Research Project

EDUR 9131
Advanced Educational Research

Activity 1: Research Project

This activity will be completed as a group project (or individually if desired). Consult with your group members to determine how best to proceed to execute this project.

Due Date:

Note -- summer 2012 due dates still under revision

See syllabus for due date. Send completed project as a PDF attachment. See the Course Index for instructions on creating PDF files. Send PDF attachments to me in GeorgiaView mail. Do not use my regular e-mail account.

Designate one member of your group to send the attachment to instructor. This member should also send the final copy to group members as well.

Due to the time limitation imposed by this short semester, projects will be penalized 10% for each day tardy.

Timeline for project follows:

Session 4 (see calendar for date): First draft of instrument is due in class or by 4:30pm for on-line classes (send as PDF in Vista).

Plan to have about 7 to 10 indicators per construct measured, so about 20 to 30 items in the questionnaire to measure main constructs assigned. This number does not include descriptive/demographic or open-ended items. In the message explain to me which variables (constructs) you are trying to measure with your instrument (e.g., dissertation anxiety and dissertation self-efficacy), and also explain which particular items are designed to measure which particular constructs (e.g., items 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 measure anxiety and items 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 measure self-efficacy). Draft instrument should be in layout exactly as intended to be sent to study participants. I'll check format and content of instrument. I'll provide feedback on instrument so revisions can be made quickly for field testing. Make revisions as needed as a result of my feedback.

Session 5 by 11pm: Revised draft instrument is to be brought to class or sent to me in GeorgiaView for review (if on-line class); send as PDF attachment.

Shortly after receiving feedback from me on the revised instrument, field test revised instrument with 2 or 3 individuals who closely match the proposed study participants. Ask these 2 or 3 individuals to complete the instrument and provide feedback about ambiguous, poorly worded, and other problematic items. Make further revisions to instrument as needed. At this point you may be down to the 3 to 6 best structured-items (although more are allowed), and you should have at least two well developed open-ended items.

Session 6: Administer newly revised instrument to study participants in class. After collecting responses to questionnaires, begin data entry into SPSS and coding of open-ended responses.

Post-Session 7: Final manuscripts of research project report due as PDF attachment in GeorgiaView shortly after the final chat session in this course.

Detailed Instructions:

The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to the research process and better prepare you for the dissertation experience. This project, in short, will require to you design and execute a research study proposal.

To complete this assignment, you will be required to submit a manuscript in which you report the findings of your study. In total, the report will probably range between eight and ten pages. Due date for the final submission is listed above.

In the report include a title page, an introduction, literature review, research questions/hypotheses, method section, results section, conclusion section, reference list, and copy of a well-developed instrument.

I will provide research topics that will include about three variables. For example, you may be instructed to study whether anxiety toward the dissertation process can be predicted by one's self-efficacy toward the dissertation process and one's self-assessed competence on research methods. To study the assigned variables, you will be required to create an instrument that includes both open-ended (e.g., free response questions) and structured items (e.g., responses to Likert scales). Three open-ended items are required, one to learn something about each of the three variables assigned.. For example, one open-ended item may focus on anxiety toward the dissertation process and could be worded as follows:

"Which aspects of the dissertation process do you most fear or are most concerned about? Please explain why you fear or are concerned about each aspect you identify."

From the structured items you must be able to use the data to perform a regression analysis. In addition, there must be a few background/demographic items on the instrument (e.g., sex, race, and anything else that may be pertinent to your study). When developing structured items, develop a minimum of 21 items. Of these, several may be omitted after you perform various item analyses. The item analyses will be another assignment for this class and will be explained later. The items you develop should solicit responses on a Likert scale with five, six, or seven steps (e.g., Very Poor, Poor, Adequate, Good, Very Good; Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Somewhat Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree). For example, in measuring self-efficacy toward the dissertation process, you may decide to use items such as these:

	not at all true of me							very true of me
1. I believe I will do well on the dissertation.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
3. I am confident that I can address even the hardest aspects of the dissertation process.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
9. I am sure that I will be able to answer some of the more challenging or difficult questions posed by the dissertation committee.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7

You may also use other item formats (e.g., semantic differential), but obtain permission from me before developing those items.

