ED 600 Test 1
2 variables that are highly correlated have a correlation coefficient near
+1.00 and −1.00
2 variable that are not related have a correlation coefficient near
0.00
What are 5 questions to ask yourself when evaluating a source?
1. What was the problem statement of the study? 2. Who was the author? 3. Where was the source published? 4. How was the study conducted? 5. When was the research conducted?
3 characteristics of a good hypothesis
1. clearly and concisely stated 2. states the relation or difference among variables 3. defines variables in measurable terms
What are the 4 parts of a methods section?
1. describe Research participants 2. describe Instruments used 3. state whether special Materials/Apparatus are needed 4. describe Design & Procedure
What are the two overriding rules of ethics?
1. that participants should not be harmed in any way—physically, mentally, or socially— 2. and that researchers obtain the participants' informed consent
Correlational research requires at least __ variables from a single group of participants.
2
Population from which researcher can realistically select participants.
Accessible population or available population
is any systematic inquiry conducted by teachers, principals, school counselors, or other stakeholders in the teaching- learning environment to gather information about the ways in which their particular schools operate, the teachers teach, and the students learn.
Action Research
____ tests measure affective characteristics (e.g., attitude, emotion, interest, personality).
Affective
State of being unknown; study participants are anonymous when their identities are hidden from the researcher.
Anonymity
____ tests measure prediction or potential versus what has been learned (e.g., Wechsler Scales).
Aptitude
Which of the following is the best example of a researchable problem?
Are there differences in the amount of time spent reading in classrooms of non-native speakers?
Kim has developed a research plan and would like to critique it before submitting it to her advisor. Which of the following guidelines does the text recommend?
Ask a colleague not involved in her research to review it critically.
___ scales measure what a person believes, perceives, or feels about self, others, activities, institutions, or situations.
Attitude
Of the following, which is a type of qualitative research?
Case Study
What type of research? Mills (1988)9 asked, "How do central office personnel, principals, and teachers manage and cope with multiple innovations?" and studied educational change in one American school district. Mills described and analyzed how change functioned and what functions it served in this district. The function of change was viewed from the perspectives of central office personnel (e.g., superintendent, director of research and evaluation, program coordinators), principals, and teachers as they coped with and managed multiple innovations, including the introduction of kindergartens to elementary schools, the continuation of a program for at-risk students, and the use of the California Achievement Test (CAT) scores to drive school improvement efforts. Mills used qualitative data collection techniques including participant observation, interviewing, written sources of data, and nonwritten sources of data.
Case Study Research
a qualitative research approach to conducting research on a unit of study or bounded system (e.g., an individual teacher, a classroom, or a school can be a case).
Case Study Research
an all-encompassing method covering design, data collection techniques, and specific approaches to data analysis.
Case Study Research
What type of research? How does having a working mother affect a child's school absenteeism? The grouping variable is the employment status of the mother (again with two possible values—the mother works or does not work); the dependent variable is absenteeism, measured as number of days absent. The researcher identifies a group of students who have working mothers and a group whose mothers do not work, gathers information about their absenteeism, and compares the groups.
Causal-Comparative Research
What type of research? How does preschool attendance affect social maturity at the end of the first grade? The grouping variable is preschool attendance (i.e., the variable can take one of two values— students attending preschool and students not attending); the dependent variable, or effect, is social maturity at the end of the first grade. The researcher identifies a group of first-graders who attended preschool and a group who did not, gathers data about their social maturity, and then compares the two groups.
Causal-Comparative Research
attempts to determine the cause, or reason, for existing differences in the behavior or status of groups of individuals.
Causal-Comparative Research
What type of research? Does an algebra aptitude test predict success in an algebra course? Scores on the algebra aptitude test are correlated with final exam scores in the algebra course. If the correlation is high, the aptitude test is a good predictor of success in algebra.
Correlational research
What type of research? What is the relation between intelligence and self-esteem? Scores on an intelligence test and a measure of self-esteem are acquired from each member of a given group. The two sets of scores are analyzed, and the resulting coefficient indicates the degree of correlation.
Correlational research
a. involves collecting data to determine whether, and to what degree, a relation exists between two or more quantifiable variables.
Correlational research
Which of the following is a typical characteristic of a qualitative research study?
Data collection is ongoing.
The change or difference in a behavior or characteristic that occurs as a result of the independent or grouping variable.
Dependent variable
Wheldon is conducting a review of the existing research on community members motivation to serve on school boards. Of the following, which represents the most important question that he should consider as he evaluates the sources?
Does the source apply to his research problem?
Which of the following is the largest educational database?
