What is research? Question Answers

Quiz No. 2 solution

  1. What is research?

Systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions is called research. Research is a valuable source of information characterized by the systematic collection analysis and interpretation of data around an issue or question.

  1. A college professor is interested in determining the effects of manipulatives or drill on math achievement. Write a null hypothesis regarding these two treatment on the effects of math achievements?

Null Hypothesis: Manipulatives and drill have no effects on students’ math achievement.

Or

Null Hypothesis: There is no relationship between manipulatives and drill, and math achievement of students.

  1. Progressive Elementary school is the target population for the researcher in question 2. The third and fourth grade classes totals 250 students. The professor wants a 25% sample to collect data. Describe a sampling technique for selecting the participants.

The population of research includes students from two different grades (3rd and 4th), therefore a simple random sampling and systematic sampling will not be able to provide accurate representation of the whole population. For accurate representation of population, stratefied sampling will be used. In stratefied sampling, first of all the population will be divided into two subgroups based on grade (3rd and 4th grade). Since the effects can also be different for students based on gender, thereofre each subgroup will be then split based on gender (male and female subgroup).

A 25% sample means a total of 62 out of total 250 students will selected as sample. Assuming that half of the population (125 students) belong to 3rd grade and half belong to 4th grade. Therefore for best representation, 31 students will be selected from 3rd grade and 31 will be selected from 4th grade. To count for gender differences, selection of male and female students will also be based on percentage of male and female students included in the respective grade calsses.

After making subgroups and calculating sample sizes, further selection may be done using simple random sampling or systematic sampling.

  1. Describe a research design that will accomplish the task of determining the effects of manipulatives or drill on math achievement.

A co-relational survey design will be used to accomplish the task of determining the effects of manipulatives or drill on math achievement. The research design will include two types of correlations. First it will identify correlation between manipulatives on math achievement, secondly, it will identify correlation between drill and math achievement. Further correlations may include correlation between the two variables manipulatives and drill and gender of the student.

  1. What are two differences between quantitative research and qualitative research?

In quantitative research statistical tests are applied on data to make conclusions. In qualitative research, there are no statistical tests applied for making conclusions.

In quantitative research, the researcher is not necessarily involved directly with the subjects (respondents) which means that researcher is detached. While in qualitative research, researcher is actively involved and attached to the respondents.