Educational Research

Chapter 2
Selecting and Defining a Research Topic

Gay, Mills, and Airasian

Topics Discussed in this Chapter

 Identifying a Research Topic

 Reviewing the Literature
 Developing and Stating Hypotheses
Identifying a Topic
 A research topic focuses the study to a
defined, manageable size
 It provides structure for the steps in the sci
entific method
 It is discussed in many ways
 Research question
 Research problem
 Purpose of the research
Identifying a Topic
 Four main sources of topics
 Theory – an organized body of concepts, generaliz
ations and principles that can be subjected to inve
stigation
 Provides conceptually rich topics
 Provides confirmation of some aspects of theory
 Personal experience
 Replication
 Library immersion
Obj. 1.1
Identifying a Topic
 Narrowing and focusing topics
 Three problems with broad topics
 Enlarges the scope of the review of the literatur
e beyond reason
 Complicates the organization of the review of t
he literature itself
 Creates studies that are too general, too difficul
t to carry out, and too difficult to interpret

Obj. 1.3
Identifying a Topic
 Suggestions for narrowing topics
 Talk to experts in the field
 Professors in your college or department
 Researchers you know
 Read secondary sources that provide overv
iews of your topic
 Handbooks
 Encyclopedias
 Reviews
Obj. 1.2. & 1.4
Identifying a Topic

 Quantitative and qualitative studies – di

fferences in when a topic is narrowed
 Quantitative studies tend to narrow the top
ic initially
 Qualitative studies tend to narrow the topic
throughout the research process itself

Obj. 1.4
Identifying a Topic
 Researchable and non-researchable topics
 Researchable topics…
 can be investigated through the collection and analysis o
f data.
 have theoretical or practical significance.
 have been conducted ethically.
 contribute to the educational processes
 can be adequately researched given the expertise, resour
ces, and time constraints of the researcher.

Obj. 1.5
Identifying a Topic

 Non-researchable topics…
 address philosophical or ethical issues.
 Cannot be resolved through the collection and analys
is of data
 address “should” questions.
 Ultimately these are matters of opinion

Obj. 1.6
 Identifying a Topic

 The formal statement of a quantitative r

esearch topic…
 identifies the variables of interest.
 describes the specific relationship between
the variables.
 identifies the nature of the participants.

Obj. 1.7 & 1.8

Identifying a Topic
 The formal statement of a qualitative re
search topic…
 emerges over the course of the study.
 begins as an initial statement that tends to
be stated as a general issue or concern.
 becomes focused as more is learned about
the context, participants, and phenomena
of interest.
 is typically stated late in a written study.
Obj. 1.8
The Literature Review

The review of the literature involves the

systematic identification, location, and a
nalysis of documents containing informa
tion related to the research problem

Obj. 2.1
The Literature Review
 Functions of a literature review
 Determine what has been done already
 Provide insight necessary to develop a logical fram
ework into which the topic fits
 Provides the rationale for the hypotheses being in
vestigated and the justification of the significance
of the study
 Identifies potentially useful methodological strateg
ies
 Facilitates the interpretation of the results
Obj. 2.2
The Literature Review
 General recommendations for the scope
of the review
 Bigger does not mean better
 Heavily researched topics provide enough r
eferences to focus only on the major studie
s
 Lesser researched topics require reviewing
any study related in some meaningful way
even if this means searching related fields
Obj. 2.3
The Literature Review

 Four stages when conducting a review

 Identifying key words to guide the search
 Identifying sources
 Abstracting the information found in the re
ferences
 Analyzing, organizing and reporting the lite
rature
Obj. 2.4
The Literature Review

 Identifying key words

 Importance of experimenting with several
key words and combinations of them
 Using “legal” key words for particular data
bases
 ERIC Thesaurus
 Accessed through the ERIC homepage

Obj. 2.4 & 2.8

The Literature Review
 Identifying sources
 Characteristics of sources
 Primary and secondary
 Empirical and opinion
 Importance of using secondary sources suc
h as handbooks, encyclopedias, and review
s early in the review process

Obj. 2.6
The Literature Review
 Identifying sources
 Broadening and narrowing keyword search
es
 Three important Boolean operators
 AND narrows a search
 OR broadens a search
 NOT narrows a search
 Narrowing and focusing by date of publication,
specific authors, titles, etc.
Obj. 2.5
The Literature Review
 Identifying sources
 Searching for books
 Electronic databases of university libraries
 Keyword searches
 Searching for journals or papers
 ERIC
 Indices usually accessed more easily through the library
at your university using EBSCO or other such search tool
s
 Education Index
 Psychological Abstracts
 Dissertation Abstracts
 Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature
Obj. 2.7 & 2.10
The Literature Review

