1 h or more.

Homework completion

The homework completion is a useful indicator demonstrated in the previous studies ( Welch et al., 1986 ; Austin, 1988 ; Swank, 1999 ; Pelletier, 2005 ; Wilson, 2010 ), and had large correlation with achievement, as a meta-analytic results suggested ( Fan et al., 2017 ). In the survey of this study, the participants were also asked to estimate a percent of the completion of homework in the past week and fill in the given blank space. It includes three items which are as follows: “What is the percentage of Chinese/Maths/English homework assignment you completed in the last week?” “Please estimate and write a number from 0 to 100 in the blank space.”

Academic achievement

To record the academic achievement, an item required participants to make a choice based on their real scores of tests, not estimate their tests scores. The item is, “In the last examination, what is the rank of your score in your grade?” (A) The first 2%; (B) The first 3–13%; (C) The first 14–50%; (D) The first 51–84%; (E) The last 16%. The options here correspond to the percentage in the normal distribution, it is convenient to compute a Z -score for each student.

The method employed here is effective to retrieve participants’ test scores. First, the self-report method is more effective than other method under the condition of anonymous investigation. To our knowledge, participants do not have the will to provide their real information in the real name format. Second, this method transforms test scores from different sources into the same space of norm distribution which benefits the comparisons. Third, the validity of this method has been supported by empirical data. Using another sample ( N = 234), we got the academic achievement they reported and real test scores their teacher recorded. The correlation between ranks self-reported and the real scores from Chinese test were r = 0.81, p < 0.001; and the correlation coefficient for mathematics was also large, i.e., r = 0.79, p < 0.001.

Data collection procedure

There are three phases in data collection. The first one is the design stage. At this stage, the corresponding author of this study designed the study content, prepared the survey tools, and got the ethical approve of this project authorized from research ethic committee of school the corresponding author belongs to.

The second stage is to releasing questionnaire prepared. The questionnaire was distributed and retrieved by the head master of those classes involved. Neither the teachers nor the students knew the purpose of this research. During this stage, students can stop answering at any time, or simply withdraw from the survey. None of the teachers and students in this study received payment.

The third stage is the data entry stage. At this stage, the corresponding author of this study recruited five volunteers majored in psychology and education, and explained to them the coding rules, missing value processing methods, identification of invalid questionnaires, and illustrated how to deal with these issues. The volunteers used the same data template for data entry. The corresponding author of this study controlled the data entry quality by selective check randomly.

Data analysis strategies

R packages employed.

The “psych” package in R environment ( R Core Team, 2019 ) was employed to do descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, mean difference comparisons, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), reliability Analysis ( Revelle, 2022 ); and the “lavaan” package was used in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and measurement invariance test ( Rosseel, 2012 ); and the “semPlot” package was employed to draw the picture of CFA’s outputs ( Epskamp et al., 2022 ).

Analysis strategies of exploratory factor analysis and reliability

Sample 1 was used for item analysis, EFA, reliability analysis. In EFA, factors were extracted using maximum likelihood, and the promax method served as the rotation method. The number of factors were determined according to the combination of the results from screen plot, and the rule of Eigenvalues exceeding 1.0, and parallel analysis ( Luo et al., 2019 ).

The Cronbach’s α and MacDonald’s ω test were employed to test the reliability of the scale. The rigorous criteria that α ≥ 0.70 ( Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ) and ω ≥ 0.7 ( Green and Yang, 2015 ) were taken as acceptable level of the reliability of HCBS.

Analysis strategies of confirmatory factor analysis

As suggested by Hu and Bentler (1999) , two absolute goodness-of-fit indices, namely, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and two relative goodness-of-fit indices, namely, comparative fit index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) were recruited as fitting indicators. The absolute goodness-of-fit indices are less than 0.08, and the relative goodness-of-fit indices greater than 0.90 are considered as a good fit. The CFA was conducted using the second sample.

Strategies for measurement invariance

Measurement invariance testing included four models, they are Configural invariance (Model 1), which is to test whether the composition of latent variables between different groups is the same; Weak invariance (Factor loading invariance, Model 2), which is to test whether the factor loading is equal among the groups; Intercept invariance (Model 3), that is, whether the intercepts of the observed variables are equal; Strict equivalent (Residual Variance invariance, Model 4), that is, to test whether the error variances between different groups are equal ( Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Since the χ 2 test will be affected easily by the sample size, even small differences will result in significant differences as the sample size will increase. Therefore, this study used the changes of model fitting index CFI, RMSEA, and SRMR (ΔCFI, ΔRMSEA, and ΔSRMR) to evaluate the invariance of the measurement. When ΔCFI ≤ 0.010, ΔRMSEA ≤ 0.015, and ΔSRMR ≤ 0.030 (for metric invariance) or 0.015 (for scalar or residual invariance), the invariance model is considered acceptable ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Strategies of controlling common methods biases

The strategy of controlling common methods biases is mainly hided in the directions. Each part of the printed questionnaire had a sub-direction which invites participants answer the printed questions honestly. The answer formats between any two neighboring parts were different from each other which requested participants change their mind in time. For example, on some part, the answering continuum varied from “1 = totally disagreed” to “5 = total agreed,” while the answering continuum on the neighboring part is the from “5 = totally disagreed” to “1 = total agreed.” Additionally, according to the suggestion of the previous studies, the one factor CFA model and the bi-factor model can be used to detect the common methods biases (e.g., Podsakoff et al., 2012 ).

