Events This Week
At the Library

• Message from the Head Librarian
• Keep Your Library Card Privileges
• Library Lessons : Using a Quantitative Approach
  • Lesson 1:  Collecting Quantitative Data
  • Lesson 2:  Analyzing Quantitative Data
  • Lesson 3:  Section II of your Research Proposal
• Circulation Desk
• Next Week at the Library

A Message from
the Head Librarian

Welcome to your first week on the Second Floor of the Library!  You are moving on up at the Research Library.  You have your first draft of Section I complete. You are continuing work on Section II this week and next.  We have also covered the material for Section III of your Proposal.

I know it seems that things are moving fast in this class. It takes a bit of time for me to go through each person's Section I draft and give feedback and it really only helps if you have time to use that feedback when working on future sections so I try to get Section I in early in the semester. Also, it usually helps to have this Section in early because it gets everyone to narrow down and commit to a topic. Not committing to a topic early on can create even greater stress if you are continually changing your mind and having to redo time consuming searches for empirical research. I am looking forward to reading everyone's drafts this week. Almost everyone did a good job identifying empirical research literature. I usually have more people struggle with this so I was pleased to find many have jumped this hurdle. The bigger hurdle for many has been applying APA.

Some are overwhelmed which is understandable. Things come early in this class because of the need for most everyone to receive feedback. Some have asked for longer periods of time to complete assignments and I am always willing to grant extensions due to extenuating circumstances so it is absolutely fine with me if you ask for an extension. However, remember that each assignment usually builds and it is useful for you to receive feedback on one prior to attempting the next.

Many of you have acknowledged that there is a lot to learn in order to produce scholarly research and it is a lot to expect in a 13-week course. I do not disagree with you and want everyone to know that I also acknowledge that, for many, this is a first attempt at proposing empirical research. The multiple opportunities for practice and feedback are one of the ways in which I try to address this - so you have practice and feedback before you are graded such that you have the opportunity to improve. Of course, this is more work on both our parts - there is almost always something you need to be working on and something for me to be reading and giving feedback on. In the end, most students have a final product that is appropriate for Masters level work, but it is usually one of the hardest things they have done.

A major focus on Section IV is the research approach and design you choose and this brings us to a whole new floor of the Library. Our conversations will begin to focus less on research literature and more on what some might consider the technical aspects of conducting research. This includes making decisions about who your participants will be and how you will select them as well as choosing what research design and measures you will use to collect the data. Finally you will make decisions regarding how you will analyze the data you gather and interpret it via quantitative or qualitative means.

Library Lessons in weeks 3 and 4 focused on Section II and III of The Research Proposal you will be submitting as your final exhibit in this course. If you will recall, last week we focused on identifying primary and empirical research to support your research problem and critiquing (analyzing) individual research articles. To this point in the course, you should have identified at least 4 empirical articles appropriate for your research topic and will hopefully receive confirmation that these are indeed empirical from your instructor this week if you have not already. You should have also taken your first stab at abstracting and critiquing an empirical article and judged its utility for your Research Proposal. You will be turning this in to me this week and I hope to have feedback to you on this first attempt by the following week. Once I have a handle on how well everyone grasped the ideas of abstracting and critiquing empirical articles, I will decide whether to assign an additional exercise related to this or to let you loose to work on your literature review utilizing these skills. Whether I assign it or not I would like to strongly suggest that you follow the same process you used last week for abstracting and critiquing for every empirical article you identify for inclusion in your Research Proposal. While it might seem like a lot of work, it will pay off for you in the end when you can sit down and easily begin to write your literature review that will include both analysis and synthesis of the empirical literature.

By 5 PM today everyone should have turned in your draft of Section I of your Research Proposal. I hope to work on reading those this week so you have some feedback prior to turning in your rough draft of Section II in a few weeks.

APA Tidbit

This week we tackle some of the speed bumps encountered using reference citations in text (labeled with-in text references by Creswell).  These are cites in your written narrative that usually take one of two forms.

1. According to the first investigation by Creswell (1998), three factors influence...
2. It has been proposed (Creswell, 1998; Deekins, 1999) that three factors...

The speed bumps most frequent in the writing of graduate students are

1. When a work has three, four, or five authors listed, cite all authors the first time the citation is used in your narrative.  After the first time, you list only the surname of the first author followed by et al. for every subsequent use (e.g., Algozzine et al., 1998).

2. When a work has six or more authors, list only the surname of the first author followed by et al. for the first and every subsequent use.

3. If the reference name is long and cumbersome but has a familiar or understandable abbreviation (e.g., National Center for Educational Statistics abbreviated to NCES), use the abbreviation in the second and subsequent uses.  The first cite would include the entire name while the second and subsequent cites would use the abbreviation.

First cite: The largest school districts have 85% of these problems (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2000).

Second and subsequent cites: Approximately 42% of the current teachers will retire by the year 2010 (NCES, 2001).

For all the seamy details, refer to sections 3.94, 3.95, and 3.96 on pages 207- 210 in the APA Publication Manual (5th edition).

Our goals this week are to:

• Consider the setting of your proposed study and the access you will have to solicit participants
• Describe different approaches used to obtain a sample of participants for research
• Identify different types of data collected in quantitative studies
• Begin the process of locating and selecting instruments for data collection and assessing their reliability and validity
• Describe the processes used for organizing quantitative data for analysis
• Discuss steps in testing hypotheses or answering research questions
• Identify ways in which analyzed data is reported

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Contact the
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Need Help?

Have a question but can't find the answer? Here are some options:

• Check the Course FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Check the Proposal FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Email the Head Librarian (Dr. Curda)*.
• Email the Assistant Librarian (Melissa)*.
• Check with the other library patrons.

*Remember to include your name and the course name (Educational Research) or number (EDF 6481) in your message.

Go to the Library Lessons for the Week
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