Completing academic research was something I had no experience with at the beginning of the semester. My process was unique since we have a very condensed time to complete an entire research project. With only 15 weeks to complete our research, we did not have much time to fix the problems that arose. We conducted survey research by sending out surveys for families to complete after the completion of Family Fun Time Activities. After the initial collection of the surveys, we had a very low response rate. But we did not have enough time to send out the activities again and collect new data. So, we had to do our best with what we had. We adapted by adding past year’s data. Adding this data helped me to see how the research we were conducting impacts the community.
My process for evaluating and selecting sources for research assignments was relatively simple. I used databased searches through the library to search for keywords, including parent involvement as well as other. I set parameters so that any articles that came up in my search were recent and peer-reviewed. After that, I would read the title of articles to see if it could help me in my research. I found about 12 articles that way. Then I read the abstract of each to see if it was what I wanted. This helped to weed out a few articles. Next, I read every article I had left. I read all of them and then found some common themes and connections that related to parent involvement. The three themes that stood out to me were: disparities in ability for involvement, parent’s needs, and the school environment. I did go back and find a few extra articles that I then read that related more to these themes than some of the other ones. I changed a few sources because they provided information that was easier for me to understand and connect with other articles.
The challenges I had when completing research was finding quality sources. I had ideas of what I wanted my sources to cover, but I could not find anything that covered the topics I wanted. Because of this, I had to change the way I looked at family involvement. By changing how I thought I viewed parent involvement, I was able to be more open to influences on parent involvement that I had not previously thought of. I think this overall taught me to be more open to situations and to not go in with an idea of how they should be.
My attitudes and perceptions have drastically changed about doing research over the course of this semester. At the beginning, I was very nervous as this was a big project to undertake and would require a lot. However, as I began to conduct the literature review, I became more invested in the topic. I had a general understanding of what our project was about, but family involvement was not something I really knew about. Reading about previous research on the topic helped me see the importance of it all and connected it to my own life. I was lucky to have parents that were very involved at home. But I also saw how that did not happen for every family because my mother worked at Head Start schools. When we were creating our surveys, I felt very knowledgeable about family involvement and the influences of external factors. Labeling our independent and dependent variables helped me to understand it as the experiment it was. I could then operationalize how the Family Fun Time Activities would influence family involvement. The rest was just reading our results, which was like learning a new language. Overall, trusting the process and seeing how all the individual parts we were doing connected helped me understand the project. It also helped me feel more confident about doing research overall.
To “Think Like a Researcher” means to always question things, at a healthy level. We are looking for connections to an independent and dependent variable. Because of the research I conducted in this class, I know question other connections I see in my life. “Thinking Like a Researcher” also means looking for the explanations to things. Researchers don’t want to leave a problem half-solved; they want to know why something happened the way it did. I know have a better idea of how all the individual pieces of academic research connect and how it can be connected to society. It’s something I think about almost every day now.