Detection of common method biases

The fitting results of the one-common-factor model using CFA technique were as follows: χ 2 = 15,073, df = 3320, p < 0.001; χ 2 / df = 4.54, CFI = 0.323, TLI = 0.306, RMSEA = 0.071, 90% CI: 0.070–0.072, and SRMR = 0.101. The results of the bi-factor model under CFA framework were presented as follows: χ 2 = 2,225.826, df = 117, p < 0.001; χ 2 / df = 19.024, CFI = 0.650, TLI = 0.543, RMSEA = 0.159, 90% CI: 0.154–0.164, and SRMR = 0.127. These poor indices of the two models suggested that the one-common-factor model failed to fit the data well and that the biases of common method be ignored ( Podsakoff et al., 2012 ).

Reliability and validity of the homework creativity behavior scale

Item analysis.

Based on the sample 1, the correlation coefficients between the items of the HCBS were between 0.34 and 0.64, p -values were below 0.01. The correlations between the items and the total score of HCBS vary from 0.54 to 0.75 ( p -values are below 0.01). On the condition of sample 2, the correlations between the items fluctuate between 0.31 and 0.58, the correlation coefficients between the items and the total score of the HCBS change from 0.63 to 0.75 ( p -values were below 0.01). All correlation coefficients between items and total score are larger than those between items and reached the criterion suggested ( Ferketich, 1991 ; see Table 2 for details).

Results of exploratory factor analysis

The EFA results (based on sample 1) showed that the KMO was 0.89, and the χ 2 of Bartlett’s test = 1,666.07, p < 0.01. The rules combining eigenvalue larger than 1 and the results of parallel analysis (see Figure 1 for details) suggested that one factor should be extracted. The eigenvalue of the factor extracted was 3.63. The average variance extracted was 0.40. This factor accounts 40% variance with factor loadings fluctuating from 0.40 to 0.76 (see Table 2 ).

Results of confirmatory factor analysis

In the CFA situation (based on sample 2) the fitting indices of the nine-item model of the HCBS are acceptable marginally, they are χ 2 = 266.141; df = 27; χ 2 / df = 9.857; CFI = 0.904; TLI = 0.872; RMSEA = 0.112; 90% CI: 0.100–0.124; SRMR = 0.053.

The modification indices of item 7 were too big (MI value = 74.339, p < 0.01), so it is necessary to consider to delete item 7. Considering its content of “I designed a neat, clean and clear homework format by myself,” item 7 is an indicator of strictness which is weakly linked with creativity. Therefore, the item 7 should be deleted.

After removing item 7, the fitting results were, χ 2 = 106.111; df = 20; χ 2 / df = 5.306; CFI = 0.957; TLI = 0.939; RMSEA = 0.078; 90% CI: 0.064–0.093; SRMR = 0.038). The changes of the fitting indices of the two nested models (eight-item vs. nine-item models) are presented as follows: Δχ 2 = 160.03, Δ df = 7, χ 2 (α = 0.01, df = 7) = 18.48, p < 0.05. After deleting item 7, both CFI and TLI indices increased to above 0.93, and RMSEAs decreased below 0.08 which suggested that the factor model on which eight items loaded fitted the data well. The average variance extracted was 0.50 which is adequate according to the criteria suggested by Fornell and Larcker (1981) . The standardized solution for the eight-item model of the HCBS was shown in Figure 2 .

Correlations between the homework creativity behavior scale and similar concepts

The results showed that the score of the HCBS was significantly correlated with the total score and four dimensions of WCAP and their correlation coefficients ranged from 0.20 to 0.29, p -values were below 0.01. Similarly, the correlations between the score of the HCBS and the scores of arranging environment, managing time, motivation management, and controlling emotion, and total score of the HMS ranged from 0.08 to 0.22, p -values were 0.01; at the meanwhile, the correlation between the score of HCBS and the distraction dimension of the HMS was r = –0.14, p -values were 0.01. The HCBS score was also significantly related to homework completion ( r = 0.18, p < 0.01), but insignificantly related to homework time (see Table 3 for details).

Correlation matrix between variables included and the corresponding descriptive statistics.

About correlation between variables, the results of sample 1 and sample 2 were presented in the lower, upper triangle, respectively.

a In analyses, grades 7, 8, 10, and 11 were valued 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively.

b TWk, the time spent on homework in the weekend; TWw, the time spent on homework from Monday to Friday; HCp, homework completion; HMSt, total score of homework management scale; AE, arrange environment; MT, manage time; MM, monitor motivation; CE, control emotion; FA, focus attention; WCAPt, WCAP total score; AD, adventure; CU, curiosity; IM, imagination; CH, challenging; HCb, homework creativity behavior; AA, academic achievement.

c Since sample 1 did not answer the WCAP, so the corresponding cells in the lower triangle are blank. *p < 0.05, two side-tailed, the same for below.

d Since there is only one item from variable 1 to 4, the α and ω coefficients cannot be computed.

Correlations between the homework creativity behavior scale and distinct concepts

The correlation analysis results demonstrated that both the correlation coefficients between the score of HCBS and the time spent on homework in week days, and time spent on in weekend days were insignificant ( r -values = 0.02, p -values were above 0.05), which indicated a non-overlap between two distinct constructs of homework creativity and time spent on homework.

Reliability analyses

The results revealed that both the Cronbach’s α coefficients of sample 1 and sample 2 were 0.86, which were greater than a 0.70 criteria the previous studies suggest ( Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994 ; Green and Yang, 2015 ).

