Education 795 Class Notes

Contexts for ResearchAdditional Review

Note set 2

Today’s agenda

Announcements (ours and yours)

Q&A

Further Review

Quiz show!

Role of Theory in Research

“Theory provides the researcher with a selected point of view without which research would be ‘the ditty bag of an idiot, filled with bits of pebbles, straws, feathers, and other random hordings’” (Lynd, 1939 in Pedhazur, 1991)

Note the date of the Lynd quote

How many of you right now feel like you are filling a ditty bag with random hordings?

Role of Theory in Research

“In science it is observation rather than perception which plays the decisive part. But observation is a process in which we play an intensely active part.” (Popper, 1972)

What is our role as a researcher? Does it differ for quantitative vs. qualitative research?

How does our epistemology frame our research?

Role of Theory in Research

Post-hoc theorizing: To attempt to come up with a theory to explain existing data.

Post-hoc theories should not be confused with the meaningful, necessary process of theory refinement, revision or reformulation

Role of Theory in Research

“The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”

(Einstein and Infeld, 1961)

Photography, architecture, and quantitative research

Interconnections between art and science

Social organization issuesDoers, audiences, and funders

Techniques, conventions, and evaluation

Kinds of photographsHow do we know if it is a good photograph?

Thinking about pictures

Every photograph can be interpreted as the answer to one or more questions

We care whether the answer the photograph gives to our questions is true

Every question we ask of a photograph can be put, and therefore answered, in more than one way

Different questions are not the right or wrong way to ask (or answer); they are just different

From Becker, Aesthetics and truth

Photography as science

Photographs do not record reality neutrally

Impossible to separate information from expression

What question is being asked?

Yet another Lab assignment…

Chip Simons describes his technique:

I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't a clue. That's why my stuff looks so weird. I'm pretty much untrained, and I thrive on mistakes. When I look at my photographs I think, cool, that's way out of focus; or, wow, there's too much light on that guy. I could care less about making the world pretty. I'm after something I haven't seen before.

Architectural Style

How buildings learn: What happens after they’re built by Stewart Brand

Permanent structures that demand flexibility to be useful

Churchill: We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us

The High and the Low road

Two kinds of buildings that easily become loved:

One, grand and deep, I call the High Road -- durable, independent buildings that steadily accumulate experience and become in time wiser and more respected than their inhabitants

The other, quick and dirty, is the Low Road. Their speciality is swift responsiveness to their occupants. They are unrespectable, mercurial, street-smart.

Two Different Roads

Quantitative Research

There are high road and low road approaches to research as well as to photography and architecture.Which is better? Answer: It depends.We need to develop the ability to separate out issues of taste and preference, from those that are mathematical.

Our Expert Advisors on the Region of Rejection

Reminder: Region of Rejection

=a specific value

Non Rejection Region

Rejection Region

Critical Value

Rejection Region

Critical Value=.05-1.96 1.96

Review of Multiple Regression

Return to our previous example: Predict importance of promoting racial understanding.

Dependent: promote racial understanding

Independent: Race (White=0, SOC=1)

Sex (M=1, F=2) Family Income (Cont.)

Comparisons

Crosstabulations

Male Female

White Non-

Regression Results

Regression Results

Interpretation

What are the significant predictors?

Who is more likely to believe promoting racial understanding is important?

What is the strongest predictor in this model?

What might be missing?

How much variance did we explain?

This Concludes Our Review

Are you ready to be part of a quiz show?

Who wants to be a Millionaire Statistician?

Today’s Quiz Show categories

Distributions

Inference

ComparisonsCrosstabulations

Mean differences

RelationshipsCorrelation

Distributions

Describing distributions

Identifying different distributions

Using distributions

Inference

Logic of indirect proof

Steps in hypothesis testing

Null and alternate hypotheses

Type I and Type II errors

Region of rejection

For Next Week

The Literature Review: Read Pedhazur Ch 9 p 191-194

Regression Diagnostics: Read Pedhazur Ch 17 p 389-411