| A | B |
|---|
| ABSTRACT | a (usually non-evaluative) summary of the content of an article (or chapter, or book). |
| AERA | American Educational Research Association, they publish many of the most scholarly journals in the field of educational research (pages 63-64). |
| AND | when you use this Boolean connector, it narrows the search by only returning those sources including both of the search terms (page 84) |
| ANNOTATION | a summary of a source (e.g., article, chapter, book, presentation) |
| APA | their code of ethics is relevant for educational researchers; their writing style required by many scholarly journals (pages 19,87) |
| ASSUMPTION | an assertion which is, at least for the purpose of your project, assumed to be true, even though you have not verified it (page 115) |
| BIAS | a noun or a verb (but never an adjective) referring to a non-representative sample (page 140) |
| BIBLIOGRAPHY | a list of references |
| BOULEAN | the logic of electronic database search, using connectors: “and” “or” “not” (page 84) |
| CLUSTER | sampling confined to one observable category or site within the population (page 135) |
| CONVENIENCE | sampling based upon ease of access |
| DATABASE | a searchable digital archive of articles or other documents, e.g., ERIC (pages 82-89) |
| DEDUCTIVE | a hypothesis based primarily on the assumptions provided by a theory |
| ERIC | Educational Resources Information Center; this is one of the largest databases |
| HYPOTHESIS | the predicted results of your study |
| INDUCTIVE | a hypothesis based primarily on the results of previous research |
| INFORMED CONSENT | the ethical principle that research subjects must, of their own free consent to participate after they have been given complete information about the potential risks |
| KEY TERMS | words related to pertinent theories, concepts, and research |
| LIMITATION | some possible flaw in the study that may have reduced validity |
| LITERATURE REVIEW | a comprehensive collection of the primary and secondary research that has already been done on your topic (page 80) |
| META-ANALYSIS | a statistical summary of previous primary research on a topic |
| MLA | a professional organization whose style of references is used largely within the humanities (page 87) |
| NULL HYPOTHESIS | the explanation that the results are not significant, but due to pure chance |
| OPERATIONAL DEFINITION | defining a variable in terms of the measurements (or manipulations, controls, or randomization) that the researcher will actually make with respect to that variable |
| PARTICIPANT | an individual subject (case) about whom we are gathering data in our study, e.g., each high school sophomore who will be filling out the questionnaire (page 113) |
| PILOT | a small scale study done prior to the main study, usually to field test the survey |
| POPULATION | a sample should be representative of this |
| PRIMARY | research in which the writer was the first to collect (or analyze) a data set (page 83) |
| RANDOM | sampling which takes place such that each subject has the same chance of ending up in the sample |
| REPLICATION | a study closely designed to imitate one that has already been done, hoping to show similar results with a different sample (page 63) |
| SAMPLE | those subjects from whom we will actually get data to be analyzed |
| SECONDARY | research in which the writer merely reports of what other individuals have said, without describing any new primary research (page 83) |
| THEORY | an abstract concept used to help describe, understand, explain, predict or control the data |