Effect of homework creativity on academic achievement

The results (see Table 4 ) of hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that (1) gender and grade explained 0.8% variation of the score of academic achievement. This number means closing to zero because the regression equation failed to pass the significance test; (2) homework time and completion explained 5.4% variation of academic achievement; considering the β coefficients of the time spent on homework is insignificant, this contribution should be attributed to homework completion totally, and (3) the score of the HCBS explained 3.7% variation of the academic achievement independently.

Effect of homework creativity on general creativity

The results showed the following (see Table 4 for details):

(1) Gender and grade explained 1.3% variation of the total score of general creativity (i.e., the total score of WACP); homework time and completion explained 1.3% variation of the total score of general creativity disposition; and the score of the HCBS independently explained 7.0% variation of the total score of general creativity.

(2) Gender and grade explained 1.7% variation of the adventure score, and homework time and completion explained 1.6% variation of the adventure score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 6.4% variation of the adventure score.

(3) Gender and grade explained 2.4% variation of the curiosity score, and homework time and completion explained 1.1% variation of the curiosity score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 5.1% variation of the curiosity score.

(4) Gender and grade explained 0.3% variation of the imagination score, homework time completion explained 0.3% variation of the imagination score. The real values of the two “0.3%” are zeros because both the regression equations and coefficients failed to pass the significance tests. Then the score of the HCBS independently explained 4.4% variation of the imagination score.

(5) Gender and grade explained 0.3% variation of the score of the challenge dimension, homework time and completion explained 2.3% variation of the challenge score, and the score of the HCBS independently explained 4.9% variation of the challenge score.

Grade differences of the homework creativity behavior scale

Test of measurement invariance.

The results of measurement invariance test across four grades indicated the following:

(1) The fitting states of the four models (Configural invariance, Factor loading invariance, Intercept invariance, and Residual variance invariance) were marginally acceptable, because values of CFIs (ranged from 0.89 to 0.93), TLIs (varied from 0.91 to 0.93), RMSEAs (fluctuated from 0.084 to 0.095), and SRMRs (changed from 0.043 to 0.074) located the cutoff intervals suggested by methodologists ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ; see Table 5 for fitting indices, and refer to Supplementary Table S2 for the estimation of parameters).

Fitting results of invariance tests across grades.

(2) When setting factor loadings equal across four grades (i.e., grades 7, 8, 10, and 11), the ΔCFA was –0.006, ΔRMSEA was –0.007, and ΔSRMR was 0.016 which indicated that it passed the test of factor loading invariance. After adding the limit of intercepts equal across four groups, the ΔCFA was –0.008, ΔRMSEA was –0.004, and the ΔSRMR was 0.005 which supported that it passed the test of intercept invariance. At the last step, the error variances were also added as equal, the ΔCFA was –0.027, ΔRMSEA was 0.005, and the ΔSRMR was 0.019 which failed to pass the test of residual variance invariance (see Table 5 for changes of fitting indices). Taking into these fitting indices into account, the subsequent comparisons between the means of factors can be conducted because the residuals are not part of the latent factor ( Cheung and Rensvold, 2002 ; Chen, 2007 ; Putnick and Bornstein, 2016 ).

Grade differences in homework creativity and general creativity

The results of ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in the HCBS among the four grades [ F (3,1345) = 27.49, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.058, see Table 6 for details]. Further post-test tests returned that the scores of middle school students were significantly higher than those of high school students (Cohen’s d values ranged from 0.46 to 0.54; the averaged Cohen’s d = 0.494), and no significant difference occurs between grades 7 and 8, or between grades 10 and 11. See Figure 3 for details.

Grade differences in HCBS.

***p < 0.001.

The mean differences of the HCBS between the groups of grades.

To address the gap in the previous research on homework creativity, this study examined the psychometric proprieties of the HCBS and its relationship with academic achievement and general creativity. The main findings were (1) Hypotheses H1a and H1b were supported that the reliability and validity of the HCBS were acceptable; (2) Hypothesis H2 was supported that the correlation between the score of the HCBS and academic achievement was significant ( r -values = 0.23–0.26 for two samples); (3) Hypothesis H3 received support that the correlation between the scores of HCBS and WCAP was significant ( r -values = 0.20–0.29 for two samples); and (4) the H4 was supported from the current data that the score of high school students’ was lower than that of the middle school students’ (Cohen’s d = 0.49).

The positive correlations among homework creativity, homework completion, and general creativity

The first key finding should be noted is that the positive correlations with between pairs of homework creativity, homework completion, and general creativity. This result is inconsistent with prediction of an argument that homework diminishes creativity ( Cooper et al., 2012 ; Zheng, 2013 ). Specifically, the correlation between homework completion and curiosity was insignificant ( r = 0.08, p > 0.05) which did not support the argument that homework hurts curiosity of creativity ( Zheng, 2013 ). The possible reason may be homework can provide opportunities to foster some components of creativity by independently finding and developing new ways of understanding what students have learned in class, as Kaiipob (1951) argued. It may be the homework creativity that served as the way to practice the components of general creativity. In fact, the content of items of the HCBS are highly related with creative thinking (refer to Table 2 for details).

