One related issue is when researchers may be seen to have a 'conflict of interest'
For example, one of the studies mentioned in Chapter 2 (Macaruso et al., 2006) found that computer-based supplementary phonics software enabled students considered to be 'low performing' to catch up with their classmates.
The second author of the paper, Hook, was a consultant involved in the design of the software.
The third author, McCabe, was actually the Director of Research and Product Management at the company that developed the software.
This is something the reader may wish to bear in mind when reading the study.
However, these affiliations are reported at the end of the study, so that the potential 'conflict of interest' is acknowledged. Whilst ideally we might prefer an evaluation of the software that can be seen as independent
the developing company is both prepared to support research into their products (which may not happen otherwise), and presumably highly motivated to use the findings from research to improve and develop their software.
is the focus appropriately conceptualized in the research?
The third author, Maccabees, was actually the Director of Research and Product Management at the company that developed the software.
This is something the reader may wish to bear in mind when reading the study. However, these affiliations are reported at the end of the study, so that the potential 'conflict of interest' is acknowledged.
Whilst ideally we might prefer an evaluation of the software that can be seen as i
There are many different ways that a project can be conceptualized.
Any research paper will have a specific focus and/or research questions), and the first part of any research account is usually setting the scene for the research by offering a way of thinking about the research context.
This introductory section of a paper will explain key ideas that are being used to think about the research, and will discuss existing literature the author thinks especially relevant (see Chapter 3).
The notion of validity is often used to judge research, especially in ERPI. The are different flavors of validity, but basically this is about measuring what you believe you are measuring. For example, a study of boys' and girls' involvement in lessons might measure how often pupils answer the teachers' questions. If it is found that girl answer fewer questions, this can be used to suggest that they are less involved in lessons-if we believe that we have used a valid indicator of involvement. A survey of pupils' attitudes to school science might include a question phrased, 'Do you think science is interesting?' Pupils responding might think that the question was about the science they hear about in the news and not have school lessons in mind when answering. School science is at best an imperfect reflection of science (Kind & Taber, 2005), so this would invalidate the question as a means of finding out about attitudes to school science.