My process for completing academic research has improved significantly because of this class. For starters, I had not completed quantitative and qualitative research before this. I believe my knowledge has increased profoundly as I now know how to do research proficiently. Our course on ethics and how to ethically perform research was beneficial for future projects as well. Due to multiple issues my group encountered; I believe I developed better problem-solving skills as well. Research is bound to always have problems, and learning how to fix and deal with them is crucial to the assignment. My group was originally placed in another activity and had to end up switching activities after the presentation day for the other class to demonstrate which activity we were going to be using. With the switch of groups, my group and I had to come together and figure out what our activity was supposed to achieve without the help from the other class. However, with that slight issue, we developed great communication with our professor to get us back on track with the rest of our class.
I chose sources for my literature review through Longwood University’s databases provided through our library. I came across multiple articles relating to our topics however I carefully selected a few dependent on if they were related to younger low-income children. After writing my literature review, I did add two more sources to my introduction to successfully explain my thoughts.
I felt challenged when identifying my independent variable because I struggled to decide which theme to focus on from my literature review. Ultimately, I decided to focus on educational attainment. I also felt challenged when we received a lot response rate.
I believe my confidence level towards performing research has increased drastically. Although research is always nerve racking and time consuming, I believe the amount of experience I have gained through my experience at Longwood University will be helpful if I have to complete research or a program evaluation in my future career.
To me, “to think like a researcher” means to critically think outside of the box and analyze everything. When we had to use surveys from previous years, we examined the open-ended responses to find themes from the parents’ responses. This forced us to analyze 66 responses and synthesize them to form three themes. Within these three themes, we had to apply them to our research question on fun time activities effectiveness on family involvement.