ERIC
What type of research? What is the Hispanic student culture in an urban community college? After selecting a general research question and a research site in a community college that enrolls many Hispanic students, the researcher first gains entry to the college and establishes rapport with the participants of the study. Building rapport can be a lengthy process, depending on the characteristics of the researcher (e.g., nonHispanic versus Hispanic; Spanish speaking versus non-Spanish speaking). As is common in qualitative approaches, the researcher simultaneously collects and interprets data to help focus the general research question initially posed.
Ethnographic Research
The participants are observed as they take part in naturally occurring activities within the setting.
Ethnographic research
focuses on a particular site or sites that provide the researcher with a context in which to study both the setting and the participants who inhabit it.
Ethnographic research
Is there an effect of reinforcement on students' attitude toward school? The independent variable is type of reinforcement (with three values: positive, negative, or no reinforcement); the dependent variable is attitude toward school. The researcher randomly forms three groups from a single large group of students. One group receives positive reinforcement, another negative reinforcement, and the third no reinforcement. After the treatments are applied for a predetermined time, student attitudes toward school are measured and compared for each of the three groups.
Experimental Research
What type of research? Is personalized instruction from a teacher more effective for increasing students' computational skills than computer instruction? The independent variable is type of instruction (with two values: personalized instruction and computer instruction); the dependent variable is computational skills. A group of students who have never experienced either personalized teacher instruction or computer instruction are selected and randomly divided into two groups, each taught by one of the methods. After a predetermined time, the students' computational skills are measured and compared to determine which treatment, if either, produced higher skill levels.
Experimental Research
at least one independent variable is manipulated, other relevant variables are controlled, and the effect on one or more dependent variables is observed.
Experimental Research
Identify the independent variable in the following hypothesis: Children who are given a free breakfast at school perform better on achievement tests and are more motivated for school than are those children who are not given breakfast.
Free breakfast
applicability of findings to settings and contexts different from the one in which they were obtained.
Generalizability
Which of the following research questions is most consistent with a survey study?
How many hours per week does the average 6th grader play video games?
A behavior or characteristic under the control of the researcher and believed to influence some other behavior or characteristic.
Independent variable
The researcher should seek permission from the ________, as well as any other permission required by the school or school district. Mills, Geoffrey E.. Educational Research (p. 351). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.
Institutional Review Board (IRB)
_____ describe equal intervals between values.
Interval variables
The statement of the research problem is found in which of the following research proposal sections?
Introduction
Which of the following is an example of a correlational study?
Is there a relationship between student achievement and homework completion?
Sarah is really excited about her research problem. There are many homeschoolers in her state, and she wants to research if homeschoolers should hire professional educators to assist them with curriculum development. Of the following, which is the most important concern with Sarah's research problem as currently developed?
It is not researchable.
Allie is writing a title for her qualitative study of elementary student experiences with guided inquiry in science. According to the text, what is the importance of a good title?
It provides a frame of reference for the researcher.
Lexx needs primary sources for her research proposal. Which of the following will she likely select?
Journal of Experimental Education
____ scales measure agreement on a scale. Strongly agree, Agree, Undecided, Disagree, Strongly disagree
Likert Scale
A local government group recently conducted a survey to ask those living in the community if they would like to see a new pool facility built. Example survey items are: Given the following scale answer questions 1 and 1. 1=Strongly Disagree, 2=Disagree, 3 =Neutral, 4=Agree, 5=Strongly Agree 1. Our community should build a new indoor pool facility. 1 2 3 4 5 2. I support spending tax dollars for recreational opportunities. 1 2 3 4 5 The two items best represent examples of which of the following types of items?
Likert Type Study
In which of the following quantitative research plan sections is the description of the research participants generally presented?
Method
Do results of correlational studies suggest cause-effect relations among variables?
NO
Another way to think of ___ research is that the ___ is the story of the phenomenon being investigated, and ___ is also the method of inquiry being used by the researcher.
Narrative Research
The researcher typically focuses on a single person and gathers data by collecting stories about the person's life.
Narrative Research
is the study of how different humans experience the world around them; it involves a methodology that allows people to tell the stories of their "storied lives."
Narrative Research
______ describe categorical data and are only labeled with numbers as categories and can be considered qualitative data
Nominal variables
______ describe rank order with unequal units.
Ordinal variables
A qualitative approach in which the researcher focuses on capturing the experience of an activity or concept from participants' perspectives.
Phenomenology
Makayla is interested in researching early childhood reading programs for children with preschool special education. Which of the following keywords would be best for Makayla to use first in her database search?
Preschool Reading
Where in the method section of a research plan should a researcher place any assumptions and limitations of a study?
Procedure
It is the collection, analysis, and interpretation of comprehensive narrative and visual (i.e., non-numerical) data to gain insights into a particular phenomenon of interest.
Qualitative Research
_____ approaches are based on different beliefs and designed for different purposes than quantitative research approaches.
