Understanding And Evaluating Research

Understanding and Evaluating Research: A Critical Guide shows students how to be critical consumers of research and to appreciate the power of methodology as it shapes the research question, the use of theory in the study, the methods used, and how the outcomes are reported. The book starts with what it means to be a critical and uncritical reader of research, followed by a detailed chapter on methodology, and then proceeds to a discussion of each component of a research article as it is informed by the methodology. The book encourages readers to select an article from their discipline, learning along the way how to assess each component of the article and come to a judgment of its rigor or quality as a scholarly report.

Clinically oriented professionals and students need to understand and evaluate the research and statistics in professional articles, especially given today's emphasis on evidence-based practice. This book demonstrates how the research approach and design help determine the appropriate statistical analysis. Understanding and Evaluating Research in Applied and Clinical Settings features: *short, independent, chapters that do not have to be read in order; *a guide to understanding why a particular statistic was selected; *an emphasis on effects sizes including measures of risk potency; *numerous cross-disciplinary examples to illustrate the material; and *methods to help determine practical and clinical significance and their relation to meta-analysis and evidence-based practice. This book is intended for practitioners and students in psychology, education, counseling, mental and allied health, nursing, and medicine, and as a text for courses on understanding research methods and statistics.

The book is intended to help students understand and interpret research articles and how to evaluate what was done in the research. It is not intended to show them how to do research but rather how to understand research articles and evaluate that research.

When learning how to read, analyze, and design one's own research, it is useful to review examples of similar research. Understanding and Evaluating Qualitative Educational Research uses published research articles to teach students how to understand and evaluate qualitative research in education. Each example within a category of qualitative research - ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, case study, action research, narrative, and mixed methods - is accompanied by commentary from the editor regarding why the particular approach was used and how and why the various aspects of the example relate back to the approach taken. This commentary guides students in learning how to read, analyze, and create their own qualitative research studies. Included in the text is a series of "Issues and Concepts" that are at the forefront of the changing field. This text gives students in qualitative educational research a well-rounded and practical look at what qualitative research is, along with how to read, analyze, and design studies themselves.

Using examples of good as well as flawed research studies, this text explains how to decide whether the conclusions reported in an article are justified on the basis of the design and analysis of the experiment.

Evaluating Research: Methodology for People Who Need to Read Research, Second Edition by Francis C. Dane offers readers a straightforward presentation of the key components of research and the skills they need to read and evaluate it. The book covers a range of research that students are most likely to encounter, from experimental to field research, and archival to evaluation research. The Second Edition features updated examples of research across disciplines, new and updated content on qualitative research and conceptual statistics, and a streamlined organization that better aligns with the order of information in a research article.

Understanding, Evaluating, and Conducting Second Language Writing Research speaks to the rapidly growing area of second language writing by providing a uniquely balanced approach to L2 writing research. While other books favor either a qualitative or quantitative approach to second language acquisition (SLA) research, this text is comprehensive in scope and does not privilege one approach over the other, illuminating the strengths of each and the ways in which they might complement each other. It also provides equal weight to the cognitive and socio-cultural approaches to SLA. Containing an array of focal studies and suggestions for further reading, this text is the ideal resource for students beginning to conduct L2 writing research as well as for more experienced researchers who wish to expand their approach to conducting research.

"Understanding and Evaluating Research," third edition, is a supplemental textbook appropriate for all courses in educational research. A reader, this text contains quantitative "and" qualitative educational research articles from a variety of professional journals. With each article is a sample article analysis and exercises that help students become better consumers of research. The third edition is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a new chapter on " Mixed Method Designs" and two mixed-method studies, revised and expanded discussion of qualitative methods, more emphasis given to randomized designs, revision of research typology, and features eight new articles.