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Experimental Research Designs (experimental + research_design)
Selected AbstractsOn-screen print: the role of captions as a supplemental literacy toolJOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN READING, Issue 2 2010Deborah Linebarger Children living in poverty are 1.3 times as likely as non-poor children to experience reading difficulties and lack key oral experiences that contribute to early literacy development. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of viewing commercially available educational television with closed captions. Seventy second- and third-grade economically disadvantaged children living in urban locations participated in this experimental research design. Children were randomly assigned to view videos with or without closed captions. Captions helped children recognise and read more words, identify the meaning of those words, generate inferences regarding programme content and transfer these skills to a normative code-related skill task. Risk status moderated word recognition performance: those at risk benefited from captions while those who were not at risk recognised more words when captions were absent. [source] Do open-ended survey questions on migration motives create coder variability problems?POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE (PREVIOUSLY:-INT JOURNAL OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY), Issue 1 2009Thomas Niedomysl Abstract Contemporary research on migration has benefited from adopting a variety of methodological approaches and different sources of information to provide answers to the ever-recurring question of why people migrate. Yet, when it comes to central methods used for researching migration motives, progress appears to have been slow. This paper focuses on surveys to research migration motives using self-administered postal questionnaires. It addresses a key validity question, namely the issue of whether the usage of open-ended questions creates coder variability problems. An experimental research design was used where five coders independently coded 500 randomly selected responses from a large survey on migration motives. Krippendorff's , was calculated to test the level of agreement between the coders. The results advance our knowledge in two important ways: firstly, it is shown that coder variability is not a major problem (Krippendorff's , = 0.82). Secondly, it identifies those types of responses that nevertheless appear problematic to code. The implications of these findings for survey research on migration motives are discussed, and it is argued that open-ended questions have some distinct advantages compared with the more commonly used closed-ended questions. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Randomization in psychiatric intervention research in the general practice settingINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF METHODS IN PSYCHIATRIC RESEARCH, Issue 3 2000CM Van Der Feltz-Cornelis Faculty of Medicine Abstract Most studies of psychiatric interventions in general practice settings conform only in part to the requirements of randomization, placebo control and blinding as formulated by the Cochrane Collaboration. It is possible, nonetheless, to develop experimental research designs that are sufficiently near to this standard. These must deal with certain methodological issues specific to psychiatric research. This article discusses scientific standards of psychiatric research with special consideration of interventions in general practice settings. These issues are accompanied by concrete examples and suggestions on how to confront the problems. In psychiatric intervention research, equivalence studies with single-blind outcome assessment, a tested and ethically justified method, are generally used in place of placebo-controlled studies. The article also examines randomization procedures in greater depth. Randomization can be applied across trial subjects or across doctors' practices. Practical consequences of randomizing across subjects, and specific implementations of it such as crossover and pre-post designs in general practice settings, are clarified. Overall, a research design using randomization across doctors' practices is judged preferable to one that randomizes across trial subjects. One potential problem is that the control group may become too small, especially when considerable effects are expected from the intervention being studied. One might consider making the control condition smaller in the first place, or, if indicated on ethical grounds, performing an intermediate analysis and then breaking off the study as soon as a statistically significant effect has been demonstrated. Multilevel statistical techniques offer new opportunities for analysis within such designs. Copyright © 2000 Whurr Publishers Ltd. [source] The Contested Nature of Empirical Educational Research (and Why Philosophy of Education Offers Little Help)JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 4 2005D. C. PHILLIPS This paper suggests that empirical educational research has not, on the whole, been treated well by philosophers of education. A variety of criticisms have been offered, ranging from triviality, conceptual confusion and the impossibility of empirically studying normative processes. Furthermore, many of those who criticise, or dismiss, empirical research do so without subjecting any specific examples to careful scholarly scrutiny. It is suggested that both philosophy of education, and the empirical research enterprise, stand to profit if philosophers pay more attention to real cases,and this attention is especially important at present, when research funding is being based on spurious scientistic criteria such as the use of ,gold standard' randomised experimental research designs. [source] Improving the School Environment to Reduce School Violence: A Review of the Literature,JOURNAL OF SCHOOL HEALTH, Issue 10 2009Sarah Lindstrom Johnson PhD ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: School violence can impact the social, psychological, and physical well-being of both students and teachers and disrupt the learning process. This review focuses on a new area of research, the mechanisms by which the school environment determines the likelihood of school violence. METHODS: A search for peer-reviewed articles was made in six databases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's report on school-violence interventions. Twenty-five articles that attempted to understand the influence of either the school social or physical environment in determining teacher and student perceptions of safety and experiences of violence were included. RESULTS: Most of the included articles were cross-sectional surveys of junior high or high school students and staff. As articles used different measures of the school physical and social environment, a classification system was created. Using this system, studies show that schools with less violence tend to have students who are aware of school rules and believe they are fair, have positive relationships with their teachers, feel that they have ownership in their school, feel that they are in a classroom and school environment that is positive and focused on learning, and in an environment that is orderly. CONCLUSION: The school social and physical environment appears to offer intervention opportunities to reduce school violence. However, the lack of consistency in school environment variables as well as the lack of longitudinal and experimental research designs limits the applicability of these findings. [source] | |||||||||||||