Question

After reading Butler, Harper, & Mitchell, C. B. (2011), answer the following questions:

1. What research question(s) does the study address?
2. What is the researchers’ rationale for the study? Was the study designed to contribute to theory? Do the results of the study contribute to theory? For both questions: If so, how? If not, why not?
3. What constructs does the study address? How are they operationalized?
4. What are the independent and dependent variables in the study?
5. The researchers used analysis of variance (ANOVA) in their data analysis. Was this an appropriate choice? Why or why not?
6. Name the type of research design the researchers used.
7. What internal and external validity threats did the researchers address in their design? How did they address them? Are there threats they did not address? If so how does the failure to address the threats affect the researchers’ interpretations of their findings?

Answer 1

Solution:

1. What research question(s) does the study address?
2. What is the researchers’ rationale for the study? Was the study designed to contribute to theory? Do the results of the study contribute to theory? For both questions: If so, how? If not, why not?

Answer: “Research tells us that providing immediate, individualized and specific feedback encourages students to write more extensively, to revise their work more intensively and that using information technology in the classroom increases the time students spend on writing (e.g., Beach, 1979; Covill, 1997; Etchison, 1989; Fitzgerald, 1987; Goldberg, Russell, & Cook, 2003; Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Solomon, Lutkus, Kaplan, & Skolnik, 2004).

In a more recent research summary on the effects of computers on student writing, Goldberg et al. (2003) found that students are more engaged and motivated when using a computer and therefore they produce higher quality and longer written work. In general, when students spend more time writing, their writing improves. It can be difficult to engage students in multiple or extended writing tasks, and students might be more motivated to write when using a computer.

A research summary (Goldberg et al., 2003) found that, on average, students who use computers when learning to write are more engaged and motivated in their writing”.

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3. What constructs does the study address? How are they operationalized?

Answer: The study constructs on students levels of interest and willingness in taking up the after school tutorials. It also mainly depends on how usefully time is spent.

Student’s interest and willingness can be deeply created by strong motivation. Driving the students for afterschool tutorials can be done effectively by involving them in intermediary-interesting activities (of their interest) before and after school tutorials.

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4. What are the independent and dependent variables in the study?

Answer:

Here the independent variables are the no.of extra hours a student spends in after work tutorials and how effectively the time is being utilized in after work tutorials and dependent variables are the scores of the tests obviously and also his/her skill set in the tests.

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5. Name the type of design the researchers used.

Answer: Post test design would be one of the convenient designs to find the answers for the research questions.

Here the observer identifies the students who are taking after school classes and who are not taking and then find the results (test scores) of these groups to find the answers for the questions under consideration.

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6. What internal and external validity threats did the researchers address in their design? How did they address them? Are there threats they did not address? If so how does the failure to address the threats affect the researchers’ interpretations of their findings? Are Goldberg’s conclusions convincing? Why or why not?

Answer:

Internal validity threats:

Student willingness and interest to take up afterschool tutorials, non-equivalent groups, lack of random assigning, no conduction of pretest, one group gets treatment and other not (both of them are post-tested).

Maturation is also one of the internal threats as we can’t assess the students' increase of score is really due to afterschool tutorials or due to their realization.

By conducting an interview to find out the willingness and interest to take up afterschool tutorials, and finding out the economic, sociological, psychological, etc background before conducting the study.

By selecting the appropriate period to conduct this study and get the results.

External validity threats:

Generalizing the results to other populations who are not included in this study is one of the threat. The ability to afford to take up after school tutorials is also a threat and generalizing results would be a problem.

Choice of afterschool tutorials is not taken into consideration and then perhaps generalizing the result would also be a setback.

By knowing more information about the specified population, results can be generalized to some extent to other populations. But this is not more accurate.

The ability to afford afterschool cannot be controlled. Choice of afterschool tutorials can be controlled to some extent by getting adequate information before conducting the study.

Parental income, student inherent ability to learn, students psychological factors, etc cannot be addressed here.

These factors influence on researchers findings and may lead to ambiguous results. These can be considered as limitations of the study, for every research contains some limitations & is based on some assumptions.