Qualitative research
_____ is sometimes referred to as naturalistic research, naturalistic inquiry, or field-oriented research.
Qualitative research
_____ often involves the simultaneous collection of a wealth of narrative and visual data over an extended period of time, and
Qualitative research
_____ believe that findings should be derived from research conducted in real-world settings to have relevance to real-world settings.
Qualitative researchers
It is the collection and analysis of numerical data to describe, explain, predict, or control phenomena of interest.
Quantitative Research
Underlying ______ methods is the philosophical belief or assumption that we inhabit a relatively stable, uniform, and coherent world that we can measure, understand, and generalize about. This view, adopted from the natural sciences, implies that the world and the laws that govern it are somewhat predictable and can be understood by scientific research and examination.
Quantitative Research
One difference between qualitative and quantitative research is that:
Quantitative researchers state hypothesis prior to beginning the study.
_____ describe all of the characteristics of the other levels but also include a true zero point.
Ratio variables
The first step of the scientific method is to
Recognize and define a problem
Jaytee recognizes that there are limitations to her proposed research study that explores students' perceptions of campus mental health resources. As she writes her plan where will she share these limitations?
Research Procedures
Which of the following illustrates norm-referenced scoring?
Sally performed at the average of the class.
Katelin is interested in examining the relationship between years of gymnastics classes taken as a child and osteoporosis as an adult. She is concerned only with females because more girls take gymnastics than do boys and more women have osteoporosis than do men. Katelin addressing this concern and then developing research questions and hypotheses involves which step of the research process?
Selection and definition of a problem
What type of research? The effects of instruction focused on assignment completion on the homework performance of students with learning disabilities. A singlesubject experiment design was used to determine how instruction in a comprehensive, independent assignment completion strategy affected the quality of homework and the homework completion rate of eight students with learning disabilities.
Single-Subject Research
those used to study the behavior change that an individual or group exhibits as a result of some intervention or treatment.
Single-Subject Research
What type of research? The effects of a training program with and without reinforced directed rehearsal as a correction procedure in teaching expressive sign language to nonverbal students with mental retardation. Ten students with moderate to severe mental retardation were studied.
Single-subject research
What type of research? How will citizens of Yourtown vote in the next school board election? A sample of Yourtown citizens complete a questionnaire or interview, and results are presented as percentages (e.g., 70% said they will vote for Peter Pure, 20% named George Graft, and 10% are undecided).
Survey Research
What type of research? How do second-grade teachers spend their teaching time? Second-grade teachers are asked to fill out questionnaires, and results are presented as percentages (e.g., teachers spent 50% of their time lecturing, 20% asking or answering questions, 20% in discussion, and 10% providing individual student help).
Survey/Descriptive Research
Of the following, which is the best example of a qualitative research problem?
The goal of this study is to describe experiences of transgendered adolescents.
Which of the following is the best example of a standardized test?
The national achievement test
Of the following, which is a quantitative research problem?
The purpose of this study is to compare the grades of students who go to office hours and those who do not.
When reporting the literature review, what should come last, just prior to the statement of hypothesis?
The references most related to your problem
Which of the following is indicative of most survey research?
This method relies on tests and questionnaires.
Given the hypothesis statement: Those students enrolled in instrumental music programs experience less transition anxiety as they enter middle school in a large urban district than do those students not enrolled in instrumental music programs. The dependent variable in this study is:
Transition anxiety
i. a placeholder that can assume any one of a range of values
Variable
Participants identified as those from whom to seek information is the definition of
a sample
The group that the researcher would ideally like to generalize findings to is referred to as
a target population
An organized body of concepts, generalizations, and principles defines
a theory
Its purpose is to provide teacher-researchers with a method for solving everyday problems in their own settings.
action research
The primary goal of ____ is the solution of a given problem, not contribution to science.
action research
What type of research? A study on how a school grading policy change affects student learning. A team of high school teachers works collaboratively to determine how replacing number and letter grades with narrative feedback affects student learning and attitudes toward learning.
action research
What type of research? A study to determine how mathematics problem-solving strategies are integrated into student learning and transferred to real-life settings outside the classroom. An elementary teacher conducts the study in his own school.
action research
______ can use quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods research designs depending on the nature of the research problem.
action research
Of the following, which is likely a peer-reviewed source for an instructional design study?
an article in a scholarly journal.
Why is the grouping variable not called the independent variable?
because the cause has already happened. The researcher did not have control over the cause
Jill is a history teacher interested in whether differences exist in motivation to study history between students who are taught concepts sequentially through time and those who are taught concepts by geographic region. Jill's research problem is best described as a study that
comes from personal experiences
Right to have information about oneself kept private; researchers protect confidentiality when they know the identities of study participants but do not disclose that information. .
confidentiality
a quantitative measure of the degree of correspondence.
correlation
The degree to which two variables are related
correlation coefficient
What kind of research investigates relations?
correlational research
or predicted variable, which must be a valid measure of the performance to be predicted.
criterion
A respondent's score on a self-efficacy measure is considered
data
To operationalize a variable means to ___________ the variable.
define
The first step in sampling is to ____.
define a population.
