Saturday 18 April 2015

Writing Literature Review in doctoral study

In doctoral journey, the writing for literature review (LR) has to be split into two phases: the proposal defence phase and the final thesis phase.

LR for the proposal defence is meant for clarifying the key concepts and major issues you have presented in Chapter 1: Introduction. The clarification of key concepts associated to your research study is important for panel examiners to comprehend nature and contexts of your study, while evaluating the grasp and depth of your understanding upon what you are interested to study. Next, you should juxtapose what other researchers and academics had studied upon the issues you highlighted in your research proposal. You need to justify why it is importance for you to further study the issues and to explore potential solutions or findings, despite knowing most if not all important findings discovered or revealed for other researchers.

LR for the final thesis is meant for setting the scene and context for writing the Discussion chapter. At this stage of your doctoral journey, you should have collected and analysed all the data, and also revealed all the results relevant to your doctoral study. In this sense, your discussion chapter is where you compare your findings with others’ (presented in Chapter 2: Literature Review). Cross-chapter referencing is common and necessary to remind panel examiners what you have written in LR.

Normally LR written for the above mentioned two phases of research journey are different. However, the key concepts in LR for the proposal defence can either be converted into “Glossary” of your final thesis, or be condensed into a list of “operational definitions” in Chapter 1: Introduction.

Friday 17 April 2015

The Spirit of Craftsmanship

I read an article this morning and I found it suitable for researchers' reference:


The characteristics shift of Japanese craftsmen
In the 20th Century
In the 21st Century
-          They insist on their own styles
-          They were hard to approach or engage
-          They thought they were great

-          They should concern about other people
-          They should be considerate of others’ needs
-          They should be thankful when given assignments
-          They should keep saying “yes, understood, please let me handle it.”


Thursday 2 April 2015

Types of Quasi-experimental Designs

Notes taken from Jackson, S.L. (2006). Research Methods and Statistics: A Critical Thinking Approach. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth

1. Single-Group Posttest-Only Design

  • A single group of participants is given a treatment and then tested. 
  • Problem: We cannot claim a method (treatment) is better when we cannot compare the results for the group who participated with the results for any other group or standard. 
  • Cannot be used to draw conclusions about how an experience has affected the individuals involved.


2. Single-Group Pretest/Posttest Design

  • A single group of participants takes a pretest, then receives some treatment, and then takes a posttest measure. 
  • Any differences in the measures are assumed to be the result of the treatment.
  • Problem: The lack of a comparison group, i.e. we do not know whether any observed change is due to the treatment or something else that may have happened during the time of the study.  


3. Single-Group Time-Series Design

  • A single group of participants is measured repeatedly before and after a treatment. 
  • Advantage: the multiple measures allow us to see whether the behavior is stable before treatment and how, or if, it changes at the multiple points in time at which measures are taken after treatment. 


4. Nonequivalent Control Group Posttest-Only Design

  • At least two nonequivalent groups are given a treatment and then a posttest measure.
  • The control group is nonequivalent, meaning that participants are not assigned to either the experimental or the control group in a random manner. Instead, they are members of each group because of something that they chose or did--they come to the study already a member of one of the groups. 
  • There is no assurance that the two groups are at all equivalent on any variable prior to the study. 
  • Thus, we cannot say definitely that the treatment is responsible for any observed changes in the groups. It could be that the groups were not equivalent at the beginning of the study; hence, the differences observed between the two groups on the dependent variable may be due to the non-equivalence of the groups and not to the treatment.



5. Nonequivalent Control Group Pretest/Posttest Design

  • At least two nonequivalent groups are given a pretest, then a treatment, and then a posttest measure. 
  • A pretest allows us to assess whether the groups are equivalent on the dependent measure before the treatment is given to the experimental group. 
  • We can assess any changes that may have occured in each group after treatment by comparing the pretest measures for each group with their posttest measures.
  • So, we can compare performance within each group from the pretest to the posttest. 
  • If the treatment had some effect, then there should be a greater change from pretest to posttest for the experimental group than for the control group. 



6. Multiple-Group Time-Series Design
A series of measures are taken on two or more groups both before and after a treatment.