This paper aims to explore the philosophical theoretical foundations of two basic research paradigms, namely positivism and interpretivism. In the discussion process, literature in the relevant fields including academic papers and books is reviewed and used as support for the analysis. Firstly, the paper explores the differences between the…

Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) has become one of the most prominent methods in the social sciences for capturing causal complexity, especially for scholars with small- and medium-"N" data sets. This research note explores two key assumptions in fsQCA's methodology for testing for necessary and sufficient…

Valid and evidence-informed practices are critical to help young children with disabilities and their families with highly effective interventions and instruction to reach their potentials. Replication research is critical for appraising research and identifying evidence-based practices. The purpose of this study was to replicate the methods used…

Decades of research has assessed the benefits of children's and adolescents' friendships, but friendships among youth often dissolve within a matter of months or years. Studies have investigated predictors and consequences of friendship stability with the expectation that, in order for friendships to have a positive or negative influence on youth,…

The 1961 Copyright Office study on renewals, authored by Barbara Ringer, has cast an outsized influence on discussions of the U.S. 1923-1963 public domain. As more concrete data emerge from initiatives such as the large-scale determination process in the Copyright Review Management System (CRMS) project, questions are raised about the reliability…

Surveys play an important role in understanding the higher education landscape. About 60 percent of the published research in major higher education journals utilized survey data (Pike, 2007). Institutions also commonly use surveys to assess student outcomes and evaluate programs, instructors, and even cafeteria food. However, declining survey…

The purpose of this study was to do a SWOT analysis and compare performances of male and female students in chemistry. Four research questions and four null hypotheses guided the study. Two boys', two girls' and two coeducational schools involving 1319 males and 1831 females, were selected by a stratified, deliberate sampling technique. A…

Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

Black and Hispanic students are undeniably underidentified as gifted and underrepresented in gifted education. The underrepresentation of the two largest groups of "minority" students is long-standing, dating several decades, and is a serious area of contention. Most debates focus on the efficacy of traditional intelligence tests with…

In this article, we test an alternative approach to creating a counterfactual basis for estimating individual and average treatment effects. Instead of using control/comparison groups or before-measures, the so-called Counterfactual as Self-Estimated by Program Participants (CSEPP) relies on program participants' self-estimations of their own…

In the Swedish educational system, teachers have the dual responsibility of assigning final grades and marking their own students' national tests. The Government has mandated the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to remark samples of the national tests to see if teacher marking can be trusted. Reports from this project have concluded that intermarker…

Debate is occurring about which result interpretation aides focused on examining the experimental effect should be used in single-subject experimental research. In this study, we examined seven nonoverlap methods and compared results using each method to judgments of two visual analysts. The data sources for the present study were 36 studies…

There has been much discussion about quantitative and qualitative approaches to research in different disciplines. In the behavioural and social sciences, these two paradigms are compared to reveal their relative strengths and weaknesses. But the debate about both traditions has commonly taken place in academic books. It is hard to find an article…

Active participation of community partners in research aspects of community-academic partnered projects is often assumed to have a positive impact on the outcomes of such projects. The value of community engagement in research, however, cannot be empirically determined without good measures of the level of community participation in research…

Replications and robustness checks are key elements of the scientific method and a staple in many disciplines. However, leading journals in developmental psychology rarely include explicit replications of prior research conducted by different investigators, and few require authors to establish in their articles or online appendices that their key…