The research glossary defines terms used in conducting social science and policy research, for example those describing methods, measurements, statistical procedures, and other aspects of research; the child care glossary defines terms used to describe aspects of child care and early education practice and policy.
Jackknife Technique
A (usually) computer-intensive resampling method used to estimate population parameters (for example, means and percentage), and/or to gauge uncertainty in these estimates (e.g.,standard error). The name is derived from the approach that involves removing each observation (i.e., cut with a knife) one at a time (or two at a time for the second-order Jackknife, and so on), calculating the mean for each new sample (original sample minus the omitted case) and then averaging the means of the new samples.