Greetings. My name is Daniel Salter, and I work in the
Center for Research Quality (CRQ) and am on the doctoral faculty in the Riley
College of Education and Leadership. I'm also very excited to be able to
provide this guest blog posting. I want to focus specifically on five resources
that you can find on the CRQ website (beyond all the forms!) that can
potentially support your dissertation process. All of them can be found at this
link
The ICPSR
Through the university's membership in the Inter-University
Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), you have access to a ton
of information that is available through various databases that are part of
this service. You may find that some of this information can provide you the
necessary facts and figures that you need to develop your research question in
Chapter 2, and/or to answer the research question in Chapter 4. They also
provide training on using large databases.
Social Change Impact Report Datasets
Consistent with our mission, Walden University has collected
data on the impact of social change efforts on a global scale, over the past
few years. We have made these datasets available to interested researchers,
including students, for further use and analysis. As with the ICPSR data, you
may find some information here to inform your research question, or to answer
it.
SPSS
Even if you are the most dyed-in-the-wool, "ain't
interested in crunching any numbers", qualitative researcher, you should
still become familiar with data analysis software (and, it can be used for
qualitative data analysis, by the way). The university makes SPSS available to
current students for free, and instructions for downloading it are on our
site.
The Walden Participant Pool
Although not appropriate for every dissertation, the Walden
Participant Pool is comprised of hundreds of individuals who are willing to
participate in IRB-approved research studies. The pool might be an option for
some students as a resource for their sample, and is definitely something to
which everyone should contribute as a participant. I actually have a study
listed, and have participated in three projects thus far. You have to register
for it, either way.
Tutorials and Guides
In the middle of the web page, we have tried to curate many
of the guides and supplements that you will encounter during your experience as
a doctoral student (e.g., the HAT from Residency 3). We also have developed
several supplemental tutorials and videos on common topics of interest to our
research community, from getting started on the project to getting your final
abstract approved. Students find many of these tutorials to be excellent
refreshers on topics they learned earlier.
If you have specific questions about your dissertation for
the CRQ, you can send it to research@waldenu.edu,
or ask them in the comments section of this posting. You can also feel free to
add +Daniel Salter to a Google+ circle, and follow the CRQ on Twitter
@WaldenResearch
Next time we will switch to qualitative and mixed methods
studies and look at Chapter 3: Participant Selection. Do you have an issue or a
question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me
your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu
No comments:
Post a Comment