CUR 526 Educational Research for Practitioners

Before you can search for appropriate articles for your bibliography, you need to identify the key concepts in your research topic, and identify any synonyms or alternative terms. Let's look at the first five topics in your syllabus:

Step 1: Identify the key concepts in your research topic.
Step 2: Identify any synonyms or alternative terms. You can look at the ERIC thesaurus for ideas.

Problem solving skills of kindergarten children

NOTE: Use ERIC descriptors to narrow your search results.

You can have more focused results if you identify the ERIC descriptors. These are the subject headings or index terms used by ERIC to locate other resources on the same topic. You can use the ERIC Thesaurus to identify terms.

You can include more alternatives if you truncate words with various spellings. For example, you can use child* to find child, children, childhood, childless, childish, etc. In other words, you use the asterisk (For example,  child* ) to look for those letters as the root or stem in other word.

Problem solving skills of kindergarten children  -- ERIC Descriptors in Yellow

Empirical research is research that uses observation or experiments to answer a question or test a hypothesis. For example, a research question might ask, "Does a specific educational intervention work with a specific age group or in a specific type of setting or for a specific subject? The results are based upon actual evidence as opposed to theory or conjecture. The results should be able to be replicated in follow-up studies. Empirical research articles are published in peer-reviewed journals.

Peer-review: Scholarly peer review (which is also known as refereeing) is the process when authors submit their scholarly work (articles, conference papers, ideas, research) to the scrutiny of peers in their field who are experts in that field. The Ulrichs Periodical Directory database can be used to see if a journal is identified as a peer-reviewed publication. It should be noted that Ulrichs does not judge the relative merits of specific publications and the peer-review process. Instead, journals are identified as peer-reviewed based on the journal publisher's self-reported designation.

Primary sources refer to information collected firsthand from such sources as historical documents, literary texts, artistic works, experiments, surveys, and interviews.  Thus, articles where the author is describing their own experiments would be considered a primary source. In science and the social sciences, research articles are considered primary sources. In history, a much wider range of sources would also be included everything from original research and original works of fiction to items created during the period that is being studied. These can include personal papers including diaries, journals, and correspondence; legal notices and records for births, deaths, divorces, marriages, and military; photographs, and jewelry.

 Secondary sources refer to another person's second-hand account of something such as in a literature review. Thus, an experiment that is described by someone other than the researcher(s) would be considered a secondary source. Accounts found in newspapers, radio, and television about research findings would be considered secondary sources.

Tertiary sources provide generalized overviews of a topic. The author usually does not go back to the primary sources and instead gathers information based on secondary sources.         

It is always best to read the original or primary sources, but sometimes this is difficult if the original work was published in another language or was published in a book that is difficult to obtain. In such a case, you would need to cite the original or primary source in the text of the paper, but you would provide a reference in the reference list for the secondary source.

a.     Within the Text

According to Skinner (as cited in Freud, 1923), Freud took the position ….

b.    In the Reference List

Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behavioralism.  New York, NY: Knopf.

See also the APA Style website's FAQ on how to format a secondary source. 

You can identify tests and measurements in the ERIC database by looking for a keyword and looking for tests or questionnaires in the Document Type field. See this example:

• Use the ERIC (ProQuest) database.
• Look for the phrase "needs assessment" in the Subject field. Put the phrase in quotes for more precise results.
• 143 Report: Research and/or 160 Tests/questionnaires in the Document Type field.
• Use other words or phrases for focus your results. For example, "educational need"
• Select grade levels in the Education Level box. 
• If the results are too broad, add another concept in the third row. If your results are too narrow, add synonyms for your second concept. For example, mainstreaming or inclusions or "inclusive schools"