Lecture 2- Formulating Research Questions Flashcards
How can a researcher generate ideas?
- Identify gaps or weaknesses in the literature
- Extend study to a new population, set of materials, or setting
- Apply different outcome measures
- Assess social validity of the research
What is the topic and broad problem of a research study?
Introduces the reader to the importance and context of the research study.
Motivates/provides a framework for the current experiment.
Organizes, explains, and accounts for data.
What are some criteria for evaluating theories?
- Comprehensiveness
- Precision and testability
- Parsimony
- Heuristic value
What is comprehensiveness?
Research should be broad enough to account for as much data as possible.
What is precision and testability?
A good theory should have concepts that are clearly and explicitly defined:
- Contains rational, logically related statements
- Empirically testable hypotheses
What is an omnipotent theory?
Theory that is so powerful, general, or flexible that they can account for anything
What is parsimony?
All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the best
What is Occam’s razor?
The explanation of any phenomena should make as few assumptions as possible
What is heuristic value?
Makes (basic or applied) predictions, generates new knowledge, and stimulates future research
What are some considerations to make when generating a research hypothesis?
- The types of research one might conduct
- Whether you can practically conduct them
- Crafting the alternatives and the logic
What are the different types of research (4)?
1- Empirical
2- Non-empirical
3- Quantitative
4- Qualitative
What is empirical research?
Involves the collection of new information or data through observation and measurement of behavior and/or physical properties.
What is nonempirical research?
Research that makes use of existing information instead of gathering new data.
What is quantitative research?
Relates to numerical information such as frequency counts and measures of size or other physical properties.
- Quantify attitudes, opinions, behaviors, etc.
- Generalize results from a sample to a population
- Methods include surveys, structured interviews/observations, systematic experiments
What is qualitative research?
Data that often includes verbal information.
- Aim to reveal underlying reasons, opinions, motives, trends
- Used to generate hypotheses to be tested in subsequent quantitative research
- Methods include unstructured/semi-structured techniques, verbal measures
What are the different types of empirical designs?
- Experimental/Quasi-experimental
2. Non-experimental/observational
What is an experimental/quasi-experimental design?
- Lacks random assign to groups
- Manipulate conditions
What is a non-experimental/observational research design?
Researcher investigates existing conditions.
What is an independent variable?
The characteristic or manipulation the researcher wants to study
What is a dependent variable?
The measures that the researcher use to determine the outcomes fo their research.
- Observations or measures a researcher obtains
What are specific research questions?
Question(s) addressed in the current study
What are descriptive research questions?
- Only have 1 variable
- What is…?
What are exploratory/relational research questions?
- Have 2+ variables
- Correlational
What are explanatory/difference research questions?
- Have 2+ variables
- Cause-effect
What is an evidence-based practice question?
PICO
P= patient/client, population, problem I= intervention, issue C= comparison/alternative O= outcome
What is a research hypothesis?
A formal statement of the predicted outcome.
Contains null and alternative hypotheses.
Also contains a statement about accepting or rejecting the mull hypothesis.
What is the null hypothesis?
H0
Statement of no difference, aka no difference between groups.
Based on the assumption that the results of a study will yield no significant differences between groups and/or no significant relationships among variables.
What is the alternative hypothesis?
H1
States that there will be a difference between groups.
Statement of what the researchers expected to find when they conducted their study.
What makes a well-formed hypothesis?
- Constructs are operationalized
- Precise, specific IV and DV
- General statement to more specific - Measures are valid
- Measures are reliable
What is the general structure of an introduction?
- What is the broad question of focus?
- What work has been done to answer it?
- Identify the gap in research
- How will the present study address the gap?
What is validity?
How accurately a measure represents the knowledge/skill/trait you aim to assess
What validity pertains to non-empirical research?
- Face validity
- Content validity
What validity pertains to empirical research?
- Construct validity
- Criterion validity
What is face validity?
Validity based on a person’s judgment of how well a test appears to accomplish its purpose.
Informal approach to establishing validity because it is based on individual ideas regarding appropriate content or procedures.
What is content validity?
A way to establish validity using judgment.
What is criterion validity?
Involves comparing a new test or measure to an existing one that serves as the standard of comparison.
What is construct validity?
Look at patterns or relationship among test items, or relationships between test items and external standards of comparision
What is reliability?
Consistency of measurement (especially critical when drawing conclusions for an individual)
What is test-retest reliability?
Researchers recruit a group of participants and test them at 2 different times.
Does performance stay consistent from one test session to the next?
What is parallel-forms of relability?
Researchers or test developers construct 2 different but hopefully equivalent, forms of a measure.
Ex. different lists of NU-6 words
What is split-half reliability?
Researcher administers a test to a group of participants. Following test administration, the researcher splits the test items into 2 equivalent forms and then compare the participants’ scores for each form.
What is the QALMRI framework?
Q= Question A= Alternatives L= Logic M= Method R= Results I= Inferences
What does the Q in the QALMRI stand for?
Contains broad and specific questions.
Broad: general question (addressed over many experiments)
- Generally in 1st paragraph of the introduction
Specific: question addressed in the paper
- Generally in last 2 paragraphs of the introduction
What does the A in the QALMRI stand for?
2+ alternative answers to the specific question
- Explain why both answers are plausible
Factor X will show an effect or that it won’t (null)
What does the L in the QALMRI stand for?
How the experiment design permits distinguishing among alternatives.
- Towards the end of the introduction
Structure: If alternative 1 (and not 2) is correct, then when the IV is manipulated, the DV should change in X way.
What does the M in the QALMRI stand for?
How to implement the design logic.
What does the R in the QALMRI stand for?
What was the outcome?
What does the I in the QALMRI stand for?
What do the results mean?
