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
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