Possible reasons of the grade effect of the score of the homework creativity behavior scale

The second key finding should be noted is that the score of the HCBS decreased as the level of grades increased from 7 to 11. This is consistent with the basic trend recorded in the previous meta-analyses ( Kim, 2011 ; Said-Metwaly et al., 2021 ). There are three possible explanations leading to this grade effect. The first one is the repetitive exercises in homework. As Zheng (2013) observed, to get higher scores in the highly competitive entrance examination of high school and college, those Chinese students chose to practice a lot of repetitive exercises. The results of some behavior experiments suggested that repetitive activity could reduce the diverse thinking of subjects’ (e.g., Main et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, the repetitive exercises would lead to fast habituation (can be observed by skin conductance records) which hurts the creative thinking of participants ( Martindale et al., 1996 ). The second explanation is that the stress level in Chinese high schools is higher than in middle school because of the college entrance examination. The previous studies (e.g., Beversdorf, 2018 ) indicated that the high level of stress will trigger the increase activity of the noradrenergic system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis which could debase the individual’s performance of creativity. Another likely explanation is the degree of the certainty of the college entrance examination. The level of certainty highly increases (success or failure) when time comes closer to the deadline of the entrance examination. The increase of degree of certainty will lead to the decrease of activity of the brain areas related to curiosity (e.g., Jepma et al., 2012 ).

The theoretical implications

From the theoretical perspective, there are two points deserving to be emphasized. First, the findings of this study extended the previous work ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ). This study revealed that homework creativity had two typical characteristics, including the personal meaning of students (as represented by the content of items of the HCBS) and the small size of “creativity” and limited in the scope of exercises (small correlations with general creativity). These characteristics are in line with what Mini-C described by the previous studies ( Beghetto and Kaufman, 2007 ; Kaufman and Beghetto, 2009 ). Second, this study deepened our understanding of the relationship between learning (homework is a part of learning) and creativity which has been discussed more than half a century. One of the main viewpoints is learning and creativity share some fundamental similarities, but no one explained what is the content of these “fundamental similarities” (e.g., Gajda et al., 2017 ). This study identified one similarity between learning and creativity in the context of homework, that is homework creativity. Homework creativity has the characteristics of homework and creativity at the same time which served as an inner factor in which homework promote creativity.

The practical implications

The findings in this study also have several potential practical implications. First, homework creativity should be a valuable goal of learning, because homework creativity may make contributions to academic achievement and general creativity simultaneously. They accounted for a total of 10.7% variance of academic achievement and general creativity which are the main goals of learning. Therefore, it is valuable to imbed homework creativity as a goal of learning, especially in the Chinese society ( Zheng, 2013 ).

Second, the items of the HCBS can be used as a vehicle to help students how to develop about homework creativity. Some studies indicated that the creative performance of students will improve just only under the simple requirement of “to be creative please” ( Niu and Sternberg, 2003 ). Similarly, some simple requirements, like “to do your homework in an innovative way,” “don’t stick to what you learned in class,” “to use a simpler method to do your homework,” “to use your imagination when you do homework,” “to design new problems on the basis what learnt,” “to find your own unique insights into your homework,” and “to find multiple solutions to the problem,” which rewritten from the items of the HCBS, can be used in the process of directing homework of students. In fact, these directions are typical behaviors of creative teaching (e.g., Soh, 2000 ); therefore, they are highly possible to be effective.

Third, the HCBS can be used to measure the degree of homework creativity in ordinary teaching or experimental situations. As demonstrated in the previous sections, the reliability and validity of the HCBS were good enough to play such a role. Based on this tool, the educators can collect the data of homework creativity, and make scientific decisions to improve the performance of people’s teaching or learning.

Strengths, limitations, and issues for further investigation

The main contribution is that this study accumulated some empirical knowledge about the relationship among homework creativity, homework completion, academic achievement, and general creativity, as well as the psychometric quality of the HCBS. However, the findings of this study should be treated with cautions because of the following limitations. First, our study did not collect the test–retest reliability of the HCBS. This makes it difficult for us to judge the HCBS’s stability over time. Second, the academic achievement data in our study were recorded by self-reported methods, and the objectivity may be more accurate. Third, the lower reliability coefficients existed in two dimensions employed, i.e., the arrange environment of the HMS (the α coefficient was 0.63), and the adventure of the WCAP (the α coefficient was 0.61). Fourth, the samples included here was not representative enough if we plan to generalize the finding to the population of middle and high school students in main land of China.

In addition to those questions listed as laminations, there are a number of issues deserve further examinations. (1) Can these findings from this study be generalized into other samples, especially into those from other cultures? For instances, can the reliability and validity of the HCBS be supported by the data from other samples? Or can the grade effect of the score of the HCBS be observed in other societies? Or can the correlation pattern among homework creativity, homework completion, and academic achievement be reproduced in other samples? (2) What is the role of homework creativity in the development of general creativity? Through longitudinal study, we can systematically observe the effect of homework creativity on individual’s general creativity, including creative skills, knowledge, and motivation. The micro-generating method ( Kupers et al., 2018 ) may be used to reveal how the homework creativity occurs in the learning process. (3) What factors affect homework creativity? Specifically, what effects do the individual factors (e.g., gender) and environmental factors (such as teaching styles of teachers) play in the development of homework creativity? (4) What training programs can be designed to improve homework creativity? What should these programs content? How about their effect on the development of homework creativity? What should the teachers do, if they want to promote creativity in their work situation? All those questions call for further explorations.

Homework is a complex thing which might have many aspects. Among them, homework creativity was the latest one being named ( Guo and Fan, 2018 ). Based on the testing of its reliability and validity, this study explored the relationships between homework creativity and academic achievement and general creativity, and its variation among different grade levels. The main findings of this study were (1) the eight-item version of the HCBS has good validity and reliability which can be employed in the further studies; (2) homework creativity had positive correlations with academic achievement and general creativity; (3) compared with homework completion, homework creativity made greater contribution to general creativity, but less to academic achievement; and (4) the score of homework creativity of high school students was lower than that of middle school students. Given that this is the first investigation, to our knowledge, that has systematically tapped into homework creativity, there is a critical need to pursue this line of investigation further.

