Week 3 Discussion

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you should be able to

Understand the need to evaluate published research.

Evaluate the quality of research questions and hypotheses.

Identify variables used in research.

Understand basic types of qualitative and quantitative research designs.

Interpret visualized data.

5Research Methods and Statistics

Jeral Kirwan—Ashford University

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Understand basic types of statistical analyses.

Understand the basics of inferential statistics.

Demonstrate ethical research integrity.

Explain career applications involving research and statistics.

Social scientists often need to collect and analyze data to test a research question or hypothesis. However, professionals in many other fields also often need to solve real-world problems. For instance, Stephon is a program evaluator who works for a non-profit organization. One day, he is asked to evaluate several new programs that are competing for a grant offered to small businesses. Stephon’s supervisor asks him to set up an evaluation model to assess these proposals and to find the top three candidates for that grant. It would be easy for Stephon to just read them and pick the three that he likes best or finds most interesting, but he knows that would not be the most fair and equitable approach. Instead, he follows some basic research principles that he learned in his research methods course and designs an evaluation that summarizes, assesses, and reports on the applications.

Stephon starts by determining the goals of the grant and using those to create a rubric with which to evaluate the proposals. Then he uses that rubric to objectively assign a score to each of the proposals. With that data, he creates a chart that shows how each proposal compares to the others based on the established criteria. He presents his results to his supervisor with his recommendations for the winners of the grant. Through this process, Stephon has used the scientific method to collect data and make informed decisions based on that data. This shows that research methods and statistics are valuable areas of expertise beyond the laboratory.

After considering this scenario, review the following questions:

What ethical considerations might have encouraged Stephon and his supervisor to use an evaluation model rather than simply selecting their personal preferences? How, in this scenario, was the creation of a rubric useful? Are there ways that you, in your everyday life, utilize the scientific method to make decisions? If so, when and how?

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