How to develop an idea/research question?
-Find a topic that you are interested in (be specific as possible)
-Read about what has been done and found before in that area
-Identify gaps, limitations, or unanswered questions
Choose a research design
-choose the research design that is most appropriate and feasible for testing your hypothesis
~randomized or quasi-experimental
~comparative, associational
~single-case designs
Develop Methods
-operationalize the variables so that you can measure them
-data collection:
~survey/questionnaire
~ test
~ observations
Select participants
Probability sampling:
-simple random sample
-stratified random sampling
Non-probability sampling:
-convenience sampling
-quato sampling
-snowball sampling
Recruit Participants
-Provide the participants with the informed consent information
-explain why the study is being conducted (but not the actual hypotheses)
Gather and Analyze Data
-enter it
-verify/clean it
-select the statistics that adequately tests your hypothesis
~correlation/regressions for variable
associations
~t-test/ANOVAs for group comparisons
Type I vs. Type II errors
Type I:
-when you reject the null hypothesis when you were not suppose to
Type II:
-when you fail to reject the null hypothesis when you were suppose to