 Identifying sources
 Searching the web
 Search engines
 Google, Excite, HotBot
 Subject directories
 Yahoo!, Web Crawler, Lycos
 Meta search engines
 Dogpile, Mamma, Vroosh
The Literature Review
 Identifying sources
 Educational sites
 ERIC, Ingenta, New Jour, Education Week, National Cent
er for Education Statistics, US Dept. of Education, Develo
ping Educational Standards, Education Resource Organiz
ation Directory
 Evaluating web sites
 Quality, honesty, bias, and authenticity
 Thinking Critically about WWW Resources, Critically Anal
yzing Information Sources

Obj. 2.11 & 2.12

The Literature Review
 Abstracting the references
 Locating, reviewing, summarizing, and classifying
references
 Seven steps
 Read the article abstract
 Skim the entire article
 Record complete bibliographic information
 Classify and code the article
 Summarize the article
 Identify thoughts about the article you believe important
 Indicate direct quotes properly
Obj. 4.1
The Literature Review
 Recommended strategies when abstracting
 Begin with the most recent references and move t
oward the most dated
 Record all bibliographic information
 Author, date of publication, title, journal name or book tit
le or website name, volume and issue, pages, library call
number or URL
 Identify direct quotes and record page numbers
 Identify main ideas
Literature Review
 Analyzing, organizing and reporting
 Technical nature of reporting
 Documentation
 Formal language
 Adherence to prescribed styles (e.g., APA)
 Outline the review
 Group by topics
 Analyze for similarities and differences within subheading
s
 Discuss the least relevant studies first, followed by the m
ost relevant studies
 Summarize the review and discuss the implications relate
d to the research problem
Literature Review
 Differences between quantitative and q
ualitative reviews
 Quantitative reviews are typically conducte
d in the initial stages of the study
 Qualitative reviews are ongoing throughout
the entire study reflecting the need to und
erstand data as it is collected, analyzed, an
d interpreted
Obj. 3.1
Literature Review
 Meta-analysis
 A statistical approach to summarizing the r
esults of many studies that have investigat
ed the same problem
 Two unique characteristics
 The review is as inclusive as possible
 The results of each study are translated into a s
tatistic called an effect size (ES)

Obj. 4.3
Literature Review
 Meta-analysis
 Effect sizes
 Essentially the difference between the means f
or the experimental and control groups in contr
ol group standard deviation units
 The average of all effect sizes for all of the stud
ies summarizes the overall effect of the studies
 Effect size indices generally range from 0.00 to
slightly more than 1.00

Obj. 4.3
Literature Review
 Meta-analysis
 Interpreting effect sizes
 There is no single standard by which effect size
s are interpreted
 The authors suggest the following criteria
 If the effect size is less than 0.30 it is considered sm
all
 If the effect size is greater than 0.30 and less than 0.
70 it is considered moderate
 If the effect size is greater than 0.70 it is considered
large

Obj. 4.4
Developing Hypotheses
 Two views of hypotheses
 Inductive – a generalization made from a n
umber of observations
 Typical of qualitative studies
 Deductive – derived from theory and aimed
at providing evidence to support, expand,
or contradict aspects of that theory
 Typical of quantitative studies
Obj. 5.1 & 5.4
Developing Hypotheses
 Defining a hypothesis
 A researcher’s tentative prediction of the re
sults of the research
 Formulated on the basis of knowledge of the u
nderlying theory or implications from the literat
ure review
 Testing a hypothesis leads to support of the hy
pothesis or lack thereof

Obj. 5.1
Developing Hypotheses
 A good quantitative hypothesis…
 is based on sound reasoning.
 provides a reasonable explanation for the p
redicted outcome.
 clearly and concisely states the expected re
lationships between variables.
 is testable.

Obj. 5.2
Developing Hypotheses
 Types of quantitative hypotheses
 Research hypotheses state the expected relationsh
ip between two variables
 Non-directional – a statement that no relationship or diff
erence exists between the variables
 Directional – a statement of the expected direction of the
relationship or difference between variables
 Null – a statistical statement that no statistically significa
nt relationship or difference exists between variables

Obj. 5.5 & 5.6

 Developing Hypotheses

Non-Directional Directional Null

There is no relationship bet There is a strong positive relation H0: µ = 0
ween math attitudes and m ship between math attitudes and
ath achievement math achievement

There is no difference in the Students using technology will ha H0: µ1 - µ2 = 0

achievement of students usi ve higher levels of achievement t
ng technology or not using i han students who are not using it
t

Obj. 5.5 & 5.6

Developing Hypotheses
 Hypotheses in qualitative studies
 Given the nature of qualitative research, fo
rmal a priori hypotheses are not stated
 Generative role of qualitative research
 Testing role of quantitative research
 Focus is on generating new hypotheses as
a result of the study (i.e., inductive hypoth
eses)
Obj. 5.10
 Stating Hypotheses
 Formats for quantitative experimental studies
 P who get X do better on Y than P who do not get X
 P represents the participant
 X represents the treatment
 Y represents the outcome
 Testing hypotheses
 Statistical analysis of data
 Importance of the results regardless of the outcome
 Results support or fail to support hypotheses, but th
ey never prove or disprove hypotheses
Obj. 5.7 & 5.9