Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Compound research questions
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
Some research questions may be considered compound in the sense that to answer one question one must ask subsidiary questions.
For example, when making comparisons (such as looking for changes over time) one must ask questions at each point to be compared.
To know if teacher beliefs change during a professional development activity one would in effect need to ask
What are teacher beliefs before the activity?
AND
What are teacher beliefs after the activity?
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
What seems at first sight one question, may on closer analysis require us to answer several questions:
We need to be aware of the compound nature of such questions if we are looking to use triangulation, as we will need more data sources to offer the redundancy needed to triangulate between slices of data.
