Events This Week
At the Library

• Message from the Head Librarian
• Keep Your Library Card Privileges
• Library Lessons : More on Sampling and Measurement
  • Lesson 1:  Sampling
  • Lesson 2:  Operational Definitions
  • Lesson 3:  Reliability and Validity of Measures
  • Lesson 4: Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs
• Circulation Desk
• Next Week at the Library

A Message from
the Head Librarian

Welcome to your third and final week on the Second Floor of the Library!  You should be finishing up Section II of your Proposal and be ready to turn in your first draft of it at the end of this week. This week we are continuing our discussion of Section IV with a continuation and more in depth look at issues related to sampling and measurement.  I would say some of the most frequently missed questions on week 5's quizzes were related to scales of measurement so hopefully this week's lessons will provide some continued assistance in that area.

Section II Drafts are due this week and I hope to have feedback to you within that following week. As a reminder you may want to glance back at the Lesson in week 5 that outlined Section II for you and provided you with the feedback sheet I will use. It was obvious to me that many people used the feedback sheet as a guide in their writing of Section I and it was also obvious to me that some did not. It is really better to try to go by this given that you can benefit more from feedback if I am able to critique all aspects of that Section. I will only provide feedback once on each section so use this opportunity to benefit you the most.

I will be finishing up reading abstract and critiques in the next day or so and will send you feedback on those so you can use it to work on Section II of your proposal. Remember that you are to provide a study-by-study review arranged around themes. You may want to review this part of Chapter 4 in your text. Finally, as stated in previous weeks, you are required to have to have between 6 and 8 empirical articles as part of your Section II literature review. This means you will have abstracted and critiqued each of these within that Section. You may, of course, use additional resources but the minimum requirement is 6-8 empirical articles.

This week you will begin part III of your textbook, which focuses on various research designs.  With the start of the new section, there will also be a slight change in the format of the chapter quizzes.  In addition to the types of questions that you have already encountered (such as multiple-choice, multi-select, matching, and ordering), each quiz will contain a few short-answer questions.  There are two reasons why I have added these types of questions: (1) they will help you assimilate the information in the chapter to better prepare you for writing section IV of your research proposal, and (2) they will help you prepare for the final exam at the end of the semester.  Do not panic!  Most of the new questions require brief answers rather than long essays.

APA Tidbit

This week is a potpourri of APA tidbits gleaned from the exercises I've been reviewing.  Let's begin with the elements of the title page. 

The title page has three parts: (a) title, (b) author's name and institutional affiliation, and (c) running head.  For this course, the title will either be the name of the assignment or the title of your research.  You will be the author and UWF the institution of affiliation.  The running head is labeled and printed in capital letters and is a shortened form of the title.  All pages of your assignment (including the title page) also include a page header. The first two or three words of the title are placed into a page header with your word processor's page numbering function.  The title page is page 1 of the assignment.  Check the fine print on pages 10-12 and the example on page 306 of the APA manual.

The second tidbit is a reminder that all lines in your manuscript should be double-spaced and you should use the preferred typefaces and font size listed on page 285 of the APA manual.  I prefer you use a 12-point Times Roman (or Times New Roman) typeface.

The third tidbit is not actually an APA guideline, but closely related to the directions for reference entries.  Use the hanging indent feature of your word processor to construct references.  If you force the format with line breaks and the space bar, you will have the reference format fall apart every time you change the view, margins, typeface, or typeface size.

The fourth tidbit comes from a dissertation manuscript recently reviewed.  An entry in the reference pages read

Franklin, G. (2001).  Lecture notes from EDF 7685 Educational 

       Foundations: A philosophical and multicultural analysis.  Pensacola, FL: University of West Florida.

How does one cite lecture notes from a class or a discussion from a professional workshop that provided information that should be included in your project report? 

The first question to be answered is this?  Can the information be accurately recovered in its original form?  In the case of lecture notes, workshop discussions, personal interviews, and telephone conversations the answer is no.  For these sources of information and data use the personal communication citation as directed on page 214 of the APA manual.  Note, especially, personal communication cites are placed only in the narrative.  They are not included in the references.

Last, use headings that follow the APA directions on pages 113-115 of the APA manual.  The easiest way to select your headings is to refer to page 114 and decide if you need one, two, or three levels and then follow the examples.  You will need more than three levels very infrequently.  Note the headings that are italicized and the rules given for capitalization.

Our goals this week are to:

• define reliability
• identify the various types of reliability data and how reliability is established for various measures used in research
• define validity
• identify the various types of validity and how they are established for various measures used in research
• identify variables that need to be operationally defined
• be able to operationally define a variable
• be able to identify instruments that measure a variable based on your operational definition
• Describe the characteristics of experimental and quasi-experimental research.
• Distinguish between different types of experiments
• Describe the process of conducting experimental and quasi-experimental research.

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Contact the
Library Staff

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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