Saturday, October 6, 2007

Assingment 3, Lauer Chapters 3 and 4

1. Explain the key differences between descriptive and experimental research.

Descriptive and experimental research are basic types of educational research, but they each use different research designs to collect data. Descriptive research is used to describe an occurrence and is most useful when working on a new topic when there is not enough knowledge to begin testing theories. On the other hand, experimental research is designed to answer casual questions and is the most rigorous, because it involves assigning subjects to treatment and control groups. This is the only type of research that can show true cause and effect.

Descriptive research design:

Simple descriptive- use to collect data that describe persons, organizations and settings
Comparative descriptive- describes or compares groups of people
Correlational- describes statistic association between two or more variables

Questions asked:
What is happening?
How is something happing?

Experimental research design:

True experimental- randomly assigns participant to treatment or control groups. The treatment group receives some type of treatment and the control group does not receive a treatment. Am example of a true experimental research would be the Tuskegee syphilis study in which the treatment group was receiving the medication and the control group was lead to believe that they were also receiving the medication. In experimental research the subjects are not told whether they are in the treatment or control group doing so may sabotage the results.
Quasi-experimental- participants are not randomly assigned, they are used as the comparison or control group.

Questions asked:
Does something cause an effect?
Is this program effective?

2. Explain correlational research.

Correlational research is used when a researcher is attempting to discover a relationship between variables. Bivariate correlation is the simples form of correlational research. In a bivariate study a researcher would try to find the correlation between the hours a teacher spends in professional development and the overall success of her pupils. He would compare the hours the teacher spend on professional development to the overall test scores of her students to determine whether or not there is a relationship.

3. Explain the key differences between quantitative and qualitative research.

One of the differences between quantitative and qualitative research in the manner in which the data is collected. Quantitative research uses numbers and measurement while qualitative research uses narrative descriptions and observations. Qualitative research is important for developing and understanding complex situations and different point of views. The data is collected by interviews, focus groups, document analysis and observations. Quantitative research is important to test theory or compare one approach against another. Data is collected by surveys, counts or descriptions of frequencies and other forms that result in numeric data.

4. What is action research.

Action research uses reflection, problem solving and participatory methods to investigate, test or improve a particular method or approach to a given situation. This type of research can be conducted by an individual or a group and is used in the educational community to help improve instructional practice. Action research can be performed by a school teacher seeking to find out whether group activities improve the overall performance of her students mathematics scores. The teacher might give instructions in large groups for several weeks and test the students, and proceed to give instruction in small groups and also test the students. She may then compare the results of the test score and determine which method maximizes the students learning.

8 comments:

James said...

Hi Carla,

Good descriptions of the questions and terms. Have you ever used correlational research in your classroom environment? Or anywhere else? I would like to try some research projects in my class using the correlational research method because it seems like all of our research that I have been involved with is more action research based.
Your explanations of descriptive research and experimental research are very clear.

James

MsKathyK said...

Nice job of describing each of the different kinds of data. You stated that you work in Student Services in Technology. Are you responsible for testing data that we are required to input each month?
Kathy

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