Week 1

Overview of Course and Research Methods

I. Introductions

--name

--program

--career objective

--research experience

--what you’d like to learn from course

II. Overview of Course

--history of course

--topics (syllabus): original surveys, existing surveys (NELS)

--readings

--assignments

--survey design software (SPSS, Teleform, Dragon/Filemaker Pro)

--WWW

--questions

III. Research

A. What is research?

--knowledge generated through a scientific process of collected and analyzing data

--other ways of knowing? Personal observation, experience, tradition, intuition, authority

--what’s wrong with other ways?

--research and science: objective?

B. Norms for conducting research

(from Krathwahl, Social and Behavior Science Research)

--skepticism: always consider alternative explanations (counterfactuals) that might be as plausible as the one advanced

--self-correction: all knowledge tentatively held as true

--universalism: universal standards for judging knowledge claims

--communism: common ownership of information; open to public and scientific scrutiny

--disinterestedness: integrity in gathering and interpreting data; continually scrutinized through self-policing and peer review process

--objectivity: phenomena observed by one researchers would be seen in the same way by another; insure that findings are not influenced by researcher’s emotions, biases, or predilections

--replicable: someone should be able to duplicated procedure and yield same results

C. Uses of research: what do we use research for?

1. contribute to body of knowledge—basic research

2. inform practice and policy—applied research

--many instances of policy issues and debates that are or could be informed by scientific evidence, examples?

3. purposes and types of research (HANDOUT)

IV. Research Methods

--difference methods of conducting research in education/social sciences

--choice of methods, depends in part on research questions

--choice of methods also depends on paradigm or world review that one believes in and practices

--in other words, research methods grounded in larger, philosophical issues that many scientists are not even aware of

A. Paradigms in education: qualitative vs. quantitative

1. Assumptions about the word

--logical positivist (single reality)

--interpretist (multiple realities)

2. Purposes

-- Quantitative: understand and explain phenemenon more

generally (theory building and testing)

-- Qualitative: understanding, descriptive from participant's view

3. Research methods

4. Researcher role

--Quantitative: detached, "objective"

--Qualitative: immersed, necessarily subjective

5. Role of context

B. Research methods

C. Types of data

V. Survey Rearch

A. History of survey research (Wright article)

--surveys grew out of practical needs to study populations and their condition [quote from Royal Statistical Society (1869)—p. 605]

--first present-day sample survey, Booth (1892) survey of conditions of London’s working poor

--elements of surveys—sampling, standardized data collection, statistical analysis—all pre-dated his study, but he brought all the elements together

--e.g., Manchester Statistical Society (1830s)—surveys of working conditions and education [read quote—p. 599]

--little use for surveys in academic social science before WWII [quote Peter Rossi—p. 601]

--only after WWII that surveys was recognized and taught as a valuable social science research method

--early controversy—secondary analysis of archived survey data [Rossi—p. 604]

B. Comparisons between survey research and other research designs

a. Key attributes of survey research designs—what are they?

--Comparisons with other types of research designs (Handout 1)

b. Purpose of research—types of questions

c. Sampling

d. Data collection instruments

e. Types of analysis

C. Examples of three types of survey research studies

a. Descriptive (Kappan survey)

b. Explanatory (Lee and Bryk)

c. Evaluative (Lee and Loeb)