This book is designed to serve as a supplementary textbook for courses in methods of educational research. Evaluation of research studies is an indispensable part of courses in educational research methods. By evaluating research studies, the student learns to differentiate between good practices, which he may wish to emulate, and poor practices, which should be avoided if and when he conducts research. The student also learns through such experience that research studies must be evaluated before conclusions stated by the writer can be accepted.
Class discussions of research studies are of maximum value if all students have had an opportunity to study the research being discussed. Most textbooks written for courses in educational research do not supply original research studies for class evaluation. To meet such a need, this book has been prepared. It contains 40 educational research articles published in 40 different journals during the period 1960-1964. Each article has been reprinted in its entirety.
For purposes of this book, an article was considered to be "educational" if it was published in a journal which is indexed in the Education Index, and to be research if it contained the following elements: (1) statement of problem, (2) collection of data, (3) analysis of data, and (4) conclusions. The term "cross-section" in the title indicates that
the 40 articles are intended to be typical of those being published, rather than "models" to be followed uncritically. Since this book is designed to supplement any textbook in educational research methods, and since each of these textbooks utilizes a somewhat different classification scheme, no attempt has been made to classify the articles according to "type" of research. Articles have been selected, however, to provide examples of a wide variety of designs, subjects, methods of gathering data, and methods of analyzing data.
Students enrolled in educational research courses reflect a diversity of interests; they usually include teachers, administrators, and pupil personnel workers. Hence, the articles have been selected so as to supply each of these groups with articles which will be of interest to them. Students of educational research methods also vary widely with respect to their preparation in statistics. Therefore, the articles in this collection have been selected to include some which can be understood with no background in statistics, some which require a fairly high degree of statistical sophistication, and a majority of intermediate difficulty in this respect.
In reproducing the articles, every effort has been made to reprint them exactly as they were originally published. The purpose of so doing is to present students with exactly the same problems in interpreting the research which they would encounter if they consulted the original source.
In addition to the articles, which have been arranged alphabetically by author, the book contains an introductory section, entitled "Evaluating Educational Research." This section provides (1) evidence that critical evaluation of all research articles is necessary, and (2) suggestions for carrying out such evaluations. This section is designed to supplement, rather than substitute for, the guidelines provided in standard textbooks in methods of educational research.
Many more articles have been included in the book than can possibly be evaluated in any one course. No attempt has been made to suggest which articles might be most useful for class discussions, since the background and interests of students differ widely from class to class.
Grateful appreciation is expressed to the authors and to the journals for their permission to reprint the articles in this book. I am also indebted to my colleagues: Georgia S. Adams, Dorothy M. Collett and Carleton B. Shay for their constructive criticism and suggestions regarding the material on "Evaluating Educational Research."
Edwin Wandt
Monterey Park, California