• Approaches to educational research • Research topics• Research problems• Research purpose• Research questions

RESEARCH METHODS IN EDUCATION ED-D 561a Summer 2011

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH - INTRODUCTION

Purpose Research Question and HypothesisPurpose Research Question and Hypothesis

Purpose Statement

Research Question

Research Hypothesis

Research Objectives

Intent ~ role in research

Overall direction

Raise question to be answered

Make predication about explanations

State goals to accomplish

Form ~ appearance

One or more sentences

One or more question

One or more statements

One or more objectives

Use ~ application

Qual and quan

Qual and quan

Quantitative Typically quantitative

Placement ~ location

End of intro End of intro, after literature review or in separate section of the study

Creswell, 2009

Quantitative Qualitative

Purpose statement

Identifies the variables, their relationship, and the participants and site of research.

Intent to explore or understand the central phenomena with individuals at a research site.

Single sentence, “The purpose of this study is…”, reference a theory if germane.

The purpose of this study is to test (the theory) by relating (the independent variable) to (the dependent variable) for (participants) at the (research site).

How is that for contrived?

The purpose of this qualitative study will be to (explore discover understand describe) (the central phenomena) for (participants)(at research cite)

Quantitative Qualitative

Research Question ~ narrow and focus the purpose statement

Pose a question; begin with how what why; specify the variables; use words like describe, compare , relate; use participants and site

Open ended, general questions that the researcher would like answered during the study

How frequently do (participants) (variable) at (research site)?

Change and emerge, few and general, sometimes central and sub questions

How frequently do grade 4 students feel anxious at the FSA? ~ descriptive

Could also be relationship and or comparison questions

What is the (central phenomena) for (participants) at (research site)

Quantitative Qualitative

Hypothesis ~ narrows the research but also advances a predication about what researcher expects to find ~ tend to be more formal than questions

nada

The more students feel anxious about the FSA the more likely their grade will be influenced negatively.

Null ~ tests that in the population that there is no difference between IV and DV or between groups

Alternative ~ that there is a difference between IV and DV or between groups in population

However, Mertler and Charles have a slightly different spin on this

Research Topic

The broad subject addressed by the study

Research Problem

The issue, concern, controversy, problem to be addressed

Research Purpose

The intent of the study – what the study intends to accomplish

Research Questions

The specific questions the study will attempt to answer

Research Hypotheses

The specific statement to be evaluated statistically – often not part of the introduction since inferential statistics will not be employed.

Statement of the ProblemStatement of the Problem

An element of the introductory chapter or section of the thesis

Provides a description of the topic of the research and a statement of the research problem to be addressed.

This should not only describe where the research is heading, but also establish the significance of the research – how it will make the world better

Purpose StatementPurpose Statement

An extension of the statement of the problem to set the direction of the study – to say

• why you are doing this study

• what you intend to do

• what you intend to accomplish

Research QuestionsResearch Questions

The specific questions you are intending to answer

Variables

• Descriptive

• Comparative

• Relational

The participants

The location

Research HypothesisResearch Hypothesis

The specific statement(s) you are going to evaluate:

H0 : Reading scoregroup1

= Reading scoregroup2

H0 : Correlation Reading:Math = 0

Student achievement of valued learning outcomes is an important index of educational performance. For individual students the achievement of learning outcomes has significant long-term consequence for life success. A clear example comes from the results of the International Assessment of Adult Literacy (IALS) (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the Ministry of Industry, Canada, 2000) that show consistently strong positive relationships between levels of literacy to employment status and to earnings.

Research topic – an example

USAIrelandGermanyCanada

COUNTRY$

1 & 2 3 to 5

IALS Literacy Level

50

60

70

80

90

Em

ploy

men

t Rat

e %

Document

0 1 2 3 4 5Literacy Level

Prose

LITERACY

0 1 2 3 4 5Literacy Level

Quantitative

0 1 2 3 4 5Literacy Level

1020304050607080

PR

OP

OR

TIO

N

Support for significance

Proportion of adult Canadians in top 60% of earners in Canada

Our understanding of empirical relationships between student, home and school correlates of learning outcomes is not well developed. There is a dearth of meaning and understanding that can be attributed to the scores and statistics in relation to educational policy and practice. To attain this we need better understandings of the relationships between achievement measures and student, home and school characteristics, identifying those characteristics that are consistently and strongly related to student achievement and are accessible to policy.

Research problem

In this internationally comparative study an HLM approach was used to investigate the relationship of student SES to mathematics achievement from an international perspective using data from the PISA 2003 program that assessed mathematics achievement in 41 countries (OECD, 2003a).

In addition the effects of selected school characteristics were explored using the multilevel modeling analyses to evaluate the extent to which they modulate what could be termed the inequity of SES effects on student achievement.

Research purpose

Research questions

What is the relationship of socio-economic status to mathematics literacy achievement across the 41 countries participating in PISA 2003 ?

Do the selected school traits* influence:

• Mathematics literacy achievement ?

• The SES / Mathematics relationship ?

* school size* ratio of teachers to students* quality of educational resources* student morale* number of assessments per year in the school* ability grouping of students