Available Research Designs Based on Example Research Questions – SOE

Does the introduction of accelerated learning activities for students randomly selected from the high school and assigned to Algebra I classes result in significantly higher final exam scores than for randomly selected and assigned students in a traditional Algebra I classes without accelerated learning activities?

The question implies a cause-effect relationship. The use of random selection, coupled with random assignment to experimental and control groups implies a true experiment.

Does exposure to violent videos or television programs reduce the prosocial behaviors of 3-year-olds in an urban daycare program compared with those of 3-year-olds not exposed to the violent programming?

An effect of an independent variable (exposure) on a dependent variable (prosocial behaviors) and the use of a comparison or control group imply a cause-effect design. But the use of convenience sampling (non-random selection from an urban daycare program) reduces it to quasi-experimental design. The participant children should be randomly assigned to either the experimental group (exposed to the programming) or to a control group (not exposed).

Does exposure to violent videos or television programs reduce the prosocial behaviors of 3-year-olds in an urban daycare program?

The use of convenience sampling reduces this to quasi-experimental status, and the absence of a control or comparison group implies either a repeated measures or time series design.

Is there a significant difference in the number of student drops between community college students who hold part-time jobs and those who do not hold part-time jobs?

Two groups are compared on one variable, student drops, which can be counted implying a chi-square analysis.

Is there a statistically significant positive correlation between education levels and income levels in European professional women between the ages of 30–60?

Two variables are to be measured in a single population.

Are age, gender, race, learning style, high school GPA, and motivation scores significant predictors of NCLEX-RN scores?

Six independent variables and one dependent variable.

What are the failure rates of fourth grade readers in a special education remedial reading program in the rural upper Midwest?

One variable, one measure. Purely describes the situation and nothing more.

How do parents, teachers, and administrators describe the challenges of a small rural school placed on probation for failing to make adequate yearly progress under the NCLB requirements?

In this example, the "school" is the bounded system of the case study. It is not only a physical boundary. It is also the study of a specific problem within a specific context or social system.

How do three veteran inner city middle-school teachers handle classroom management issues?

This is a collective case study in which each teacher and her or his class is an individual case. The individual cases are developed through observations, interviews, and artifacts. The individual cases are analyzed with a within-case analysis and three cases compared and synthesized with a cross-case analysis.

How do first year teachers in an inner city school learn the customs, beliefs and relationships that define acceptable behavior in the school?

Asking for the customs, beliefs, and relationships of a group that is a kind of society within the larger society ("large countercultural cult") indicates ethnographic interest. Asking for both their descriptions and how they carry out their customs, etc., implies both direct verbal communication and field observation, perhaps participant observation, which is integral to ethnographic inquiry.

How do teachers in special education classrooms describe their disciplinary practices and their beliefs about discipline?

This may sound similar to the ethnographic question, but there is no clearly identified "culture" here, only a category of teachers, who would no doubt share some but not all cultural values, norms, customs, and beliefs. And like the previous question, the phenomenon to be described is an external one, involving non-psychological aspects (such as their methods of organizing the classroom) as well as psychological aspects. This is ideally suited to generic qualitative inquiry.

How do recent, non-English speaking immigrant families describe the entry process into American public schools?

The key word or idea is "process." Grounded theory describes and explains a process—how the participants accomplished a certain outcome—and thus is a description of a longitudinal phenomenon rather than a cross-sectional one.

How do principals of suburban school districts describe the transition from teacher to principal?

Although lacking the word "process," the "transition" idea substitutes for it, and the question suggests grounded theory.

How do secondary students who come from families with parents who lack a formal education describe the lived experience of deciding to go to college?

Here the key word is "lived experience," which is not mere "experience," but everyday, non-reflective experiencing of some cognitive/affective phenomenon. It is a purely interior phenomenon of consciousness, different from "experiences" such as "life experiences" (such as having a car accident or missing one's airline connection). The other key is the type of experience: A phenomenological experience is an experience as it appears in one's consciousness. It is not observable to outsiders. Thus, the experience of deciding something is one that outsiders cannot perceive and observe, but must be told about. These two keys suggest phenomenology. Note that the phenomenon is not "deciding to go to college," which would call perhaps for basic qualitative inquiry. The phenomenon to be investigated is "deciding," which is interior, private, and cannot be directly observed by others.

How do female high school teachers use intuition in classroom management decision-making during high-risk incidents?

This is the classic kind of phenomenological question. First, "lived experience" identifies the everyday, non-reflective, as-it-happens kind of consciousness. Second, "intuition" is a classic interior phenomenon, the experience of which is private, occurs in one's consciousness, and cannot be directly observed by others.