Description
In this book we will be looking at quantitative research methods in education. The book is structured to start with chapters on conceptual issues and designing quantitative research studies before going on to data analysis. While each chapter can be studied separately, a better understanding will be reached by reading the book sequentially.
This book is intended as a non-mathematical introduction, and a software package will be used to analyse the data. This package is SPSS, the most commonly used statistical software package in the social sciences. A dataset from which all examples are taken can be downloaded from the accompanying website (www.sagepub.co.uk/resources/muijs.htm). The website also contains the answers to the exercises at the end of each chapter, additional teaching resources (to be added over time), and a facility to address questions and feedback to the author.
I hope you find this book useful, and above all that it will give you the confidence to conduct and interpret the results of your own quantitative inquiries in education.
Daniel Muijs
Contents
1 Introduction to quantitative research
2 Experimental and quasi-experimental research
3 Designing non-experimental studies
4 Validity, reliability and generalisability
5 Introduction to SPSS and the dataset
6 Univariate statistics
7 Bivariate analysis: comparing two groups
8 Bivariate analysis: looking at the relationship between two variables
9 Multivariate analysis: using multiple linear regression to look at the relationship between several predictors and one dependent variable
10 Using analysis of variance to compare more than two groups
11 One step beyond: introduction to multilevel modelling and structural equation modelling