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 * **What are some of the education databases available to me from the URI library?**
 * **[|URI Education Database]** of journals and articles
 * **To locate dissertations,** go to ERIC: Proquest, and select the box for dissertations. If the full text of the document is not available, try copy/pasting the whole title into Google and enclose in quotation marks - you will usually be able to locate the full text this way.
 * [|URI Library - Digital Commons] links to all URI dissertations
 * [|ProQuest Dissertations Database]
 * [|Open Access Theses and Dissertations]
 * **What is a great online resource for addressing questions you may have about research design?** [|The Research Methods Knowledge Base] is a very useful online textbook with a wide range of information about sampling, measurement, and design methods.
 * Another easy-to-understand source is [|Explorer.com's Research Basics], which covers topics from research methods and design to statistics and experimental research.
 * **Where can I quickly find a list of high quality journals in my field?**
 * One of the best resources I have used is the [|Finnish Publication Forum] which allows you to search for journals using a variety of keywords and search terms. The journals are also coded into three levels (according to Finnish criteria) ranging from Level 1 (the lowest level) to Level 3 (the highest level. Links to each journal are provided once the list is generated.
 * **How can you evaluate the quality of a journal in education?** Read more about impact factors from [|Wikipedia]and learn [|how researchers evaluate the impact of their work]. Factors to consider include a journal's type of review process, the number of external reviews, and its acceptance rate.You might enjoy [|this summary] of how the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor is calculated. "The annual //JCR// impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years." This number is then used by publishers to a) market their journal in competition with others, b) evaluate researchers as part of their tenure and promotion process; and c) judge the extent to which published information is cited in later publications.
 * The University of Delaware provides an [|excellent summary of links] to the impact factors of certain journals. Check out the impact rankings of journals in [|Education/Educational Research (2010)] and the [|Top 20 Journals in Education] ranked by the 2007 impact factors.
 * [|SCImigo Lab: Scientific Journal Rankings] lets you search and sort by category or country.
 * You might also enjoy searching the [|Journal Rate website] for suitable journals to publish your work.
 * Top Peer-Reviewed Journals in...
 * [|Early Childhood Education]
 * [|Literacy Education]
 * [|Science Education]
 * Math Education
 * [|Educational Leadership]
 * Higher Education [[file:Bray and Major - Journal Rankings ASHE.doc]]
 * Tips on [|how to recognize peer-reviewed (refereed) journals]
 * You should know that there are several critiques of the Impact Factor - a good summary of these critiques is included [|here]
 * You can also refer to [|Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities] to provide you specific information about professional journals in several categories, including Education (and more specifically, Educational Curriculum and Methods; Educational Psychology and Administration, and Educational Technology of Library Science. The directory gives detailed information on [|a number of indicators] for each journal in that field. The RIC Reference Library has a copy of the Educational Curriculum and Methods book, with a call number of REF L11.A1 C32 v.2005-06v1
 * [|Google Scholar Generated List of Top Journals in Education] (hover over Education for sub-categories of journals)
 * University of Jyvaskyla (Finland): [|Publications Forum]
 * A list of acceptance rates of educational/research journals
 * **Can science ever really "prove" anything?**
 * The concept of proof — real, absolute proof — is not particularly scientific. Science is based on the principle that //any// idea, no matter how widely accepted today, could be overturned tomorrow if the evidence warranted it. Science accepts or rejects ideas based on supporting and refuting evidence, and may revise those conclusions if warranted by new evidence or perspectives; science does not prove or disprove them. [|Science is more about building knowledge] supported by many lines of evidence that allow us to figure out how entities in the world are likely to behave and how we can harness that understanding to solve problems. (See more at [|Understanding Science], by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley.)
 * **Where else can you find relevant research besides peer-reviewed journal articles?**
 * Search for your topic plus "**report**" to find examples of papers/studies that organizations share that typically don't go through the peer-review process. These sources can be very useful for building up and supporting your rationale about why your study is important. Some examples: (feel free to add more!)