A sample instrument is provided below and also listed in the sample manuscript for this project. Read the sample manuscript carefully to learn how I present the introduction, literature review, research questions/hypotheses, method (participants, materials, procedure), results, and conclusion. Below are more details on specific components of the manuscript.

1. Title Page

Provide a title, your name(s), and course identification (also add page numbers starting with the next page).

2. Introductory section

In this section, the writer introduces the reader to the topic investigated in the study and makes clear the importance of the topic. Usually the first few paragraphs provide a brief background to the problem for the study, then this is followed by a paragraph or two in which the purpose of the study is stated and explained. In this last section the writer also explains who could benefit from this study, and why this study is important. See sample manuscript for an example of this section.

3. Literature review

With the literature review, you are to provide a brief overview of research in the area you choose to investigate. Further, the way the literature is presented should help the reader to understand the nature of your study—the significance of your study and how your study differs from others. For this assignment, the literature review should include about six to eight citations and should be about two to three pages in length. Although I have provided a rough number of citations to include as a guide, ensuring that you have the appropriate number of citations is not the point of this review; your review should clearly present the story of the research topic for your project, should read well, and should be informative.

When writing the literature review, a summary section at the end is needed. The summary serves as a transition statement or paragraph between the literature review and the research questions/hypotheses for the study. After stating the research questions or hypotheses, indicate in a few sentences or a paragraph how this study differs from previous research on the topic—how your study makes a contribution. For example, for a study of high school dropouts and minimum competency testing, one may write the following:

"As noted above, both educators and educational researchers think that minimum competency testing will result in more students dropping out of school. In addition, academically at-risk students and racial minority students are expected to be especially affected by poor performances on competency tests. To empirically examine these issues, data were collected and analyzed in this study to address the following questions regarding the relationship between competency test performance and dropping out of high school: (a) Do students who fail the minimum competency test show an increased likelihood of dropping out of school? (b) Are students with lower achievement records more likely to leave school if they fail the competency test than students with average and above average achievement records? (c) Are Black and Hispanic students differentially affected, in terms of dropping out, by failure on the competency relative to White students? This study, unlike other published work on increased graduation standards, provided an empirical analysis of the relationship between test performance and dropping out of high school. In addition, this study extended research by specifically examining minimum competency testing performance for academically at-risk students and racial minority students, and their decisions to leave school."

See sample manuscript for the type of literature review I require for this project.

4. Method

The method section contains a number of subsections that are explained below. Since you will be doing survey research, there only needs to be three sections for the methods: Participants, Instruments, and Procedures.

Participants

With this assignment you may choose to only survey students in this class (EDUR 9131), or survey others as you see fit. In this section, you will describe participants (e.g., demographic characteristics, field setting, etc.), and how you plan to select them.

Instruments/Materials

You will be required to develop a questionnaire to administer to everyone in the class. Details of what should be included in the questionnaire are explained above. In this section of the paper you should explain what the instrument is designed to measure, the steps taken to develop the instrument, and present evidence of validity and reliability for scores obtained from the instrument. (You may wish to direct readers to empirical evidence of validity that may be present in the results section of the paper.) Also, discuss any pilot studies and the revisions that resulted from the pilot studies.

Procedures

Explain the procedures you followed to collect data for your study (when surveys were distributed, procedures followed to collect surveys, procedures used to contact those who failed to return surveys, etc.).

See sample manuscript for the type of detail required for each of these sections.

5. Results

In this section you will presents the results of your study. Results typically take the form of outcomes from statistical analysis or qualitative/descriptive findings. You will have both in your study to report.

6. Conclusion/Discussion

Present, in this section, how your findings correspond with prior research or theory. Point out directions for future research.

7. Reference/Appendix

Include a reference section and any appropriate appendices (e.g., copy of your instrument).

As noted above, see sample manuscript for example results, conclusion, and reference presentation.

Example Instrument for Research and Presentation Assignment

Below is a questionnaire that illustrates the type of instrument that should be developed for this project. In this example only two constructs are measured: (a) anxiety and (b) self-efficacy toward the dissertation process. For the first 10 items, the even items tap anxiety and the odd assess self-efficacy.

