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Saiyidi Mat Roni  Margaret Kristin Merga  Julia Elizabeth  Morris  Conducting Quantitative Research in Education Conducting Quantitative Research in Education Saiyidi Mat Roni • Margaret Kristin Merga Julia Elizabeth Morris Conducting Quantitative Research in Education Saiyidi Mat Roni Margaret Kristin Merga School of Business and Law School of Education Edith Cowan University Edith Cowan University Joondalup, WA, Australia Perth, Australia Julia Elizabeth Morris School of Education Edith Cowan University Mount Lawley, WA, Australia ISBN 978-981-13-9131-6 ISBN 978-981-13-9132-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9132-3 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 What This Book Will Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 The Importance of Engaging with Quantitative Research Methods and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 The Neglected Non-parametric Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.4 Format and Suggested Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 Getting Started: What, Where, Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2 What Are Quantitative Methods All About and When Should I Use Them? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2.1 The Research Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2.2.2 When Are Quantitative Methods Appropriate? . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.2.3 What Types of Quantitative Measures Are Available to Me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.2.4 In the Event of Writing Your Own Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2.3 Where Can I Collect Quantitative Data and How Do I Go About It? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2.3.1 What Could My Setting and Sample Look Like? . . . . . . . . 14 2.3.2 Dissemination Methods for Surveys and Other Quantitative Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 2.3.3 How Many Times Should I Collect Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4 Why Use Quantitative Methods? A Few Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4.1 Pure Quantitative Research Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.4.2 Mixed Methods Research Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.5 Final Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 3 Conducting Research with Children and Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.1 Age Appropriate Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 3.2 Satisficing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 v vi Contents 3.2.1 This Is Not a Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.2.2 I Want to Know What You Really Think, Not What You Think I Want You to Say . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.2.3 No One Will Know What You Said . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3.2.4 I Value Your Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.3 The Importance of Piloting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 3.3.1 Pre-pilot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.3.2 Pilot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.4 What Am I Looking for in a Pilot? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.4.1 You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3.4.2 You Want Your Data to Actually Be Reliable . . . . . . . . . . . 31 3.4.3 Your Reviewers Will Appreciate It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.5 Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 3.6 Understanding and Engaging Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.6.1 The Cover Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 3.6.2 Other Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 3.7 Final Comment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 4 Data Types and Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4.1 Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4.2 Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 5 Data Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 5.1 Data Entry in SPSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 5.2 Knowing Your Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 5.3 Recoding and Recomputing Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 6 Analysis: Difference Between Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 6.1 Mann-Whitney U . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 6.1.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 6.1.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 6.1.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6.1.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 6.1.5 Descriptive Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6.1.6 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.2 Kruskal-Wallis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 6.2.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 6.2.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 6.2.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 6.2.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 6.2.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 6.3 Chi-square . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 6.3.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 6.3.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Contents vii 6.3.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 6.3.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 6.3.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 6.4 McNemar test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 6.4.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 6.4.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 6.4.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 6.4.4 Checking the assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 6.4.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 6.5 Cochran’s Q test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 6.5.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 6.5.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 6.5.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 6.5.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 6.5.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6.6 Wilcoxon Signed-Rank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6.6.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6.6.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 6.6.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 6.6.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 6.6.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 7 Analysis: Correlation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 7.1 Spearman’s Rho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 7.1.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 7.1.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 7.1.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 7.1.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 7.1.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 7.2 Kendall’s Tau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 7.2.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 7.2.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 7.2.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 7.2.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 7.2.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 7.3 Cramer’s V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 7.3.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 7.3.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 7.3.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 7.3.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 7.3.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 8 Analysis: Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 8.1 Simple Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 8.1.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 8.1.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 viii Contents 8.1.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 8.1.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 8.1.