Methods Chapter

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Action Research Methods

• Intro
• Participants
  • Who are the participants (experiment/control if appropriate)
  • Number (N = )
  • How students are selected (any selection criteria)
    • identify any possible bias in the selection
    • if you have data on students pre state (e.g. a pretest) put it here to show how the groups are the same or different
  • Background/context information on participants
• Instruments or Materials
  • If you are using a particular instructional method (e.g. curriculum, software etc)
  • Any surveys, tests, protocols used in the study
  • for each survey - what are we trying to measure, the protocol,
  • Complete survey should be in an appendix
  • samples of questions are encouraged
• Procedures
  • What is the process from start to finish
  • Provide a time line of when different events happened (will happen) in the study
• Data Analysis Method
  • describe how you will analyzed the data (e.g. coding answers into categories, case studies).
    • samples of student responses with their coding are very useful
  • any statistical analysis that you did (or will do if this is a proposal) on the data.

For proposals we write everything in the future tense then change for final papers. Also in your final paper, report what you actually did, not what you intended to do (you can explain why you were not able to do the ideal procedure).