Instructions

The purpose of the questionnaire is to ascertain doctoral students’ thoughts regarding the dissertation process. In the context of this questionnaire, dissertation process means the entire process students experience to construct and defend the dissertation. This includes, for example, developing the research idea, developing and defending the prospectus, collecting and analyzing data for the research, writing the dissertation, and defending the dissertation before a committee.

The following 10 statements refer to the dissertation process that you will soon experience. There are no right or wrong answers, so please answer as accurately as possible. Use the scale below to respond to each statement. If you think the statement is very true of you, circle 7; if the statement is not at all true of you, circle 1. If the statement is more or less true of you, find the number between 1 and 7 that best describes you.

	not at all true of me							very true of me
1. I believe I will do well on the dissertation.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
2. I feel uneasy or uncomfortable with the dissertation process as a whole.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
3. I am confident that I can address even the hardest aspects of the dissertation process.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
4. Thinking about the upcoming dissertation process makes me feel anxious.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
5. The process of writing and defending the dissertation may be difficult or hard, but I think I will be successful anyway.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
6. I am worried about how well I will do during the dissertation defense.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
7. I know that I have learned the literature and theories that will be necessary to report in the dissertation.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8. I feel my heart beating faster as I start to think about the dissertation.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
9. I am sure that I will be able to answer some of the more challenging or difficult questions posed by the dissertation committee.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7
10. Thinking about the consequences of failing some component of the dissertation process makes me uptight.		1	2	3	4	5	6	7

Open-Ended Responses

For items 11 and 12, please provide honest, thoughtful responses. If space does not permit a full response, please continue your response on the back of this paper.

11. With which aspects of the dissertation process do you most fear or are most concerned about? Please explain why you fear or are concerned about each aspect you identify.

(leave adequate space for responses here)

12. With which aspects of the dissertation process are you most comfortable with or confident about? Please explain why you are comfortable or confident with each aspect you identify.

(leave adequate space for responses here)

Demographics

35.	Sex	Female	37.	How many years has it been since you received your last college degree?	0-1
		Male			2-3
					4-5
					6-7
36.	Race / Ethnicity	Asian			8-9
	Race / Ethnicity	Black/African-Amer.			10 or more
		Hispanic
		White
		Other (please identify in the space below)
		Other (please identify in the space below)

Research Manuscript Points of Evaluation

Below are points that one should consider when developing a research paper. This does not represent an exhaustive list, but does include common errors found in student manuscripts.

Plagiarism.<---Very important; many students write papers by lifting sentences here and there from others' work, and that is plagiarism. I will spot check each submitted project to ensure that plagiarism does not exist. If incidents of plagiarism exist, group projects will be penalized severely. To understand better plagiarism, review these sites:

http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/plagiarism.shtml

http://sja.ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm

http://www.aug.edu/sociology/plagiarism.html

Failure to provide appropriate sections (e.g., problem statement, research question(s)/hypotheses, participants, etc.).
Lack of correspondence between hypotheses/research question(s) and methods selected (e.g., hypothesis indicates comparison of two groups, methods section suggests comparison of four groups).
Grammatical mistakes.
Poorly written or structured passages; lack of flow in manuscript (this indicates sloppiness and lack of concern for craftsmanship; dissertation committees dislike this type of behavior).
Lack of correspondence between the problem statement and hypotheses/research question(s) (e.g., problem statement indicates an investigation of A and B, hypotheses introduce new variables, like A, B, and C).
Lack of correspondence between literature review and hypotheses/research question(s) (e.g., literature review focuses upon A and B, hypotheses on C and D; or, lit. review suggest that A will occur, but hypothesis states the opposite will occur).
Lack of correspondence between problem statement and literature review (e.g., problem statement indicates research will focus on A and B, but A and B are not coveredor not covered wellin the lit. review).
Failure to specify how variables in research question(s)/hypotheses will be measured (in methods section).
APA formatting errors.
Lack of correspondence between citations and reference list.
Weak or inappropriate coverage of methods section (i.e., participants, etc.). For detailed comments on what should be included in each sub-section of the method section, see the proposal requirements I provided you on the second night of class.
Your research will make a valued contribution to the literature on the topic. (I don’t evaluate this, but this will be something to consider when developing your dissertation prospectus.)

Last revised on 21 May, 2012 02:26 AM