Data availability statement

Ethics statement.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the research ethic committee, School of Educational Science, Bohai University. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

Author contributions

HF designed the research, collected the data, and interpreted the results. YM and SG analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. HF, JX, and YM revised the manuscript. YC and HF prepared the HCBS. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Liwei Zhang for his supports in collecting data, and Lu Qiao, Dounan Lu, Xiao Zhang for their helps in the process of inputting data.

This work was supported by the LiaoNing Revitalization Talents Program (grant no. XLYC2007134) and the Funding for Teaching Leader of Bohai University.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.923882/full#supplementary-material

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Research Trends: Why Homework Should Be Balanced

Research suggests that while homework can be an effective learning tool, assigning too much can lower student performance and interfere with other important activities.

Homework: effective learning tool or waste of time?

Since the average high school student spends almost seven hours each week doing homework, it’s surprising that there’s no clear answer. Homework is generally recognized as an effective way to reinforce what students learn in class, but claims that it may cause more harm than good, especially for younger students, are common.

Here’s what the research says:

• In general, homework has substantial benefits at the high school level, with decreased benefits for middle school students and few benefits for elementary students (Cooper, 1989; Cooper et al., 2006).
• While assigning homework may have academic benefits, it can also cut into important personal and family time (Cooper et al., 2006).
• Assigning too much homework can result in poor performance (Fernández-Alonso et al., 2015).
• A student’s ability to complete homework may depend on factors that are outside their control (Cooper et al., 2006; OECD, 2014; Eren & Henderson, 2011).
• The goal shouldn’t be to eliminate homework, but to make it authentic, meaningful, and engaging (Darling-Hammond & Ifill-Lynch, 2006).

Why Homework Should Be Balanced

Homework can boost learning, but doing too much can be detrimental. The National PTA and National Education Association support the “10-minute homework rule,” which recommends 10 minutes of homework per grade level, per night (10 minutes for first grade, 20 minutes for second grade, and so on, up to two hours for 12th grade) (Cooper, 2010). A recent study found that when middle school students were assigned more than 90–100 minutes of homework per day, their math and science scores began to decline (Fernández-Alonso, Suárez-Álvarez, & Muñiz, 2015). Giving students too much homework can lead to fatigue, stress, and a loss of interest in academics—something that we all want to avoid.

Homework Pros and Cons

Homework has many benefits, ranging from higher academic performance to improved study skills and stronger school-parent connections. However, it can also result in a loss of interest in academics, fatigue, and a loss of important personal and family time.

Grade Level Makes a Difference

Although the debate about homework generally falls in the “it works” vs. “it doesn’t work” camps, research shows that grade level makes a difference. High school students generally get the biggest benefits from homework, with middle school students getting about half the benefits, and elementary school students getting few benefits (Cooper et al., 2006). Since young students are still developing study habits like concentration and self-regulation, assigning a lot of homework isn’t all that helpful.

Parents Should Be Supportive, Not Intrusive

Well-designed homework not only strengthens student learning, it also provides ways to create connections between a student’s family and school. Homework offers parents insight into what their children are learning, provides opportunities to talk with children about their learning, and helps create conversations with school communities about ways to support student learning (Walker et al., 2004).

However, parent involvement can also hurt student learning. Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2008) found that students did worse when their parents were perceived as intrusive or controlling. Motivation plays a key role in learning, and parents can cause unintentional harm by not giving their children enough space and autonomy to do their homework.

Homework Across the Globe

OECD , the developers of the international PISA test, published a 2014 report looking at homework around the world. They found that 15-year-olds worldwide spend an average of five hours per week doing homework (the U.S. average is about six hours). Surprisingly, countries like Finland and Singapore spend less time on homework (two to three hours per week) but still have high PISA rankings. These countries, the report explains, have support systems in place that allow students to rely less on homework to succeed. If a country like the U.S. were to decrease the amount of homework assigned to high school students, test scores would likely decrease unless additional supports were added.

Homework Is About Quality, Not Quantity

Whether you’re pro- or anti-homework, keep in mind that research gives a big-picture idea of what works and what doesn’t, and a capable teacher can make almost anything work. The question isn’t  homework vs. no homework ; instead, we should be asking ourselves, “How can we transform homework so that it’s engaging and relevant and supports learning?”

Cooper, H. (1989). Synthesis of research on homework . Educational leadership, 47 (3), 85-91.

Cooper, H. (2010). Homework’s Diminishing Returns . The New York Times .

Cooper, H., Robinson, J. C., & Patall, E. A. (2006). Does homework improve academic achievement? A synthesis of research, 1987–2003 . Review of Educational Research, 76 (1), 1-62.

Darling-Hammond, L., & Ifill-Lynch, O. (2006). If They'd Only Do Their Work! Educational Leadership, 63 (5), 8-13.

Eren, O., & Henderson, D. J. (2011). Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework? Economics of Education Review, 30 (5), 950-961.

Fernández-Alonso, R., Suárez-Álvarez, J., & Muñiz, J. (2015, March 16). Adolescents’ Homework Performance in Mathematics and Science: Personal Factors and Teaching Practices . Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication.

OECD (2014). Does Homework Perpetuate Inequities in Education? PISA in Focus , No. 46, OECD Publishing, Paris.

Patall, E. A., Cooper, H., & Robinson, J. C. (2008). Parent involvement in homework: A research synthesis . Review of Educational Research, 78 (4), 1039-1101.

Van Voorhis, F. L. (2003). Interactive homework in middle school: Effects on family involvement and science achievement . The Journal of Educational Research, 96 (6), 323-338.

