As evidence-based reform becomes increasingly important in educational policy, it is becoming essential to understand how research design might contribute to reported effect sizes in experiments evaluating educational programs. The purpose of this study was to examine how methodological features such as types of publication, sample sizes, and…

Independent descriptive (correlational) and functional (experimental) analyses, conducted with six subjects with profound mental retardation exhibiting self-injurious behavior (SIB), found that the descriptive analysis was useful in identifying the extent to which SIB was related to social versus nonsocial contingencies but was limited in its…

This article uses a parable to compare qualitative (interpretive) and quantitative (experimental) methods in child language research. Two hypothetical young researchers both investigate question-asking behavior of children with autism. Five different possible endings to the parable illustrate various relationships among research approaches and…

This reaction to Duchan (EC 607 918) warns against a strict dogmatic adherence to either a qualitative or quantitative research approach and argues that far more important than methodology per se are choice of research question and appropriateness of the methodology to the problem under investigation. Examples in speech-language pathology are…