Research Reflection
By: Rebeckah Anderson
During the semester, I participated in a research evaluation class which allowed me the opportunity to create and analyze real data based off a program that is slowly growing. The program is supposed to help parents spend quality time with their children through pre-made activities that were sent home in Head Start programs around central Virginia. Before this class, I had never participated in a large-scale research project. In the past, I had done evaluations on preschool aged children to analyze their growth and development throughout the year, but it was only handed in as a class project to be graded. While that knowledge and experience has helped me through smaller class projects in college, this opportunity expanded my knowledge on how to conduct an actual survey and analyze the data using statistics. While I have written literature reviews in the past, before this class I had never written a qualitative based paper which included graphs. By completing this portion of the project, I learned how to analyze data using a program I hadn’t heard of prior to this class called Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences or SPSS. Compared to the beginning of the semester, I had no idea how to even begin a project of this size, but after experiencing it, I now know the steps to start and complete an academic research project.
To begin the project, it was important to find different sources that had already conducted research on parent involvement to understand what I was going to be researching. I used Longwood Greenwood Library data bases in order to narrow my search to find specific examples of studies that had already been done which led me to multiple sources including “Parent Involvement in Homework: A Research Synthesis” by Patall, Cooper, and Robinson (2008). This article focused on parents and how they involve themselves with their children’s academic studies which is similar to what my class was researching. To make sure this article would be an appropriate academic source, I had to check to make sure that the source was peer reviewed, was related to the topic I was preparing to study, and stemmed from a reliable source. There were multiple articles that mentioned parental involvement in smaller sections of the article which I used for the annotated bibliography, but I felt that articles fully dedicated to parental involvement was a better choice as a source and ultimately replaced one originally on the annotated bibliography with a different, more in-depth article.
During the semester, I struggled when it came to writing different portions of the final paper which included the qualitative research section. Using SPSS was challenging since I had never used it before. It was hard to compare different data charts and make conclusions from them. I had help from classmates as well as just researching how to use the system. Since this was one of the more challenging sections for me, I spent more time on it to make sure I understood it better. Doing this portion of the project discouraged me and had me feeling confused just like I had felt at the beginning of the semester, but once I finished this section and got corrections, I felt more comfortable and confident about what I was doing. My confidence in academic research has gone up since the start of this project. When I first heard what we would be doing, I felt nervous and confused. I wasn’t sure how it was all going to come together, but looking back, going through each step individually made the process much easier and more doable. I remember going to a large group meeting at the beginning of the semester and not understanding what was being presented. When we had the second and final group meeting at the end of the semester, I knew what to expect and understood what was being presented and explained.