Walker, J. M., Hoover-Dempsey, K. V., Whetsel, D. R., & Green, C. L. (2004). Parental involvement in homework: A review of current research and its implications for teachers, after school program staff, and parent leaders . Cambridge, MA: Harvard Family Research Project.

Database Homework #2

To receive full credit for this assignment, all your writing should be legible and all pages you submit should be stapled together. You may, of course, type your responses if you’d like.

Connecting to the database

For this homework, you will use a database of flight information. To access the database, use pgAdmin to connect to database.rhodescs.org, as we’ve been doing in class to access the Harry Potter database. However , you must connect with a different username and password. Your username is your standard Rhodes username (like your email, minus the @rhodes.edu part), and your password is the same as your username. We changed this in class, but you may have missed it if you were absent or didn’t have your laptop that day.

Once connected, look for the flights database. The tables are as follows:

customers(customerID, first, last, city, state, birthday) The customers table represents people traveling by airplane. We have unique ID for every customer, their first name, last name, the city and state in which they live, and their birthday. customerID is a key.

airports (name, airportCode, city, state, airportLat, airportLong, cityLat, cityLong, population) The airports table represents airports that travelers will arrive at and depart from. For each airport, the table stores the name of the airport, a three-letter code that is unique for each airport, the main city and state the airport serves, the latitude and longitude of the airport itself, the latitude and longitude of the city served by the airport, and the population of the city.

airlines (name, airlineCode) The airlines table stores information about the airlines that fly the planes between the airports. For each airline, the table stores the name of the airline and a two-character unique code that identifies the airline.

schedule (airlineCode, flightNumber, source, destination, departTime, arriveTime) The schedule table stores information about the individual flights that will happen on a particular day (the day itself is not important, but you can imagine this is a list of all flights that occur on one single day). For each flight, the table stores the airline’s two-character code, the flight number, the three-letter codes for the airport where the flight departs (source) and arrives (destination), and the departure and arrival times in a 24-hour clock format. Note that flight numbers may be duplicated across airlines, but not across flights. In other words, two airlines may both have a flight with number 42, but there is only one Delta flight #42 on a particular day. That means the combination of the attributes (airlineCode, flightNumber) is a key.

bookings (customerID, airlineCode, flightNumber, boardingGroup, seatRow, seatLetter) The bookings table stores information about the customers who have made reservations to fly. For each reservation, the table stores the customerID, the two-character airline code, the flight number, the boarding group for the customer (an integer between 1 and 3, inclusive), and the seat assignment (a row between 1 and 30, and a letter from A to F).

For each question below (most anyway), you will write an SQL query. Additionally, for each question with a star (*), provide the SQL query output (the table that is printed). The output can be cut-and-pasted from pgAdmin. (You can either paste a screenshot, or there is a button on the toolbar that will copy the table cells.)

Unless otherwise specified, each of these questions should be answered with a single SQL SELECT query that would hypothetically work for any logical database instance. In other words, you shouldn’t “hard-code” anything in a query that will make the query return incorrect information if any of the information in the database changes.

Question: Can I use SQL VIEWs? Answer: Yes, if you wish. Use the syntax: CREATE VIEW [name] AS SELECT ... Make sure to give the CREATE VIEW statement(s) in addition to your SELECT query.

(Remember, queries with stars must also include the query output.)

*Select the customer IDs, first, and last names of all customers who live in Memphis. [Sanity check: 6 rows]

*Select the airline code, flight numbers, and departure/arrival times of all flights scheduled to fly from MEM to ATL (MEM and ATL are the airport codes for Memphis and Atlanta). [Sanity check: 7 rows]

*Find the names, codes, and cities of all the airports in Tennessee that serve cities of at least 100,000 people. [Sanity check: 6 rows]

Find the passenger manifest (passenger first name & last name, seat row, and seat number, sorted by last name) for everyone on Delta (DL) flight 1147. [Sanity check: 29 rows]

*Find the first & last names of all passengers who reside in Tennessee who are departing the Memphis airport on flights between 9 and 10 am, along with the airline code, flight number, departure time, and destination airport. [Sanity check: 8 rows] Hint: You can compare times in PostgreSQL using the regular less-than and greater-than operators; e.g., ...WHERE arrivalTime > '4:00 PM'

Find the total number of airports in each state in the country. Return two columns: state, and number of airports.

*Find the total number of people on Delta flight 45. Hint: Delta’s two-character code is DL.

*Find the total number of rows occupied on Delta flight 45. A row is occupied if at least one person is sitting in the row.

Find a listing of all flights (here “flight” means the airline code and flight number combination) and the number of people on each flight. Return a table with columns for airline code, flight number, and number of passengers. [Sanity check: 23983 rows]

Using your query from the last question, augment the table with the source and destination airport codes. (So this should be the same 23983 rows as before, but now you should have 5 columns total.) Hint: Save this as a view! You will want to use it again!

*Find the largest number of passengers on any single flight. Return this number of passengers (one row/one column). [Sanity check: the number is between 100 and 200.]

*Find the airline code, flight number, source, and destination airport codes for the flight(s) with the largest number of passengers. Do not use any literal numbers in the query; your query should calculate the size of the largest flight and retrieve the relevant information in one query.

Note that in general , there is no guarantee that there will be only one flight that has this number of passengers on it! Your query should be able to return them all if there is more than one.

[Sanity check: For this particular database instance, there is only one flight with the largest number of passengers on it and it involves a New York City airport.]

