Web Links
Chapter 1
The What Works Clearinghouse reviews existing empirical investigations to determine those that are the highest quality and to inform educational-decision making about scientifically-based best practices.
The American Educational Research Association is an international professional organization with the goal of advancing educational research and its practical application to classroom settings.
The NationalCenter for Education Statistics (NCES) is located within the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. The main function of NCES is to collect and analyze data related to education. Individuals can access a variety of reports that describe the findings of national and international data collections.
The Education Week is a weekly newspaper that publishes national educational news and issue-oriented articles and includes a ResearchCenter at the online site. The ResearchCenter webpage includes a variety of resources for those interested in educational research such as recent reports, statistics, and research-based articles on issues in education.
Chapter 2
Article on experimental designs in education compared to other social sciences.
Explanation of various experimental designs.
Interesting examples of what look like random assignment, which may not be.
Discussion of factorial design.
Simple random number generator
Chapter 3
Information on quasi-experimental designs.
Considerations for quasi-experimental designs.
Several resources on design and analysis of quasi-experimental designs.
Chapter 4
Provides an in-depth discussion with many examples of time series designs.
Provides examples of time series and other quasi-experimental designs.
Discussion of quasi-experimental and times series designs.
Extensive list and resources for statistical analysis of interrupted time series data.
Chapter 5
Full discussion on correlation including example calculations.
Generate scatterplots by setting sample size and correlation coefficient.
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory information on assessment.
Chapter 6
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation is a peer-reviewed electronic journal includes articles on a variety of research concepts, design and data collection issues that may be of interest to students. See for example, Robert Frary’s 1996 article “Hints for Designing Effective Questionnaires” for additional information about survey research and design.
Chapter 7
The Qualitative Research Report is an online journal that provides readers with a variety of resources for designing and conducting qualitative research. The website includes links to numerous other sites dedicated to qualitative inquiry.
Chapter 8
Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation is a peer-reviewed electronic journal includes articles on a variety of research concepts, design and data collection issues that may be of interest to students. See for example, Steve Stemler’s 2001 article “An Overview of Content Analysis” for additional information about how to analyze documents and other forms of material.
Chapter 9
This daily education newspaper frequently has articles that highlight action research conducted in classrooms and schools nationwide.
The Action Research Resources site provides numerous resources, links to online journals and websites as well as discussion forums for those interested in action research.
The Action Research at Queen’s College site hosts a variety of materials, papers and links to other resources dedicated to action research.
The “Themes in Education: Action Research” publication by Eileen Ferrance at the Northeast and Island Regional Education Laboratory at BrownUniversity provides a detailed and practical discussion of conducting action research.
Chapter 10
Further explanation of reliability and validity.
Examples of a low inference observation form.
University of California presidential speech on aptitude and achievement tests.
Wikipedia entry for Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.
Chapter 11
Tutorial on internal validity.
Discusses how certain designs can control for threats to internal validity.
Discussion of external validity issues.
Chapter 12
The EducationalResourcesInformationCenter is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences in the US Department of Education. Is a database that houses over one million journal and non-journal publications related to educational issues dating back to 1966.
Dissertation Abstracts Online
The Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP) in the US Department of Health and Human Services oversees the implementation of IRB regulations. Access this website to get additional information about the ethical requirements that govern research involving human subjects and issues specific to human subjects research that involves children.
For a detailed discussion of the methods used to conduct a meta-analysis see Goldberg, A., Russell, M. & Cook, A. (2003). The effects of computers on student writing: A meta-analysis of studies from 1992-2002.Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment 2 (1). Available at
Chapter 13
More fun with z-scores.
Detailed explanation of skewness and kurtosis.
Graphical and mathematical for the t-test.
Detailed explanation of Type I and Type II errors.
Broad overview of inferential statistics.
Chapter 14
Tutorials on a broad range of statistics and methods.
Formulas for a wide variety of effect size calculations.
Detailed example of analysis of covariance.
Chapter 15
See Rudner, L. & Shafer W. (1999). How to write a scholarly research report. Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 6 (13) for additional information about writing, organizing, and publishing research reports.
Reference the American Psychological Association (APA) publication manual for detailed information about organizing, formatting, and referencing scholarly journals and reports.
Click on the above link to access the article “How to Publish in Scholarly Journals” written by Janette Klinger, David Scanlon and Michael Pressley located on the American Educational Research Association journal highlights webpage. The article appeared in the November 2005 issue of the Educational Researcherjournal.
This link directs readers to the recently released (June 2006) Standards for Reporting on Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications.
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