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| A process of steps used to collect and analyze information to increase our understanding of a topic or issue. |
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| · Identify a problem that defines the goal of research· Make a prediction that, if confirmed, resolves the problem· Gather data relevant to this prediction |
- Analyze and interpret data to see if it supports prediction and resolves question that initiated the research
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| · Identifying a research problem· Reviewing the literature· Specifying a purpose for research· Collecting data· Analyzing and interpreting data |
- Reporting and evaluating research
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| A type of educational research:· researcher decides what to study; · asks specific , narrow questions; · collects quantifiable data from participants;· analyzes these numbers using statistics, |
- conducts the inquiry in an unbiased, objective matter.
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| A type of educational research:· researcher relies on views of participants· describes and analyzes these words for themes |
- conducts inquiry in a subjective, biased manner
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| The educational issues, controversies, or concerns that guide the need for conducting a study. |
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| Includes actual research problem and 4 aspects:· the topic· the research problem· justification of the importance of problem as found in past research and practice· deficiencies in our existing knowledge about the problem |
audiences that will benefit from a study of the problem |
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| *in statement of the problem |
*Individuals and groups who will read and potentially benefit from the information provided in your research study. |
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| A written summary of journal articles, books, and other documents that describes the past and current state of information***It organizes literature into topics |
***documents a need for a proposed study |
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| Primary Source literature |
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| Literature reported by the individual(s) who actually conducted the research or who originated the ideas. |
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| Secondary source literature |
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| Literature that summarizes primary sources. (handbooks, encyclopedias, summarized research, etc.) |
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| Statement that advances the overall direction or focus for the study. |
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| Questions in quantitative or qualitative research that narrow the purpose statement to specific questions that researchers seek to answer. |
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| Statements in quantitative research in which the investigator makes a prediction or a conjecture about the outcome of a relationship among attributes or characteristics. |
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| A characteristic or attribute of an individual or an organization that researchers can:· measure or observe |
varies among individuals or organizations studied. |
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| An attribute or characteristic that is dependent on or influenced by the independent variable. |
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| An attribute or characteristic that influences or affects an outcome or dependent variable. |
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| Make predictions that of all possible people whom researchers might study, there is no relationship between independent and dependent variables or no difference between groups of an independent variable or a dependent variable. |
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| The concept or a process explored in qualitative research. |
The central component of both purpose statement and research question. |
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| Representative (sampling) |
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| The selection of individuals from a sample of a population such that the individuals selected are typical of the population under study |
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| A group of individuals who have the same characteristic. |
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| A group of individuals with some common defining characteristic that the researcher can identify and study. |
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| A subgroup of the target population that the researcher plans to study for generalizing about the target population. |
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| The researcher selects participants for the sample so that any researcher selects participants (or units such as schools) for the sample so that any individual has an equal probability of being selected from the population. |
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| You choose every nth individual or site in the population until you reach your desired sample size. Not as precise but more convenient. |
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| Researchers divide the population on some specific characteristic and then using simple random sampling, sample from each subgroup of the population. |
**this guarantees that the sample will include specific characteristics that the researcher wants included in the sampling. |
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| The researcher selects participants because they are willing and available to be studied. (individuals are not truly representative of the population) |
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| The researcher asks participants to identify others to become members of the sample. |
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| Depends on sample estimate and population score. |
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| A tool that will measure your variables |
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| Scores from an instrument are stable and consistent. |
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| An individual’s scores from an instrument make sense, are meaningful and enable you (as the researcher) to draw good conclusions from the samples you are studying to the population. |
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| Provide response options where participants check one or more categories that describe their traits, attributes, or characteristics. These traits don’t have any order. |
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| Provide continuous response options to questions with assumed equal distances between options. (strongly agree, agree, etc.) |
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