Find a listing of the most popular routes flown, sorted in order of descending popularity. Here, a “route” means a single source airport and destination airport combination, and popularity is measured by the total number of passengers on all the flights between those two airports on a single day. Hint: use your previously-created view, and use grouping and aggregation to add up all the passengers on all the flights that share a common source/destination airport combination. Use ORDER BY to sort them. [Sanity check: 4482 rows.]

*Find the most popular route, along with its source and destination airport. Your query should return one row with the total passengers, the source airport, and the destination airport. [Sanity check: it’s a southerly route from a midwest airport to a Texas airport.]

*Find the most popular route, along with the source and destination airports, for each individual airline. (Note that in this question, the concept of a flight necessarily differentiates between different airlines that fly between the same pair of cities, whereas the previous two questions did not make this distinction.)

Return the airline code, the source and destination airport codes, and the total number of passengers that are flying that route.

Hint: this is hard. You may want to use more views.

Hint 2: You may find it useful as well to read the book section on correlated subqueries. This may be helpful as well. This question can be solved with correlated subqueries or joining a table to itself.

Hint 3: You should end up with a 12-row table. [Sanity check: You should end up with the most popular Delta (DL) route being from Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) to Salt Lake City (SLC), carrying 572 passengers in total.

Other hints, guidelines, and clarifications

Do not use the LIMIT keyword. In particular, you should not use LIMIT 1 combined with ORDER BY to find the largest or smallest anything, in SQL. The reason is that sorting results with ORDER BY is an O(n log n) operation, and then using LIMIT 1 to find the largest or smallest item wastes much of that computation; you can do this with aggregation in O(n) time.

The second reason why LIMIT 1 is often deceptive is that while it can help you find the maximum or minimum something in SQL (albeit inefficiently), it can create problems when you try to expand your query to find other attributes related to the maximum or minimum something, if the maximum or minimum appears multiple times. For instance, pretend you have a database table that stores items sold in a store and their prices. You want to find the price of the most expensive item. You can do this with an ORDER BY/LIMIT 1 query (again, it’s horribly inefficient and you shouldn’t do it!) but it works. What doesn’t work, however, is where you try to then get the name of the item that has the most expensive price — what if there are multiple items with this price? Using LIMIT 1 will only retrieve one of them, and you don’t know which one. This kind of query should be done with a subquery (see the link in the last question above for an example of this exact situation).

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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Data Blitz Event Showcases Biomechanics Research on Midwestern University Glendale Campus

Faculty, students present research projects

• AZ - Glendale

On February 2, the Glendale University Research Committee organized and hosted a successful Data Blitz event thanks to a partnership and financial support from the Midwestern University Office of Research and Sponsored Programs. The theme of this event was Biomechanics. Because this is such a broad topic, faculty and students from many different programs had the chance to showcase their unique research.

With nearly 30 people in attendance, six faculty members and students gave quick, 5-minute presentations on their various research. Margaret Klausing, PT, D.P.T., Clinical Assistant Professor, Physical Therapy Institute, showcased different case studies of improved biomechanics with biofeedback using the CAREN machine (Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment). Student Karly Evans (CVM ’24) hosted a discussion on the effects of a high fat diet on zebra finch flight biomechanics. Gina-Marie Agostini-Walesch, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, College of Dental Medicine – Arizona presented on the effects of different crown material on tooth wear patterns. Lastly, Heather Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Anatomy, discussed how the anatomy of African Wild Dogs supports their efficient running pattern, as well as their highly social pack structure.

The low-stakes format of the Data Blitz event not only provides a venue for MWU students and faculty to connect with others participating in similar research, but also to present their new, exciting data that is nearly ready for publication and get valuable feedback from their colleagues.

Related News

Pendergast 8th Graders Get Hands-On Experience at Glendale Campus

Midwestern University Researchers Earn Significant Grants to Support Projects

Faculty, Students Inducted in National First-Generation Honor Society

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Household Debt Rose by $184 Billion in Q1 2024; Delinquency Transition Rates Increased Across All Debt Types

NEW YORK — The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit . The report shows total household debt increased by $184 billion (1.1%) in the first quarter of 2024, to $17.69 trillion. The report is based on data from the New York Fed’s nationally representative Consumer Credit Panel .

The New York Fed also issued an accompanying Liberty Street Economics blog post examining credit card utilization and its relationship with delinquency. The Quarterly Report also includes a one-page summary of key takeaways and their supporting data points.

“In the first quarter of 2024, credit card and auto loan transition rates into serious delinquency continued to rise across all age groups,” said Joelle Scally, Regional Economic Principal within the Household and Public Policy Research Division at the New York Fed. “An increasing number of borrowers missed credit card payments, revealing worsening financial distress among some households.”

Mortgage balances rose by $190 billion from the previous quarter and was $12.44 trillion at the end of March. Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) increased by $16 billion, representing the eighth consecutive quarterly increase since Q1 2022, and now stand at $376 billion. Credit card balances decreased by $14 billion to $1.12 trillion. Other balances, which include retail cards and consumer loans, also decreased by $11 billion. Auto loan balances increased by $9 billion, continuing the upward trajectory seen since 2020, and now stand at $1.62 trillion.

Mortgage originations continued increasing at the same pace seen in the previous three quarters, and now stand at $403 billion. Aggregate limits on credit card accounts increased modestly by $63 billion, representing a 1.3% increase from the previous quarter. Limits on HELOC grew by $30 billion and have grown by 14% over the past two years, after 10 years of observed declines.

