Research Processes and Introduction to Statistics

1
Research Processes and Introduction to Statistics

• Research Methods in Education
• Research Process
• Introduction to Quantitative Methods
• The Projects

2
Research Process

• Topic and General Area
• Significance and Relevance
• Review of the Literature
• Major Questions and Issues
• Methodology
• Results
• Interpretation, Critique and Conclusion

3
Research Process Example Esther Loong

• Mathematics teaching practices and the internet
• general decline in maths skills and in positive
  attitudes in Australian and American schools
• some major national projects but little is known
  because the area is new
• What are new effective pedagogies?
• resource based learning with the web is to SOSE
  as ????? with the web is to maths
• creation of a web typology, teacher surveys, and
  class practice observation with interviews and
  surveys
• emergent pedagogy of task object model positive
  attitudes in junior and middle years
• much needs to be done

4
Literature Review

• Brief Statement of Accepted Wisdom
• Description of Major Findings
• Outline of Outstanding Issues and Unanswered
  Questions
• List of General Questions to be Addressed by
  Research

5
Methodology

• Rationale for Choice of Methods
• Target Population
• Operationalising of Questions
• Detailed Description of Methods
• Selection of Participants
• Ethics Processes and Approvals

6
Quantitative Methods

• Population
• children aged 4-10
• Parameter
• mathematics skill(standard test)
• Sample
• 100 children from various schools
• Statistic
• numeracy skill
• Variable
• Age
• Reference Ch1. Levine and Stephan Even You Can
  Learn Statistics

7
Types of Parameters/Variables

• Categorical Values
• Fall into defined categories eg. Gender, social
  class, country of origin
• Ordinal Values
• categories that can be ranked eg. Income levels
• Discrete Values
• counts of things eg. votes in an election
• Continuous Values(ratio)
• measured within accuracy limited only by the
  measuring process eg. height, test scores

8
Branches of Statistics

• Descriptive Statistics
• parameters of the whole population are known, eg.
  personal income in the census, scores on the
  national numeracy tests
• Inferential Statistics
• statistics of a sample are known and parameters
  of the population inferred population eg.
  Australian mathematics performance TIMMS
• Random Sampling
• Stratified Random Sampling
• Convenience Sampling

9
Descriptive Statistics

• Population parameters can be described in terms
  of
• frequencies
• eg. number of Australians with income between
  60,000-80,000
• percentages
• eg. the percentage of Australians earning under
  40,000
• percentiles
• eg.the richest 10 of the population

10
Presenting Categorical Data

• Summary Tables
• percentage table
• two way classification table
• Reference Ch2. p22-3 Levine and Stephan Even You
  Can Learn Statistics

11
Presenting Categorical Data

• Visual Presentations
• Bar charts
• emphasize largest categories
• Pie Charts
• comparative breakdown of categories
• Pareto diagram
• distinguish critical categories
• Histograms
• represent distributions
• Time Series
• show change over time
• Scatter Plots
• distinguish critical categories

12
Summary Measures

• measures of central tendency
• mean
• mode
• median
• measures of spread or dispersion
• range
• standard deviation

13
The Projects

• Reading processes
• School environment and physical activity
• Writing/reading and the Web

14
Reading Processes

• Main aim
• determine whether RAN is related to word reading
  ability and to resolve discrepancies in the
  research literature
• Population
• school children R-7 South Australia
• Sample
• convenience sample with some random aspects
• Methods
• standard tests(20 minutes administration time)

15
Reading Processes-Operationalised Questions

• 1. Are RAN and phonemic awareness scores
  significantly related?
• 2. What is the relationship between RAN and word
  reading scores?
• 3. Does the relationship between RAN and word
  reading vary according to word type ( ie regular
  or irregular)?
• 4. Is there a correlation between RAN scores and
  orthographic scores for older readers?

16
School environment and physical activity

• Main aim
• to look at some features of childrens
  environments which may contribute to reduced
  levels of exercise in the primary years
• Population
• school children R-7 South Australia
• Sample
• convenience sample with some random aspects
• Methods
• observation and children survey(5 minutes)

17
School environment and physical activity -
Operationalised Questions

• 1. Do road layout and traffic density play a part
  in reducing childrens opportunity for exercise,
  particularly walking or cycling to school?
• 2. Does playground design encourage or discourage
  childrens active play during school hours?
• 3. Can school policy, eg in encouraging walking
  via a walking bus improve the level of activity
  among children?
• 4. How do opportunities for exercise affect
  childrens attitude to exercise?

18
Writing/reading and the Web

• Main aim
• to explore the relationship author recognition,
  world wide web site use, attitudes to computing,
  web self efficacy and academic writing
• Population
• adult undergraduates in the social sciences
• Sample
• convenience sample at Magill with some random
  aspects
• Methods
• survey and tests( 15 minutes)

19
Writing/reading and the Web - Operationalised
Questions

• 1. Are computer attitudes and web self efficacy
  significantly related?
• 2. Are author recognition and web site
  recognition related?
• 3. Is there a relationship between web self
  efficacy and academic performance?
• 4. Is web site recognition related to that
  academic performance in a similar way to author
  recognition, after factoring out the influences
  of differential individual attitudes to
  computing?

20
ActivStats

• Activities for Independent Learning
• Lots Exercises
• Narrated Lectures synchronising graphics, text
  and animation
• Videos that bring statistics to life
• Visualisation Tools
• More than 300 data sets and direct connection to
  SPSS
• Quizzes and Self Tests