Archives for : February 2016

My Questionnaire Quest  0

 February 17, 2016  

“Quest: a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and (frequently) as a symbol… In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and the overcoming of many obstacles”.

From last December until now, I have been anxiously awaiting for mail in my mailbox here at ICLON. By the time it was Christmas, I was singing “All I want for Christmas, is maiiiiil”! Really, nothing could make me a happier PhD student than receiving a bunk of mail like this on my desk every week:

20151216_090120

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Because, ladies and gentlemen, my first data have arrived! Finally tangible proof that my first year of work as a PhD student has paid off.

Constructing and distributing a questionnaire was somewhat more complicated than I thought. Here are some things you should think about:

 

  1. Constructing the questions. You cannot just ask whatever you fancy to ask, I discovered. You need to justify what you ask your participants, preferably supported by literature and/or by questionnaires already available covering your topic.
  2. Online or hardcopy’s by mail? That was a very relevant question, since I wanted to have about 2000 students filling in my questionnaire, an online survey would be so much easier for me. But it would also have such a small response rate… Also considering that my questionnaire took about 20 minutes to complete, I chose to send around my questionnaire in hardcopy. That way, students could fill it out in the lesson of the corresponding teacher, and be more likely to complete the survey.
  3. Recruit participants. In my case, I needed schools and teachers to commit to my research, ensuring their students and teachers would fill in my questionnaires. I already knew some teachers, but definitely not enough to cover my whole research population. So, I started asking around. With colleagues (do they have any contacts with schools that might be interested?), friends, acquaintances, institutions also interested in my research topic… And eventually, I even made a list of appropriate schools, looked up their telephone numbers and tried to call the specific teachers to explain them about my research and invite them to participate. Do not underestimate this step. It. Takes. Time.
  4. Logistics. After I printed and stapled over 2000 questionnaires (thank God for automatic staplers), they needed to get to the right persons in the right schools. And those right persons in the right schools should also be able to send the piles of paper back to the right person: me! I am so, so lucky to have gotten help from people in my department, and people from the post office (and occasionally my boyfriend, who helped in the stapling process). I had this whole administration of how many questionnaires should go to which school, how many for students (white coloured paper) and how many to teachers (orange coloured paper). I needed piles of envelopes with the right addresses, and also self-addressed envelopes in which the teachers could send the questionnaires back in the mail.
  5. Communication. It helps to be clear about the agreement you have with the corresponding teacher. Remind them in which classes the questionnaire has to be distributed. In general, remind them. And administer who returned how many questionnaires to you.

 

And then, everything needed to get back to me. I waited in such anxiety. At this moment, my response rates luckily seem very high, although one of my greatest fears also came true as some of the envelopes got lost in the mail. While still awaiting the very last envelopes to return, the scanning and analyses can begin…

What are your experiences when constructing and distributing a questionnaire? What were the obstacles you met, and do you have any tips and tricks for others? Please let me know in the comments below!

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Image source: www.channel4learning.com

 PHD, teacher research , , ,

Killing two birds with one stone: Audit trail to secure research transparency and accountability  0

 February 13, 2016  

 

Until recently, academic integrity within Dutch educational research was largely a matter of individual and collective responsibility, rather than applying specific compliance measures. University researchers are expected to conduct themselves in an ethical manner with respect to the ways in which they design, carry out and report academic research. However, procedures and requirements with respect to ethical conduct and academic integrity practices of research projects are changing. Research financers and scientific journals require more strict procedures, incidents with research integrity, safety and privacy call for more transparency and accountability, and recent developments in the domain of open resources trigger questions about accessibility and re-use of data.

 

Much of the literature is framed in terms of misconduct or academic corruption with research ethics and tends to focus on the negative framing of academic integrity as “corrupt” or “bad” practice. Fabrication and falsification of results together with plagiarism and ethical abuses practiced by academic researchers are frequently highlighted. Yet ICLON Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching designed a procedure that builds on trusting academic researchers to conduct themselves in an ethical manner with respect to the ways in which they design, carry out and report academic research.

 

A distinctive character of the ICLON research program is its double focus of developing educational theory and practice, which means that the research projects of the program aim at simultaneously contributing to the improvement of educational practice and generating knowledge about this practice. Because of this double focus, many research projects of the research program are highly-contextualized and are characterized by complex research processes which ask for many interpretations of the researchers and lack standardized procedures of analysis.Kill 2 birds 3

 

Akkerman and colleagues designed and evaluated a so-called audit procedure to ascertain if this kind of studies meets the criterion of trustworthiness. This procedure is about the visibility, comprehensibility, and acceptability of the research process. A decision in the research process must be made explicit and communicated to be judged at all and substantiated to be judged by its logic and content.

The data management procedure of ICLON builds on this audit procedure and includes an audit trail, which allows an auditor to track, understand and assess the research process from the final conclusions as reported in a paper back to the data. This data management procedure is considered a practical and useful way to secure both transparency of the research process and accountability of its researchers. It can also be understood as a way to support researchers to improve the quality of the research process and to raise their awareness of the importance of academic integrity.

 teacher research ,

So, what did I learn from my six-week stay abroad?  0

 February 4, 2016  

As you all might have noticed, we went offline for a little while. As much fun as we have when blogging about our PhD-lives, we need ideas for interesting blogposts. So, we took a little break, allowing ourselves to have experiences we could later write about. And look, here we are, back with new blogposts :-).

 

This week, I am taking you with me in a flashback to my stay in Berkeley. The previous time I wrote, it was mainly about my preparations for and my first experiences in Berkeley. Now, I have been back for a little over two months, and will write about what useful knowledge and experiences I gained. Because even though I was there for ‘just’ six weeks, what I brought back will last me months! In this blogpost I will focus on two of those insights I’ve gained. Read more

 PHD