According to the text, the review of literature is important early in a qualitative study because it
demonstrates assumptions of the research questions.
Given the following research question: "Are there differences in individual student achievement scores in advanced science classes between classes where students sit in the lecture-style seating and those where students sit in cluster seating?" What type of variable does achievement scores represent?
dependent variable
the study of the cultural patterns and perspectives of participants in their natural settings.
ethnographic research
What kind of research studies cause-effect phenomena?
experimental studies & causal-comparative studies
In experimental research ___variables are controlled.
extraneous
Action research is used to
find and solve educators' problems
The applicability of research findings to settings and contexts different from the one in which they were obtained.
generalizability
The cause of a causal-comparative research study is believed to influence some other behavior or characteristic and is known as the ________.
grouping variable
A good _____ is based upon sound reasoning and is consistent with existing theory or is derived from previous research.
hypothesis
a prediction of the researchers' expected findings
hypothesis
an explanation for the occurrence of certain behaviors, phenomena, or events
hypothesis
The first step in probability sampling is to
identify the population
In educational research, a test or other tool used to collect data.
instrument
One benefit of cluster sampling is that it
is effective for use in school research.
The following are purposes your text provides for research plans, EXCEPT
it provides an opportunity to obtain valuable feedback.
Of the following, the best examples of performance assessments are
lab demonstrations.
involves the systematic identification, location, and analysis of documents containing information related to the research problem. The term is also used to describe the written component of a research plan or report that discusses the reviewed documents
literature review
Peggy is planning to conduct a study in a small rural school. She recognizes it is important to include the setting information in her study. Where should Peggy place this information?
method
Hanna is conducting a problem-solving study that relates learners' motivation to number of challenging problems attempted. She defines motivation as self-efficacy. She uses a self-report instrument to measure self-efficacy. Hanna has operationalized which of the following variables?
motivation
One of the goals of _____ in education is to increase understanding of central issues related to teaching and learning through the telling and retelling of teachers' stories.
narrative research
A number near -1.00 indicates a _____ correlation.
negative
In these designs, the size of the sample is said to be ___.
one
Often researchers field-test their instruments and research plan procedures prior to conducting research. This strategy is referred to as a(n)
pilot test.
General term for the larger group from which a sample is selected or the group to which the researcher would like to generalize the results of the study.
population
A number near +1.00 indicates a _______ correlation.
positive
Which type of source is preferred?
primary source
contain first-hand information
primary source
One difference between quantitative and qualitative research plans is that
qualitative plans are flexible throughout the research process.
Narrative is a method employed by
qualitative researchers
In ______, in contrast, research is most often conducted in researcher-controlled environments under researcher-controlled conditions, and the activities of data collection, analysis, and writing are separate, discrete activities.
quantitative studies
Survey research is mainly collected through
questionnaires, interviews and observations
Standardized test scores are often given as percentile ranks. These data are considered ________________ level measurement.
ratio
Time is considered a(n) ________________level variable.
ratio
The degree to which an instrument consistently measures the construct of interest is referred to as
reliability
individuals, events, or items, selected from the population.
sample
the individuals selected from a population for a study
sample
The process of selecting a number of participants for a study.
sampling
is systematic sampling error
sampling bias
Ken randomly selected 75 students to participate in his study and then randomly assigned them to one of three conditions. When he examined his groups he found he had very unequal gender by condition. Ken's samples illustrate
sampling error
•is chance variation that occurs when a sample does not represent the population.
sampling error
Generally, qualitative researchers select a sample that is
selected purposely
What kind of research describes current conditions?
survey research
determines and reports the way things are; it involves collecting numerical data to test hypotheses or answer questions about the current status of the subject of study.
survey/descriptive research
Which of the following is a type of random sampling?
systematic
Sophia needs to conduct a survey for the Alumni Association. She takes the list of all the alumni and calls every 10th name on the list. Sophia is best illustrating
systematic sampling
Population to which the researcher would ideally like to generalize results.
target population
The review of the literature includes
the research problem of the study
A well written research topic statement generally describes what?
the variables of interest, and, ideally, important characteristics of the participants.
An organized body of concepts, generalizations, and principles that can be subjected to investigation.
theory
What is the purpose of correlational research?
to establish relations or use existing relations to make predictions
The first step in conducting a literature search is
to identify keywords related to the research.
One drawback of initial research problems is that they are often
too broad
The annotating process is conducted
with the most recent references first.
