Research Methods in Education

1. -- Mahesh Nath Parajuli Research Methods in Education (Lecture 4 – Research problem, research question and research hypothesis)

2. Research topic / problem • Research problem, statement of the problem and research question • A good research question • Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Research and null hypothesis • A good hypothesis

3. Research problem • Research problem provides the very basic foundation of research work • Without research problem there cannot be a research • A ‘problem’ situation is not a ‘wrong’ situation but we are simply problematizing the situation (eg. defining school family or society) • Our intention is to enhance our knowledge about the situation

4. Research problem • Sometimes when things do not go as per our normal assumption we ‘face’ problems • Examples: trained teachers are not using their training skills in their classroom, or, despite good efforts parents are not cooperating with the school, or, how to attract more and more new students in the school • These are examples of our ‘problem’ situations

5. Research problem • Research problem is understanding and explaining the problem – what I am going to study, why and how? • Research problem thus sets the frame of reference for the study • Defining a research problem is clarifying oneself what is the problem and what the research is intended to do or what are the expected output

6. Research problem • Defining or understanding research problem • arriving to this problem (interest, gap, need, social/technological and policy change) • looking for rational • collecting preliminary information • reviewing the literature • discussing with the stakeholders, other researchers

7. Statement of the problem • We often need to write a section in our research proposal / thesis • This section can be limited just in one sentence or can be few paragraphs long extending to more than a page • Whatever its length be, it should define and delimit the problem • It should also justify the problem

8. Statement of the problem • We might have one or few key problem statements and the rest we do in this section is elaborate our problem statements adding other closely related dimensions of our research problem • This section thus gives the context of our research problem and situates our research in wider context

9. Research question • Research problem (RPs) describes the nature of the problem and situates our research into the context of our research • Research questions (RQs), staying within the context as set by our research problems, give specific focus to our study • RQs thus define exactly what we are going to do, how, and why

10. Research question • RQs help to clarify what to expect as the findings of the research • Setting RQs is the process of operationalizing our research • One critical concern: are we asking the questions we want to study? • Or, are our research questions compatible with our research purpose

11. Research question • Example: Gender concern in education • The broader problem can be expressed as: ‘Gender concern is a neglected dimension in education’ • What do we mean by gender concern? • How are we going to assess this? • May be we can say, ‘gender imbalance in the governance of primary schooling (in public schools in rural areas in Nepal)’

12. Research question • We can further specify our problem as imbalance in gender composition in SMCs and in school management positions • Translating this problem into RQs • What is the (or, what influence the )gender composition of SMCs and school management body of primary schools in rural areas in Nepal?

13. A good research question • Clear and concise • Grounded and researchable • Literature supported • Derived from practical/theoretical considerations • Raises and indicates the nature and direction of relationships between variables/themes • Contributes to knowledge building – theoretical and practical implications

14. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Once we develop problem statement, we develop hypotheses which the study seeks to prove or disprove • Hypothesis is a formal statement of the relationship between variables to be investigated • It must contain two or more measurable variables and must specify how the variables are related

15. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Hypothesis helps us to remain organized and provides guide lines to the researcher: what to look, how to look, etc. • They are used to organize and analyze information and verify and suggest new relationships • They set the framework for developing interpretations and drawing conclusions

16. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Hypothesis is NOT a must in all social research study • However, quantitative studies often do have hypotheses • We can formulate them at the beginning of the study or can develop them during data analysis • We can have one or more than one hypothesis

17. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Example • There is no relationship between sex of adolescents and their smoking behavior • Student achievement score is influenced by their family income, ethnicity, and mother’s literacy • High income people do not tend to use public transportation

18. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • A hypothesis may not get empirical verification causing us to reject our original hypothesis and formulate the new one • There are statistical techniques to test our hypothesis • Testing hypothesis is establishing the validity of our findings

19. Hypothesis – meaning and importance • Developing hypothesis is like developing research problem • One needs to have full understanding of the theoretical, conceptual and operational aspects of the problem being investigated in order to be able to develop a good hypothesis • Previous research works, literature, etc are the sources of hypotheses

20. Research and null hypothesis • Hypotheses are formulated in a way to challenge an existing explanation derived from prior research findings and to put them to empirical test • The hypothesis that we want to test (or which we believe) is taken as alternate (or research) hypothesis and the opposite one (the one which we do not believe) is taken as null hypothesis

21. Research and null hypothesis • Alternative – existing or intended hypothesis, seeking to test so that it could be retained/rejected, expressed as H1 • Null – but actually, hypotheses are statistically tested in their null form, expressed as no relationship/association exists between variables, for this we nullify the existing explanation and formulate a null hypothesis, expressed as H0

22. Research and null hypothesis • If the null hypothesis is rejected then the existing explanation is accepted but if the null hypothesis is retained then the existing explanation is falsified in the context of situation under study • In case of falsification of existing explanation, we need to formulate a new hypothesis

23. Research and null hypothesis • We believe that women head teachers have more positive leadership characteristics • Our hypothesis (research or alternate, H1): women head teachers have positive leadership characteristics • Null hypothesis (H0): there is no association between sex of the head teacher and leadership characteristics

24. A good hypothesis • A good hypothesis should be in a declarative sentence form specifying the relationship between variables;conditional statement cannot be a hypothesis • It must be measurable and empirically testable, concise and with specific meaning (clarity is obtained by means of definitions) • It should be linked with some theoretical / conceptual / analytical framework / tools