Aggregate delinquency rates increased in Q1 2024, with 3.2% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency at the end of March. Delinquency transition rates increased for all debt types. Annualized, approximately 8.9% of credit card balances and 7.9% of auto loans transitioned into delinquency. Delinquency transition rates for mortgages increased by 0.3 percentage points yet remain low by historic standards.

Household Debt and Credit Developments as of Q1 2024

*Change from Q4 2023 to Q1 2024 ** Change from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024

Flow into Serious Delinquency (90 days or more delinquent)

About the Report

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Household Debt and Credit Report provides unique data and insight into the credit conditions and activity of U.S. consumers. Based on data from the New York Fed’s Consumer Credit Panel , a nationally representative sample drawn from anonymized Equifax credit data, the report provides a quarterly snapshot of household trends in borrowing and indebtedness, including data about mortgages, student loans, credit cards, auto loans and delinquencies. The report aims to help community groups, small businesses, state and local governments and the public to better understand, monitor, and respond to trends in borrowing and indebtedness at the household level. Sections of the report are presented as interactive graphs on the New York Fed’s  Household Debt and Credit Report web page  and the full report is available for download.

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Volume 52, Issue 8, 8 May 2024

Critical steps in the assembly process of the bacterial 50s ribosomal subunit.

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The diversity of splicing modifiers acting on A -1 bulged 5′-splice sites reveals rules for rational drug design

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Discovering DNA shape motifs with multiple DNA shape features: generalization, methods, and validation

Chromatin damage generated by DNA intercalators leads to degradation of RNA Polymerase II

Differential expression of paralog RNA binding proteins establishes a dynamic splicing program required for normal cerebral cortex development

Activation of zinc uptake regulator by zinc binding to three regulatory sites

Set2 regulates Ccp1 and Swc2 to ensure centromeric stability by retargeting CENP-A

Leveraging chromatin state transitions for the identification of regulatory networks orchestrating heart regeneration

Lineage-determining transcription factor-driven promoters regulate cell type-specific macrophage gene expression

Zebrafish Mbd5 binds to RNA m 5 C and regulates histone deubiquitylation and gene expression in development metabolism and behavior

Phylogeny-linked occurrence of ribosome stalling on the mRNAs of Arabidopsis unfolded protein response factor bZIP60 orthologs in divergent plant species

Novel insights into the role of translesion synthesis polymerase in DNA incorporation and bypass of 5-fluorouracil in colorectal cancer

DNA-PK controls Apollo’s access to leading-end telomeres

Physical interaction with Spo11 mediates the localisation of Mre11 to chromatin in meiosis and promotes its nuclease activity

The origin recognition complex requires chromatin tethering by a hypervariable intrinsically disordered region that is functionally conserved from sponge to man

Pathogenic CANVAS (AAGGG) n repeats stall DNA replication due to the formation of alternative DNA structures

COSA-1 mediated pro-crossover complex formation promotes meiotic crossing over in C. elegans

Mutation rate heterogeneity at the sub-gene scale due to local DNA hypomethylation

Discovery of a polymorphic gene fusion via bottom-up chimeric RNA prediction

BRD2 promotes antibody class switch recombination by facilitating DNA repair in collaboration with NIPBL

A phage nucleus-associated RNA-binding protein is required for jumbo phage infection

Bridging DNA contacts allow Dps from E. coli to condense DNA

The effect of pseudoknot base pairing on cotranscriptional structural switching of the fluoride riboswitch

Identifying human pre-mRNA cleavage and polyadenylation factors by genome-wide CRISPR screens using a dual fluorescence readthrough reporter

Determinants of CRISPR Cas12a nuclease activation by DNA and RNA targets

Molecular basis of A. thaliana KEOPS complex in biosynthesizing tRNA t 6 A

Biochemical characterization of the meiosis-essential yet evolutionarily divergent topoisomerase VIB-like protein MTOPVIB from Arabidopsis thaliana

RNA polymerase SI3 domain modulates global transcriptional pausing and pause-site fluctuations

Temperature-sensitive splicing defects in Arabidopsis mitochondria caused by mutations in the ROOT PRIMORDIUM DEFECTIVE 1 gene

All exons are not created equal—exon vulnerability determines the effect of exonic mutations on splicing

RIP-seq reveals RNAs that interact with RNA polymerase and primary sigma factors in bacteria

Ribosomal collision is not a prerequisite for ZNF598-mediated ribosome ubiquitination and disassembly of ribosomal complexes by ASCC

Landscape of RNA pseudouridylation in archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus

The crystal structure of bacteriophage λ RexA provides novel insights into the DNA binding properties of Rex-like phage exclusion proteins

Unearthing a novel function of SRSF1 in binding and unfolding of RNA G-quadruplexes

Resolving the intricate binding of neomycin B to multiple binding motifs of a neomycin-sensing riboswitch aptamer by native top-down mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy

Protein G-quadruplex interactions and their effects on phase transitions and protein aggregation

Structure-functional characterization of Lactococcus AbiA phage defense system

Multiplexed in - situ mutagenesis driven by a dCas12a-based dual-function base editor

Correction to ‘Non-CpG methylation by DNMT3B facilitates REST binding and gene silencing in developing mouse hearts’

Correction to ‘somamutdb: a database of somatic mutations in normal human tissues’, correction to ‘pot-3 preferentially binds the terminal dna-repeat on the telomeric g-overhang’, live-cell imaging of human apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 in the nucleus and nucleolus using a chaperone@dna probe.

txtools: an R package facilitating analysis of RNA modifications, structures, and interactions

ORBIT for E. coli : kilobase-scale oligonucleotide recombineering at high throughput and high efficiency

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