Problems that threaten our ability to draw correct inferences from the sample data to other persons, settings, treatment variables, and measures.
What are threats to external validity?
100
An educational issue, concern, or controversy that the researcher investigates.
What is a research problem?
100
An attribute or characteristic that influences or affects an outcome or dependent variable.
What is an independent variable?
100
A form of purposeful sampling in which you study an outlier case or one that displays extreme characteristics.
What is extreme case sampling?
100
A statistical test to determine the tendency or pattern for two (or more) variables or two sets of data to vary consistently.
What is a correlation?
200
A type of experiment that includes assignment, but not random assignment, of participants to groups.
What is a quasi-experiment?
200
Statements in quantitative research in which the investigator makes a prediction or a conjecture about the outcome of a relationship among attributes or characteristics.
What are hypotheses?
200
An independent variable that is measured or observed by the researcher and consists of a range of continuous or categorical scores.
What is a measured variable?
200
A type of sampling where the researcher purposefully samples individuals or sites based on membership in a subgroup that has defining characteristics.
What is homogenous sampling?
200
A variable used to make a forecast about an outcome in correlational research.
What is a predictor variable?
300
The point where you have identified the major themes and no new information can add to your list of themes or to the detail for existing themes.
What is saturation?
300
Statement of intent used in quantitative research that specifies goals that the investigator plans to achieve in a study.
What is a research objective?
300
An attribute or characteristic that "stands between" the independent and dependent variables and exercises an influence on the dependent variable apart from the independent variable.
What is an intervening variable?
300
A purposeful sampling method undertaken after the research begins in order to take advantage of unfolding events that will help answer research questions.
What is opportunistic sampling?
300
A visual display of the correlation coefficients for all variables in a study.
What is a correlation matrix?
400
An attribute or characteristic that "stands between" the independent and dependent variables and exercises an influence on the dependent variable apart from the independent vairable.
What is an intervening variable?
400
Systematic, qualitative procedures that researchers use to generate a general explanation that explains a process,action, or interaction among people.
What are grounded theory designs?
400
In calculating statistics, this number is the square root of the variance.
What is the standard deviation?
400
A record of personal thoughts that researchers have that relate to their insights, hunches, or broad ideas or themes that emerge during the observation.
What are reflective fieldnotes?
400
A calculation by researchers that assesses the proportion of variability in one variable that can be determined or explained by a second variable.
What is a coefficient of determination?
500
Attributes or characteristics that the researcher cannot directly measure because their effects cannot be easily separated from those or other variables, even though they may influence the relation between the independent and the dependent variable.
What are confounding variables?
500
The first sentence of an educational topic that draws the reader into a study.
What is a narrative hook?
500
The critical region for rejection of the null hypothesis is divided into two areas at the tails of the sampling distribution.
What is two tailed test of significance?
500
Subquestions under each question that the researcher asks to elicit more information.
What are probes?
500
A table that shows the overall amount of variance explained in a dependent variable by all independent variables, called R squared.