The article, Age-Related Differences in Achievement Goal Differentiation, by Mimi Bong from Korea University, questioned whether achievement goals differ more in elementary aged children or middle school students. The study examined 1,196 Korean elementary and middle school students’ achievement goals based off of four distinct achievement goal factors. By use of self-reports the researchers gathered information from the elementary and middle school students’ perception of their achievement goals. Once the research was compiled it was found that the achievement goals of young students strongly correlated with one another but, the correlation became increasingly weak as the age of the respondents increased. With that being said, the type of data needed to answer this research question is self-identity, since the researcher only gathered data by self-reports from the students, off of how they describe their achievement goals, which is somewhat of a self-description. Therefore, the data gathering method would be by in-depth interview, since it is more than just a shallow opinion, but the interviews themselves took a lot less time than a typical in-depth interview would. The method of data analysis for this research question would be ordinal, since the students ‘ranked’ their achievement goals based off of the four distinct achievement goal factors given to them by the researcher. I found this research methodology to be very interesting, it seemed to be a lot more informal than I am used to reading about. Therefore, that aspect of it made this research example interesting to me since I have been correlating research solely with formal tactics instead of informal. I believe this would be interesting for the class as a whole as well since the research we look at in class is more formal and this shows that research can be done in a plethora of ways.

Bong, Mimi. (2009). Age-Related Differences in Achievement Goal Differentiation. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 101, No. 4, pp. 879-896.

Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks by Marian Verhallen and Adriana Bus from Leiden University examined whether digital picture storybooks could help low-income children learn the proper amount of vocabulary prior to beginning school, lessening the chances of them developing reading difficulties. Since that often happens to children who start school with a much lower vocabulary than their classmates. In this study, the researchers examined the effects of the video storybooks on 92 five year old children, whom they repeatedly exposed to the digital storybook. After the study, it was found that the storybooks were helpful in teaching children vocabulary words, helping lessen their chances of developing reading difficulties. The type of data needed for such a research question would be acts, behavior or events since the children’s reading abilities were directly observed by the researchers. Therefore, the data-gathering method for such data would be detached observation. While the method of data analysis would be ordinal since the children’s vocabularies were ranked after the research concluded. I found this to be a very interesting research question, I never thought digital picture storybooks could help to improve children’s vocabulary so much, but it is a very innovative and easy way to expand children’s vocabulary at a young age, which I believe my classmates would find interesting as well.

Verhallen, Marian and Bus, Adriana. (2010). Low-Income Immigrant Pupils Learning Vocabulary Through Digital Picture Storybooks. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 102. No. 1, pp. 54-61.

The article, Does Speech Rhythm Sensitivity Predict Children’s Reading Ability 1 Year Later? By Andrew Holliman, Clare Wood, and Kieron Sheehy, question whether speech rhythm sensitivity predicts the different components of reading over time. The study examined 69 five to eight year old English speaking children. The yearlong study started off by giving the children a speech rhythm assessment, along with a cognitive assessment and a variety of reading assessments, and ended exactly one year later by doing the same assessments for the children. After completing both of the assessments over the year long span, the researchers found that when controlling for individual differences in age, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, speech rhythm sensitivity was able to predict unique variances in word reading and the phrasing component of the reading fluency measure one year later. With that being said, the type of data needed to answer this research question would be organizational data because the researchers are looking for changes in reading ability. Subsequently, the data-gathering method would be surveys, but more so in a test-like form. Then, the method of data analysis would be ordinal since the children’s abilities would be rank ordered. I found this to be a very interesting research question and results. Something I believe others may find interesting is the conclusions this research brought. The researchers found that speech rhythm sensitivity should now be included in current models of children’s reading development.

Holliman, Andrew J., Wood, Clare, and Sheehy, Kieron. (2010). Does Speech Rhythm Sensitivity Predict Children’s Reading Ability 1 Year Later? Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 102, No. 2, pp. 257-530.

