Boston houghton mifflin college london

Main literature:

• Clear
• Answerable
• Relevant (for whom?)

Purpose of research

Scientific research is characterized by its methodological rigor:

A theory is a systematic structure of ideas and assumptions about a defined subject area.

The components of the theory should be as precise as possible.

For example, one would like to draw conclusions about all school children in this federal state (population) based on the results of a study with randomly selected school children in a federal state (sample).

When such hypotheses refer to “statistics”, that is, to summarized values such as mean values, then they are frequently called statistical hypotheses.

If, for example, one would like to ascertain the mathematical abilities of a certain group of students in the context of country comparisons, then the results of the individual students in a corresponding arithmetic test can also be influenced by how fearful, intelligent, rested, hungry, in a good mood, etc. they

It is not uncommon for test participants to develop “theories” themselves about what is to be examined in the study, and such theories can affect their behavior.

In addition, ethical problems can arise (e.g. when is it allowed to initially not tell test participants the whole truth about the study?).

Further data analysis then depends even more on the initial hypotheses.

In doing so, one will first describe the results in the sample, but not infrequently one would also like to draw conclusions about the total population.

In this case - and this is possibly the most interesting type of result – the researcher will try to expand the existing theory (s) or create a new one, which of course then has to be re-examined.

Choosing a topic - general criteria

Choosing a topic - personal criteria

• research focus of your professors

• ....

Initially random; then more and more systematically.

Literature search – search strategies
• Keyword searches:
• “Keyword searches use search engines on the World Wide Web or on specialized databases” (Greenlaw, 2006, p. 35).

Here to tell your “story line” and set the structure of your research project.

Elements of the summary

Additional advice on writing a summary:
• A non-technical summary describes a research project in essay form - not a list of questions and answers – but you may start out with a separate sentence or paragraph for each question.

• Base this on a preliminary literature review – first search for relevant literature from your previous studies and this course (including material and information from presentations, skripts, etc.) and then try to obtain a few other relevant articles by browsing public sources.

1. collecting material and insights – immediately document in your report draft

2. collating and putting into order – reorganizing sequence in your report draft

Research proposal /application form submission
• Applicable if your project is a formal thesis to be submitted at a university.• Format of the proposal/application form will be set by the university.

• Submission deadline will be set by the university.

4. Literature review: summary of selected relevant literature.

5. Methodology: summary of research methods applied and data used or generated.

• At first, keep each author/source in a separate paragraph; later you will reorder the literature entries and group them according to topic.

• Afterwards review your abstract/summary and revise according to what you have learned from the literature.

Suggested contents and structure of the Introduction chapter

• This exercise helps keep your “eyes on the target; you will be able to “guess” your end-result once the research question is defined and you know the literature – we will discuss upfront how this can be done and why it is so useful.

• Afterwards review your non-technical summary, table of contents, and literature discussion - and revise according to what you have learned since the previous exercise.

Afterwards review what you have written before and revise accordingly.

Results first draft and presentation (PPT)

Prepare a PPT presentation on your research project.

• Use up to five pages (but not more).

experience.

• You should now be able to present your fully developed thesis project to an outside

List of references (literature used)
Appendices – data sources and additional data eg original interview logs Declarations page – academic integrity

Primary and secondary literature sources
• Secondary sources:
• Popular summaries of scholarly research • Addressed to a general audience
• A great place to start for ideas
• Tip: DON’T only use secondary sources!

• Primary data:
• Originally generated during the research process
• Data obtained by observation, measurement, interview, survey, etc.

• Challenge: requires time and resources
• Advantage: often addresses a research or information gap

• OECD:

• World Bank:

• Quantitative research is a research methodology that seeks to quantify the data and typically applies some form of statistical analysis.

Videos on research methods: