Читать книгу The Research Experience - Ann Sloan Devlin - Страница 95

One of the biggest challenges is obtaining the “Who” for the study. Often the participants, the who, will be college students, recruited at the researcher’s institution (see also Chapter 11 on recruiting participants). In the articles you read, notice whether the participants were college students. Adult volunteers from the community? A special population like residents of an assisted-living complex?

Sample size is an important consideration. How many people participated? If participants number more than 100, this might be an issue at small institutions where the participant pool is limited (see Chapter 11). If a topic requires a specialized population, such as prisoners, this is also a consideration. Certain groups such as prisoners and children are considered vulnerable populations. Not only may such populations be difficult to obtain, as in the case of inmates, but also research with vulnerable populations requires special ethics review (see Chapter 4).

How were the participants recruited? Through a participant pool (i.e., usually students who chose to participate in research for extra credit in a course)? Were they contacted via e-mail? Direct mailing? Via Amazon MTurk (or Amazon Mechanical Turk), a crowdsourcing platform sponsored by Amazon.com where researchers (requesters) post studies and participants (workers) complete the posted tasks for pay (see Chapter 11)? Were the participants randomly selected within the population or through a convenience sample, gathered through their mere availability and accessibility to the researcher (e.g., people who stopped at a research table in the library or student union; the participant pool)? It is worth noting that the participant pool is a convenience sample and is not necessarily representative of the student population. Did the authors use a snowball sample (i.e., asking people to participate who in turn asked others to participate)? Issues of sampling are covered in Chapter 11.

Snowball sample: Nonprobability sample in which individuals who participate in a study invite others to participate in the study, and they in turn invite still others.

Materials: Section of the Method in which you describe the “with what” of your study; often called measures, instruments, or apparatus.

Measures: In the Method section where you describe the scales or instruments used.

Internal consistency: Statistical measure, usually expressed as Cronbach’s alpha, which reflects the degree to which each item of the measure is tapping the construct of interest.

Procedure: Section of your Method in which you describe the how of your study.