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Video Transcript:

Developing the Anticipated Findings and Personal & Professional

Implications

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Hello everyone, my name is Jim Staunton and I'm part of the team at the MCAA program that

teaches the 550 research methods class. At this point in your paper you should have reviewed

relevant literature on your topic, developed a workable research question or possibly even a

hypothesis, devised a way to answer that question or to test your hypothesis. Now we turn to

your anticipated findings. This section is somewhat difficult because since you have not

conducted the actual investigation you proposed in chapter three, however, you must discuss

what you anticipate finding and how you will use these findings to advance knowledge in the

area of study you've chosen. Make your predictions based on your review of the literature,

expert opinion, and your own professional experience. Discuss the statistical treatment you

used in your methodology and your analysis of what that data would show. Feel free to predict

whether your findings would give valid data and is repeatable. It is acceptable in this section, in

fact it's often desirable, to present research that contradicts your theory or on the topic. You

can frame an argument that states something like, “Joan's 1998 believes there is little value in

dynamic stretches. This researcher devised a study that showed that dynamic stretching

increased flexibility in a group of high school athletes and reduced injuries.” They call this the

“they say, I say” approach and it's really desirable because it shows the reader or demonstrates

to the reader that you have reviewed this topic considerably, you've stated a position on the

topic, and you were prepared to maybe challenge some of the assumptions that are out there

in the field presently. Remember in this section to remind the reader of your research question

or hypothesis, give a brief review of the methodology, predict what you would find, determine

whether your results are reliable and valid, and state your limitations. That's what we're going

to turn to the PowerPoint now to demonstrate what limitations are. Alright, what are

limitations and how do I present them in my paper? Every published study has limitations, it's

not possible to conduct a study that is perfectly executed. Limitations are those factors that act

as constraints on the research design or the methodology? What are common limitations?

Issues with the sample and selection. We know that samples must be limited in some way it's

just not possible usually to study an entire population. If you wanted to look into attitudes of

fans about their baseball teams, it would not be possible to go to every single stadium across

the United States and survey all the folks who come to games. So you select a representative

sample of those people who go to games and test their attitudes through surveys or other

methods. Limiting down your sample will allow you to actually conduct a reasonably good

study. There a selection or sample bias. Your population may not reflect the target group of

your research design, it may not be large enough or diverse enough to give accurate

conclusions. There may not be sufficient subjects for statistical measurement - the larger the

Video Transcript:

Developing the Anticipated Findings and Personal & Professional

Implications

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sample the more precise your data will be. There might be a lack of previous research studies

on the topic or gaps in the body of literature on your subject that can lead to a flawed research

design on which to base your theoretical foundations. An example of this might be a study that

I read about in a newspaper - which is not a good source to find information about studies - but

this study reflected that senior citizens in retirement communities were very, very happy as

opposed to those people who are not. It makes a decent conclusion until you look at the study

and find that the subjects were all people living in high-end retirement homes in San Diego,

California. You might be inclined to say this is great I've got good weather, excellent views,

beaches and areas where I could have great recreation. That study really doesn't carry a lot of

weight if you try to apply it to people nationwide older people nationwide. There might be

limitations on the methods or instrument used to collect data. Did you use a previously

validated instrument? That's desirable, but sometimes those instruments may not apply

directly to the topic you're studying. If you've created your own instrument, did you do a valid

test before you applied it to your subjects? So, there can be limited access to data and previous

research. There could be time constraints and we've taken it for granted that in this class there

is insufficient time to actually conduct an actual study. This may be true also when conducting

actual research, you may be limited by the amount of time that the University perhaps gives

you to complete your study. Don't forget about researcher bias, a common mistake when

conducting research is bias on the part of the researcher, him or herself. We caution against

conducting a study to prove a personal belief. Researchers must have an open mind and view

data without personal conviction or bias. Researchers have to have an open mind when

conducting studies. Well why report your limitations, why would you want to? In this section of

your paper talk about the things that may have skewed your results. Well, many researchers

are reluctant to report limitations, but openly reporting limitations tells other researchers you

have conducted a proper study without bias. And, if your research is going to be read other

researchers will point out those limitations, something you don't want. Get out ahead of them

and let them know you recognize these influences on your study. There was a recent study in

the esteemed journal Lancet. It's a well-known and well received medical journal published in

England. It was withdrawn by the publication after it was found out that the researcher did not

use primary research sources when he talked about his subject. What was it? Heart disease

associated with taking hydroxychloroquine. The researcher was disgraced and the research

publication was embarrassed. So where do I put the limitations? Well the anticipated findings

section of your paper should include limitations you identified in your methodology section.

Include references to your review of the literature. For instance, this is from a student recently:

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Developing the Anticipated Findings and Personal & Professional

Implications

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“While this study was not completed, the findings should agree with Felipe et al in 2013, who

found that a study of injuries on artificial turf resulted in a greater likelihood than those on

natural turf.” It's a nice summary that includes previous research that you looked at. Be sure

your references section contains citations that you have referenced throughout the body of

your paper. Now I want to just take a moment to talk about the sources for the information I've

just given you because you may want to expand your understanding of this topic and certainly

you can turn to the textbook, Research Methods for Sports Studies, by Jones. I also found

information just on the on the web through a Google search and wound up at libguides.usc.edu

and there is a website called ProAcademic-writers.com where you can find more information.

Now let's turn to the final chapter of your paper personal and professional implications. This is

where actually you get to have a little fun with your topic and talk about how what you studied

is important to you and why it might be important to other coaches in your field or

administrators. So in this section you discuss why the anticipated findings would have an

impact on you as a coach or administrator. You're now at a point where you can make a

contribution to your profession and we hope that your proposed study does. Talk about why

this is important to you. It's permissible to use personal pronouns since you are referencing

yourself in this section. Remember through most of this paper you are not allowed to do that,

it's against APA style, but now you're making a personal reference and it is permissible. Discuss

how the findings could be generalizable to other coaches and possibly affect how they deal with

training strategies teaching or other aspects of your sport. Here's a sample from a student's

paper: “It is believed that if another study took place using the same subjects but a design that

incorporated a control group that trained with a traditional conditioning plan, researchers

would find equal if not better results from the experimental group training with soccer

specificity.” That's just an example of how you might end up your paper and and discuss how it

could be your findings could be used by others. So there it is, the last two chapters of your

paper anticipated findings and personal and professional implications. I hope that these slides

and this presentation have been helpful to you completing this paper and wish you all the best

of luck in the class.