Interest in applied educational research methodology is growing as educators and researchers strive to seek empirical evidence about what is effective teaching within distinctive contexts. However, for beginner researchers who are interested in conducting case studies within educational settings and are looking for an appropriate starting point,…

Consultation relies on story. This is true for researchers, for practitioners, and for clients. Given this fact, qualitative and mixed methods (QMM) research are particularly well suited to listening to the stories that compose the clinical practice of consultation in order to extend understanding and to support improvement and innovation. In this…

This article addresses methodological issues related to the consequences of researchers' range of insider identities that emerge over the course of completing subsequent stages of qualitative migration research projects. Taking on a temporal approach to the insider status evolving over the course of field entry, data collection, data analysis, and…

In this case, I discuss my progression from ethnography toward multimodal ethnography as a necessary methodology to study multiliterate and multimodal lives. I view daily life, social interactions, and meaning-making practices as inherently multimodal. By multimodal, I mean that individuals continually read, interpret, and create meanings that…

As aspiring professionals, pre-service teachers must become good consumers of educational research as well as competent researchers who can use tools of inquiry to improve their practice and conduct their own educational research. Many, however, resist learning research skills or find difficulties in doing so. This article presents ways in which…

Background: Scholars have called for research approaches that actively include and are driven by people with intellectual disabilities, but the process of inclusive data analysis has been scarcely documented in the literature. This paper demonstrates the process university researchers and a group of self-advocates used to analyse and interpret…

Experimental data are analysed statistically to allow researchers to draw conclusions from a limited set of measurements. The hard fact is that researchers can never be certain that measurements from a sample will exactly reflect the properties of the entire group of possible candidates available to be studied (although using a sample is often the…

Two basic data sources required for research studies have been secondary and primary. Secondary data collection helps the researcher to provide relevant background to the study and are, in most cases, available for retrieval from recorded sources. Primary data collection requires the researcher to venture into the field where the study is to take…

In this paper, two beginning qualitative researchers describe the challenges and successes of conducting a collaborative self-study. For two academic years, the authors wrote and analyzed personal narratives related to their experiences as a lesbian and a gay man, respectively, in educational contexts. This article addresses the data analysis…

Much composition research, even qualitative research, posits a world "out there" waiting to be understood and seeks causes of phenomena without considering the subjective states of researchers or study participants. Because of this, many researchers consider social phenomena as "things" which coerce human behavior. But even…

This study examined the influence of research journals beyond their function as a data collection instrument. The researcher used a research journal to record field notes and write reflections and to develop a better understanding of the research role. The study that is the focus of the discussion was an examination of the development of…

This document examined studies of the overjustification effect. Many studies examining the phenomenon were conducted during the 1970s; findings appeared to be accepted without qualification. It is unclear whether researchers conducted the studies with the proper methodologies and interpreted results correctly. Such factors included the type of…

Describes three classes of measurement techniques: (1) interviewing methods; (2) record retrieval procedures; and (3) observation methods. Discusses primary reasons for measurement error. Concludes that, although measurement error can be defined and controlled for, there are other design factors that also must be considered. (CFR)

Maintains that the need for gathering sensitive information frequently arises in planning and implementing organizational surveys. Describes methods of designing the instrument format and the mode of data collection. Provides a description and process summary of the Randomized Response Technique (RRT). (CFR)