Research Reflection
After completing my Social Research and Program Evaluation class, I have noticed that as I am researching topics and reading published journals, I read more into the process than before. Prior to learning about bias and reliability it never mattered to me how participants were gathered or if bias had affected the study. Although, now I have realized that bias can occur from participants, researchers, and even observers. Therefore, I have begun to examine, in-depth, the process of how researchers gathered their participants and conducted their study, to grasp the reliability of the study completed. For instance, if a study gathered participants through the coercion of money than it can be assumed that these participants might be biased by the amount of money received. Thereby, preventing the study from being reliable because the participants may pretend to act a certain way to keep their money. Before learning about how bias can impact the reliability of the research I never thought about the accuracy of the study and just assumed everything stated in an article was correct. However, now that I understand how bias affects the reliability of the study, I search through various statements and look for underlying hints that have the potential to state if bias was taken into consideration. In my opinion, I feel that this information has not only made me more aware of the validity of research but also increased the accuracy of my researching skills.
Before expanding my knowledge on the role of accuracy takes on research, I used to not put a lot of thought into my annotated bibliography. At the beginning of 2018, I did a literature review for an English 400 class, I put no effort into actually reading the articles. I would read the abstracts and introductions and use that information. However, now I will read the abstract and immediately go to the study and examine the details of the participants and how the study was conducted. I will also read the results and imagine how the information provided can influence my research. For instance, when I was creating my literature review I would not only focus on aspects of parental involvement but the bigger picture as well. I added articles that not only supported the research that already took place but also showed both positive and negative aspects of parental involvement as well. I understand that being honest within my research helps to not only decrease bias but also increase transparency and validity.
Being that the research I was focusing on was activities that would increase parental involvement, there was little research on this topic. While I could find a plethora of research to explain why there was a lack of involvement and how to work on the issues/barriers that were affecting parental involvement; rarely were activities mentioned that addressed this issue. Therefore, I had to rely on my research and the growth of my research knowledge to help further my research. For instance, before conducting my research, I would read the methods sections of various articles and become intimidated with the vocabulary being used. However, after learning about mixed-methodology, qualitative, and quantitative measures and learning about the various levels of measurements, I started to understand the research process better. In doing so, this helped me to gain confidence in my research, learn to be resilient, and trust in my research capabilities regardless of the difficulties. I believe that thinking like a researcher means to question concepts and ideas. For instance, taking the close-ended questions from our surveys and turning them into data to examine individually and consider which questions could be dependent on one another shows how to think like a researcher. Taking observations and interpreting them into theoretical terms, is something I have gained a higher respect for.