My research process has changed a lot after completing this class in the Fall of 2019. One of the most useful things that I learned was how to set up a research project in my local community. I learned that in order to start research, there are a few steps that need to be completed before you can start evaluating your data. I learned that I needed to do some research of my own and look at other studies that have been done on the similar topic. One of my favorite things that I learned was how to code data. I thought coding data was fun because we could see the results of all the hard work, we had done to make the survey.
Before taking this class and completing the research, I was not very familiar with the finding good sources. Often times I would just find a website that best fit the information I was looking for. For this project I used the peer reviewed sources because they were reliable and really helped me find good information with my final paper. It is much better to use peer reviewed articles rather than online websites because you know that someone with knowledge in the field reviewed it. I did not change or add any extra sources to my final paper because, I was not able to find any sources that matched the research I was completing because there is little research done on this topic.
One of the challenges that we faced was getting a good amount of surveys back. We sent out 84 surveys. On the first wave of surveys returned we only received 19 surveys. This was not a lot of data to analyze nor did it represent a lot of the community members because there was not a lot of data to compare. Another challenge I faced was writing the literature review. This was the first literature review that I had ever done, and it was a struggle for me. I spent many hours in the library researching making sure it was perfect and got help from my professor to ensure that I was doing it correctly.
One strategy that we used to try and encourage a big response rate was, we attached a five-dollar Walmart gift card to try and encourage a response from the participants. The strategy I used to help me with writing my literature review was, utilizing the writing center and going to my professor’s office hours for help to learn how to write a good literature review.
My attitudes and perceptions about doing research has changed quite a bit over the course of the semester. I am a lot more confident about doing a big research project because, I now know all the steps to take in order to set up a research project. I am now also familiar with the ethics about research, so I know what to do and what not to do while conducting my research. A good example is, keeping the respondent’s identity anonymous by sending out anonymous surveys rather than having face to face interviews.
After all the research I have completed this semester, to me the term “Think Like a Researcher” means, how would this data help other researchers trying to fix a similar issue. It is good to gather knowledge about topics such as parental involvement because now other researchers who research a similar topic can have some information on the topic. That way they can focus their research on another topic or go more in-depth with this topic to gain more knowledge on a topic such as this one.