Effect of Infant’s Perceived Gender on Adolescents’ Ratings of the Infant is a research proposal done by, Douglas Degelman, Veronika Dvorak, and Julie Ann Homutoff at Vanguard University of Southern California. This research proposal aims to explore stereotypical sex role appropriate traits. The researchers aim to explore that idea by having 36 junior high students (18 boys and 18 girls) view a photo of a 3-month-old infant. Then, the students will be told that the baby’s name is Larry, Laurie, or they will not be told the infants name. After viewing the photo and name or no name, the students are asked to rate the infant on a few bipolar adjective scales: firm/soft/big/little, strong/weak, hardy/delicate, well coordinated/awkward, and beautiful/plain. The researchers predict that both the name assigned to the infant and the students’ gender will affect the ratings. This study is important because stereotyped expectations may influence gender role socialization and the acquiring of sex-typed behavior. Another reason as to why this study is important is because preconceived gender-based expectations can cause the parent to elicit expected behavior from the infant and to reinforce the expected behavior when it occurs. Several studies have been done before to explain this type of behavior, however, this study also aims to see whether or not males and females have different preconceived notions on infants depending on if they are boys or girls. For instance, a man may see a picture of a female baby and choose that that baby is delicate and/or weak but if they were to see that same photo and are told that the baby is a male the man may then choose the adjectives hardy and/or strong, directly showing gender stereotypes that are ever prevalent. Overall, this study proposes the idea that adult responses coincide with culturally specified sex stereotypes related with the gender label assigned to an infant and independent of actual infant gender differences. Lastly, the type of data needed for this research proposal is shallow opinions and attitudes, the researchers plan on using surveys as their type of data collection method and once the results are in they plan to read their results by comparing each of the dependent variables with the independent variable, which would be a type of categorical data. I found this research proposal to be very thought-provoking and would make for very fascinating results, I would not change anything about it. I believe that my classmates would agree with that as well and would be interested in seeing the results.

Link to proposal: http://www.vanguard.edu/psychology/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/proposal.pdf

The article, Can Tutors Be Supported in Giving Effective Explanations? By Jörg Wittwer, Matthias Nückles, Nina Landmann, and Alexander Renkl from the University of Freiburg, questions whether tutors are ineffective in giving explanations without previous background knowledge on the tutees individual knowledge level. The study examined 30 sets of tutors and tutees, the researchers gave half of the tutors information on the tutee’s individual knowledge level, while giving the other half of the tutors no information on their tutee’s. After a few weeks the researchers realized that the tutor’s who had information on their tutee’s were able to customize instruction for them, bettering their understanding of the tutor’s explanations, while the other tutee’s were not fully comprehending their tutor’s explanations. The study very clearly showed, that only the tutors that were given background information on their tutee’s individual knowledge could successfully explain concepts to them. Overall, the findings suggest that a diagnosis-based approach to support tutors in developing a model in how to properly teach the tutee effectively contributes to the individualization of instruction in tutoring. All in all, the article is answering the research question of how can tutors give effective explanations to tutees? Therefore, the type of data needed in order to answer this question is acts, behavior, or events, since the researchers conducted their research by listening and watching in on tutoring sessions. The data-gathering method would then be detached observation, since the researcher is simply watching and listening to who they are trying to collect data from. The method of data analysis would be ordinal, since the researchers are only ranking the tutees based off of how well they appear to be absorbing the information. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting way to conduct research. It seemed to be a lot more laid back than most research strategies. However, I still found it to be effective in answering their research question, something that I think would interest the rest of the class as well.

Wittwer, Jörge, Nückles, Matthias, Landmann, Nina, and Renkl, Alexander. (2010). Can Tutors Be Supported in Giving Effective Explanations? Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 102, No. 1, pp. 1-256.