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 8.2 Binomial Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 8.2.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 8.2.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 8.2.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 8.2.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 8.2.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 8.3 Multinomial Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 8.3.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 8.3.2 Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 8.3.3 Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166 8.3.4 Checking the Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 8.3.5 Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174 9 Write Up and Research Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 9.1 The Plain English Report for Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 9.2 The Journal Article . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 9.2.1 Good Fit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 9.2.2 Reputable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 9.2.3 Fast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 9.3 Unique Challenges in Publishing Quantitative and Mixed-Methods Articles in education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 9.4 Thesis by Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184 9.4.1 But Is This Right for Me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 9.5 Plain English Dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 9.6 Altmetrics and (Social) Media-Supported Dissemination . . . . . . . . 189 9.7 The Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 9.8 Final Comment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 10 Conclusion and Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 10.1 Further Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 10.1.1 Readings About Mixed Methods Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 10.1.2 Readings About Experimental Methods Design . . . . . . . . 195 10.1.3 Readings About Sample Size, Power and Effect size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 10.1.4 Readings About Ethical Issues in Education and Social Science Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 10.1.5 Readings About Survey Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 10.1.6 Readings About Validity and Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 10.1.7 Readings About Quantitative Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 10.1.8 Readings About Reporting Educational Research . . . . . . . 197 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 Chapter 1 Introduction Welcome to Conducting Quantitative Research in Education! This book has been written to help support higher degree by research students, early career academics and life-long researchers who are looking to increase their capacity to both choose and use quantitative data collection and analysis in educational research. 1.1 What This Book Will Do By the end of this book, you should be able to design and undertake a research proj- ect which is entirely or partly reliant on quantitative research methods. You will have an understanding of some of the unique contextual factors involved in conduct- ing quantitative research in educational settings, and you will be able to prepare your data for a broad range of analyses. We will walk you step-by-step through each of these stages, so even those of you who are absolutely new to quantitative design and data analysis (and slightly freaked out by the weird symbols and things) should be able to apply the ideas that we cover herein to your own research plans with a degree of confidence. Each of these analytical chapters will be self-contained, beginning with its own overview of a statistical procedure, a survey instrument, research question, hypothesis, SPSS procedures and output. Unlike many statistical support books, we consistently use a similar set of vari- ables to illustrate the analyses in this book. We do this so you may focus your atten- tion on understanding each analysis, as opposed to deciphering the purpose of different variables in different research designs. This approach also allows you to see multiple analyses conducted on the same variables, which helps to minimise confirmation bias where researchers unknowingly bias toward asserting their hypotheses while disregarding other possible explanations. In this book we use reading frequency as a dependent variable in multiple chapters. In doing so, you can see how reading frequency is influenced by gender, encouragement to read and other factors, and how we conducted analyses to justify conclusions. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 1 S. Mat Roni et al., Conducting Quantitative Research in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9132-3_1 2 1 Introduction We also include examples of how the results from each analysis could be reported, based on APA style, as this is most typically used in education. In addition, we provide advice about how to write up your work for publication, and highlight additional readings that you can draw upon if you find yourself wishing to delve more deeply into non-parametric statistics. You should be able to use this book to support educational research with samples derived from pre-school, primary, sec- ondary and tertiary education contexts. 1.2 The Importance of Engaging with Quantitative Research Methods and Analysis Quantitative data analysis occupies an odd place in educational research. While there are many exceptional and well-known researchers working in this paradigm in education, and it is prevalent in some sub-fields such as educational psychology, we’ve noticed that research involving quantitative analysis is less common in other sub-fields. Some supervisors in education may not feel comfortable supporting stu- dents wishing to work with this approach due to lack of experience and knowledge with this method. We have even detected distinct nose-wrinkling at the mention of quantitative data analysis in some educational research contexts. Perhaps this is because the research questions we seek to explore, and the theories that underpin our research in education, are often better suited to a qualitative method. It could also be due to the tension between adherents of qualitative and quantitative approaches, which situates them as approaches in opposition. However, researchers in educational and social sciences are increasingly moving toward accepting a “legitimate complementarity of paradigms” (Salomon 1991, p. 10), with both para- digms seen as important and valuable when used in a way that is responsive to both the intended inquiry and context. For the contemporary researcher, we need to get over this unnecessary dichot- omy. It is useful to be knowledgeable across the broadest range of methods possible, including quantitative methods, so that we can understand and interpret the litera- ture that we review in our research areas. Even if the body of your current work uses qualitative methods, understanding of quantitative methods adds the option of going down this path for parallel or follow-up data collection on current research projects, enabling the interrogation of a research concern through multiple phases and the generalisation of exploratory research (Creswell and Plano Clark 2011). Knowledge of this area can also help us to support and/or supervise higher degree by research students wishing to use this approach. Having at least a basic understanding of how to employ a range of methods can enable you to take a creative and novel position on a research area. For example, where you have already done a great deal of quali- tative research, you may now seek to create a survey tool based on some of the emerging themes to test their generalisabilty. There are a range of advantages to using a quantitative approach. Quantitative approaches are sometimes related to higher impact, both in terms of publication and translation, perhaps due to their broader capacity for generalisability. While many

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