 * [|Pew Internet Group]
 * [|Horizon Report]
 * [|Highlights from Math TIMMS 2011 Report from NCES]
 * [|Reading for Understanding: The Rand Reading Report]
 * You can also search for "**white papers**" in your area for; often, an authority in the field is commissioned or invited to write a paper on a certain topic - again, it's not usually peer-reviewed but it is a useful summary of information of interest to a specific research community. Some examples:
 * [|American Library Association Whitepapers and Reports]
 * [|Policy Briefs from the Literacy Research Association (LRA)]
 * [|Policy Brief: Achieving Success in Mathematics]
 * [|Measuring Principal Performance (A Quality School Leadership Issue Brief)]
 * Similarly, professional organizations often publish "**position statements**" that are useful for building your rationale - some examples:
 * [|Position Statements and Information Guides from International Reading Association (IRA)]
 * [|Position Statements from National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)]
 * **What are some of the different types of variables?** This handout defines many types of variables, including intervening and confounding variables, something we talked about in class. [[file:variable_types.pdf]]
 * **How can I randomly select numbers for my study?**
 * Try the [|Research Randomizer] (to customize options)
 * **Where can I read about ethical issues specific to qualitative research?**
 * Ethical Issues in Qualitative Research [[file:Ethics in Qualitative Research.pdf]]
 * **Where can I find more information about how to write a literature review for any study, and then specifically for my dissertation?**
 * [|Some examples and additional resources] from Oxford Brooks University in the UK.
 * **What does a study look like that uses a literature review methodology?**
 * [|Review of Educational Research] is a journal that publishes literature reviews. It is ranked #1 (of 216) in Education and Educational Research. Here are three examples of different types of literature reviews:
 * **//A Review of School Climate Research (2013)//** [[file:School Climate Research.pdf]] (integrative review of 206 citations around five central dimensions - notice the methods section on p. 358-359)
 * //**Assessing Effects of High School Exit Exams (2010)**// [[file:High School Exit Exams.pdf]] (reviewed 46 unique studies around four domains of expected influence - notice the methods on p. 478-479 and the large summary tables on p. 481-486, 493-499, 505-510, and 516-518)
 * //**A Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Correlates of Bilingualism (2010)**// [[file:Bilingualism 2010.pdf]] (reviewed 63 studies involving 6,022 participants - notice the methodology on p. 211-214 and the table of Effect Sizes in Tables 1-5; these are the "results" of a meta-analysis)
 * //**Class Attendance in College: A meta-analytic review of the relationship of class attendance with grades and student characteristics (2010)**// [[file:Class Attendance 2010.pdf]] (notice the logic model linked to each hypothesis on page 276 and the smaller summary tables of correlations on p. 282)
 * **Where can I find a writing template for helping me to frame the introductory section of my study in less than one page?**
 * Creswell has writing templates for summarizing the design of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods studies. Download a version of the template here: [[file:Introduction – Qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods.docx]]
 * **What are some great uses of transition words to enhance the logic in your writing?** see this [|index of transition words] for ideas
 * What are some useful ways of setting up the wording of Likert scale items? see this file for ideas [[file:Likert scale samples.pdf]]
 * **Is it ever possible to conduct multiple regression with categorical variables?** Yes, it's possible, with a process called dummy coding. [|Read more about this here].
 * **What should I consider as I write up the limitations section of a proposal or study I've conducted?**
 * [|Writing Assumptions, Limitations, and Delimitations] (general explanation of each)
 * [|How to Structure The Limitations Section of Your Dissertation]includes sections for announcing, reflecting, and forward looking moves.
 * [|Advantages and Limitations of Qualitative Research in Psychology and Education] (Griffin, 2005)
 * View Limitations sections of the [|sample proposals] from the [|Guide To Developing a Research Proposal Website]
 * **Where can I locate a workbook with guidelines and activities that take me through the whole dissertation process?**
 * Right here! [[file:DissertationGuidesWorkbook-T3.pdf]]
 * **What are the best books to inform my thinking about how to conduct interviews for qualitative research?**
 * Kvale, S. and Brinkmann, S. (2009). //Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing //. Sage.
 * Kvale, S. (1996). //InterViews. An introduction to qualitative research writing//. Thousand Oaks.
 * Where can I get answers to challenging statistics questions? Try [|The Analysis Factor] blog posts.