Age Appropriateness and Motivation, Engagement, and Performance in High School: Effects of Age Within Cohort, Grade Retention, and Delayed School Entry by Andrew J. Martin at the University of Sydney digs into the relative salience of age while observing three dimensions of age appropriateness. Martin’s study examined 3, 684 high school student’s academic motivation, engagement, and performance. These high school students were then monitored and later evaluated to test their age appropriateness based on the three dimensions (cohort, grade retention and delayed school entry). It was found that, generally, being older-for-cohort has negative effects, the effects of having to repeat a grade are negative, and delayed entry status came up with negative results as well. Overall, it was found that cohort, grade retention and delayed school entry all result in poor age appropriateness, motivation, engagement and performance in high school.

With Martin’s research question asking: whether or not effects of age in the terms of cohort, grade retention and delayed school entry effect age appropriateness in the terms of motivation, engagement and performance in high school? The type of data needed in order to answer such a question would be acts, behavior, or events and demographic data. I chose those two particular data types because the research method required a lot of observation but also the students grades which were supplied by the teacher. The data gathering method for this experiment would then be, ethnography and public and private records. The method of data analysis would be qualitative data as well as ordinal data, to rank the student’s grades. I, personally, found this research question to be very interesting, yet I found the results to be as I expected them to be. I enjoyed reading about a research question that would need two different types of data to answer it fully- something I have not written about until now.

Martin, Andrew J. (2006). Age Appropriateness and Motivation, Engagement, and Performance in High School: Effects of Age Within Cohort, Grade Retention, and Delayed School Entry. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 101. No. 1, pp. 1-258.

Learning Disabilities and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis by Jason M. Nelson and Hannah Harwood digs into the hypothesis that school aged students with learning disabilities also frequently have anxiety. Their study showed that students with learning disabilities have higher mean scores of anxiety than their peers who do not have learning disabilities. They also backed their research up with the fact that learning disabilities and emotional problems have been associated since the first conceptualizations of learning disabilities in the early 1900s, not to mention the theoretical explanations linking the two together. The research question asked if students with learning disabilities also have a high level of anxiety and if the two are somehow linked to one another, which they later found was true. The type of data needed to answer Nelson and Harwood’s research question would be demographic data because they obtained their data from different studies. The data gathering method for this research would be through public and private records since the research was obtained through 533 studies through the database search and references list reviews. Similarly, the method of data analysis would then be numeric since the research came from counting of already gathered statistics. I believe this is a very good research strategy and different from all of the others that I have looked into since it is focused on compiling previously collected data instead of gathering new data. I found the results of this study to be very interesting as well as the way in which the researchers compiled their data.

Nelson, Jason M., Harwood, Hannah. (2011). Learning Disabilities and Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp.1-96.

The research topic of the article I chose, Test-Enhanced Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom: The Effects of Quiz Frequency and Placement, tests how effective quizzes are in learning, specifically with middle school students in a science class.
The article relayed the information gathered from an experimental study, which examined whether quizzing students fosters learning of course content. The researchers used 139 8th grade science students to conduct their experiment. In experiment one, the researchers used three quizzes on the courses content spread throughout the unit prior to the unit’s examination, this experiment resulted in the students receiving a 13%-25% gain in their examination performance. In experiment two, the researchers manipulated the placement of the quizzes. In this experiment the students were quizzed on content prior to the lecture and then again immediately after the lecture. It was found that experiment two resulted in the highest unit examination scores, the benefits of quizzing often continued throughout the students entire course.
The type of data needed for the researchers to properly answer their research question is acts, behavior, or events due to the fact that it is a first-order phenomena and the researchers are conducting the research themselves and observing it in person. The data-gathering method would then be ethnography due to the fact the researchers were in contact with the research subjects. The method of data analysis would fall under the category of quantitative data due to the fact that it is regarding numerical grades and scores in connection with the number of quizzes.
I found this type of research to be very interesting and helpful. The way the researchers conducted their research accompanied by the different methods they used to test how the quiz taking was affecting the examination results was flawless and led to great results, it was a successful experiment.

Agarwal, Pooja K., Huelser, Barbie J., McDaniel, Mark A., McDermott, Kathleen B. Roediger, Henry L. (2011, February). Test-Enhanced Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom: The Effects of Quiz Frequency and Placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 103. No. 2, pp. 257-508.