Events This Week
At the Library

• Message from the Head Librarian
• Keep Your Library Card Privileges
• Library Lessons Using a Qualitative Approach
  • Lesson 1:  Collecting Qualitative Data
  • Lesson 2: Analyzing Qualitative Data
  • Lesson 3:  Section II of Your Research Proposal
• Circulation Desk
• Next Week at the Library

A Message from
the Head Librarian

Welcome to your second week on the Second Floor of the Library and your sixth week of the course!

By now everyone should have submitted their APA formatted abstract for one of the articles you identified for your literature review section of your proposal. I will be reading and giving feedback on those this week. Once you have completed this process once and feel good about how you are doing then completing section II of your proposal should be a breeze:-) The goal of section II is for you to abstract at least 8 empirical articles that relate to your topic and help to inform the study you plan to propose. So, once you have completed one abstract, you will follow the same process for each of the articles. The other aspect you will have to work on within section II is to organize your abstracts by subtopics and then be sure to provide clear introductions to the subtopics and how they relate to your research topic and then provide good transitions from one topic to the next. I strongly urge everyone who has not read the sample proposals provided from previous students in this course to accomplish this during the week as they will give you a very good idea of what the expectation is in terms of detail within abstracting of the articles, how to organize and use subheadings, and how to be sure to have good transitions from one topic to the next. I also strongly suggest you review the rubric I will use for providing feedback on section II. Use this to review your paper BEFORE you turn it in to me to make sure you have addressed all elements. You get the best feedback when you have at least attempted all aspects of each section as there is no second go round with feedback. So if you do not do it the first time then you don't get any feedback and then you are really turning in your first attempt when you turn in your final draft. That is definitely not ideal. Please let me know if you have any questions on this during the week as you are working on this section.

APA Tidbit

This week the APA tidbit focus is on the knotty little problem of how to cite and reference a report you read about in another document. 

For example, while reading Does computer technology improve student learning and achievement? by Schacter & Fagnano (1999) you find they summarize Wolk's 1994 report titled,  Project-based learning: Pursuits with a purpose.   The results reported by Wolk are exactly what you need to justify the project you want to propose.  The problem, however, is that Wolk's report is an unpublished manuscript (see examples 58 and 59 on page 263 of the APA manual) and you cannot obtain it.

Fortunately, the procedure for solving this problem is explained on page 247 of the APA manual.  In short, you would use a with-in text citation such as this:

The results reported by Wolk (as cited in Schacter & Fagnano, 1999) support three conclusions.

On the reference pages cite Schacter and Fagnano in the ordinary manner, but do not include a citation for Wolk.  One note of caution!  Citing material from secondary sources is not encouraged in journal articles, theses, or dissertations.  Limited use is acceptable for this course.

Our goals this week are to:

• Consider the setting of your proposed study and the access you will have to solicit participants
• Describe different approaches used to obtain a sample of participants for qualitative research
• Identify different types of data collected in qualitative studies and the methods used to collect it
• Begin the process of locating and selecting or creating tools (protocols) for data collection in a qualitative study
• Describe the processes used for organizing and transcribing qualitative data for analysis
• Identify ways in which qualitative data is reported
• Continue constructing your own literature map for your research topic based on the articles you identify and begin working on writing Section II of your proposal

Don't Forget Your
Library Card!

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Contact the
Library Staff

Need Help?

Have a question but can't find the answer? Here are some options:

• Check the Course FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Check the Proposal FAQ page to see if your question has already been answered.
• Email the Head Librarian (Dr. Curda)*.
• Email the Assistant Librarian (Melissa)*.
• Check with the other library patrons.

*Remember to include your name and the course name (Educational Research) or number (EDF 6481) in your message.

Go to the Library Lessons for This Week
(Page 2)