How can we judge good research

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How can we judge good research ?
Radha Ravindran Koh Puay Kiang Teo Ting Ting Manu
Kapur 17/7/00
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Problems

• Developing clear and adequate standards
• Framing QR as alternative paradigm
• Co-existence with positivism
• Definition as positivisms polar opposite
• Making up various dualisms

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Alternative?

• Anchor standards in non-positivist framework
• Frame standards in
• Logics in use
• Purposes
• Judgments
• Purposes
• Values
• That make up research activities

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Features of Standards

• Abstract
• ER cuts across several disciplines each with its
  own methodologies
• Unable to master all methodologies
• Deference to discipline specific methodology and
  substance peculiar to disciplines in question

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Features of Standards

• Focus on educational issues
• show evidence of features of educational research
  to justify the term educational
• Be of value and interest to educators

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Features of Standards

• Grounded in nonpositivist epistemological
  perspective
• Applicable to quantitative qualitative research
• Quantitative research ought to satisfy the
  nonpositivist standards.

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Standards - 1

• Fit between research questions , data collection
  and analysis techniques
• the data collection techniques employed ought to
  fit, be suitable for answering the research
  question entertained
• Research questions should drive data collection
  techniques and analysis, not vice-versa.
• Incumbent upon researchers to give careful
  attention to the value their research questions
  have for informing educational practice then
  ground their methodology in the nature of these
  questions.

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Standards - 2

• The effective application of specific data
  collection and analysis techniques
• Competent application of data collection and
  analysis techniques
• Immediate low inference conclusions should be
  rendered credible credibility warrant should
  not be suspect.
• Leading to credible general conclusions, that
  rest on the credibility of low inference
  conclusions.

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Standards - 3

• Alertness to and coherence of background
  assumptions
• Studies to be judged against a background of
  existent knowledge
• Contradictions in current study compared to
  existent studies need explanation
• Place role for review of literature

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Standards - 3

• Background assumptions should guide the research
  questions and methods in a coherent and
  consistent fashion
• Question of researchers personal subjectivity
• Basis for researchers distinctive contribution
• Derived from joining personal interpretations
  with the data that have been collected and
  analysed
• Assumptions derived from literature,
  subjectivities need to be made explicit if they
  are to clarify rather than obscure research
  design and findings

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Standards - 4

• Overall Warrant
• Encompasses responding to and balancing the first
  three standards discussed as well as going beyond
  them
• Most warranted conclusions are those drawn after
  robust and respected theoretical explanations
  have been tentatively applied to the data
  triangulation by theory (Denzill, 1989 Shulman,
  (1988) used to explain research data

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Value Constraints

• Conduct of ER is subject to both external and
  internal value constraints (Howe, 1985)

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External Value Constraints

• Worth of research for informing and improving
  educational practice so what?
• E researchers must communicate the value their
  research has for educational purposes.
• ER conclusions ought to be generally accessible
  to the education community
• Research process therefore must give attention to
  the nature of the contents and individuals it
  investigates and to which its results might be
  applied

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Internal Value Constraints

• Concerns research ethics
• The way research is conducted vis-à-vis research
  subjects
• Qualitative research researchers must weigh the
  quality of the data they can gather against
  principles such as confidentiality,privacy
  truth telling
• RE clearly relevant to evaluating the
  acceptability or legitimacy of research designs
  and procedures

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Research

• Scientific
• Process disciplined in design and action
• Based on assumptions and values
• Uses or develops theory
• Aims to achieve goal of understanding or
  explaining relationships
• JRM p.5.

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Goals

• Policy making
• Problem solving
• Increasing understanding
• Raising questions
• Evaluating

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Good Research Characteristics

• Inference is goal ability to infer beyond
  collected data to something more that is not
  observed (descriptive inference/causal inference)
• Procedures are public use of explicit public
  methods that enable assessment of reliability.

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Good Research Characteristics

• Conclusions are uncertain Researchers have to
  have an estimate of how certain or uncertain
  their work is to be a science as inference is
  imperfect and uncertainty the outcome of all
  research
• Content is method validity depends on set of
  rules of inference content of science - rules
  and methods, used to study anything
• JRM p.8

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Questions
The End