A Reflection

Occasionally, it is a good idea to reflect on where your road in life is taking you. Have you considered what jobs will be available when you complete your degree? Have you done all you can do to prepare yourself, so you are marketable for those jobs?

Let me give you an example, a Ph.D. in psychology alone will not get you a job. If you want to be a professor then you need some additional experience, such as teaching and doing research beyond your dissertation. Remember, with a master's degree you are qualified to teach at community and junior colleges (no license is required), some universities also hire master's level faculty for temporary adjunct positions. Don’t think of these types of jobs as a permanent position, instead you are gaining the necessary teaching experience for a full time position later. Volunteer as a research assistant for faculty doing research, look outside your own university, and field of study. Again, all you are looking for is the opportunity to gain experience.

Your road does not end with your degree; it is the beginning of a new road to your professional career. Be ready when you reach it! Next time, we start a special series for summer break. 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

Microsoft Word webinar part2

Microsoft Word webinar part1

Data Collection Problems and Resolutions

Participant Withdrawal. Occasionally you may have participants indicate that they want to stop and do not want to continue in your study. This is most common with special populations, such as the elderly and ill.

What to do? First, I suggest asking if a break might help (and if you can recognize the need for one early, all the better). Second, as frustrating as it may be, you should just thank them for coming and let them go.

Incomplete data. Thus far I have been addressing in-person research concerns, but one that is very common with online data collection is participants skipping questions. Some standardized surveys are invalid if questions are skipped.

What to do? In person, you can do a quick check to see if any data is missing. Online is trickier. Most survey programs (like survey monkey) allow the option for requiring answers to the questions. There are some positives and negatives to consider with this. The positive is that your data will be complete, with no missing responses. The negative is some people will quit the survey if they can’t skip responses.

Inappropriate disclosure. In interviews, you may have someone tell you things that are inappropriate, such scenarios include child or abuse, and disclosing medical or education information.

What to do? As soon as you realize where they are going, stop them. Say that this is information you should not be told and move on with the study. The exception, is if you are a mandated reporter (check the laws in your state, some states say that everyone is a mandated reporter for child or elder abuse), in this case you are ethically required to report the incident to the appropriate authorities. I suggest first consulting with your committee and the IRB. Your status as a mandated reporter must be disclosed in the consent form. Such disclosures are unusual, but you need to be prepared in case they do happen.

Whenever you run into something unexpected, know that you can contact your methodologist and/ or the IRB for help. Next time, we will finish the quarter with a reflection of how far you have come. 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

Questionable data

When you are collecting in-person data, you may have someone act strangely, making you suspect drugs or alcohol use. Another scenario is that someone hands in a “completed” survey in a few minutes, as compared to the 20 minutes others took.

What to do? First, make sure you are safe in the case of strange behavior (I once had a participant break the chair in which he was sitting from rocking and bouncing the chair due to amphetamine use). If there are any concerns, thank them for coming and get them out the door quietly. Second, mark their data forms, with the behavior that concerns you. Later when you analyze data, check whether their data deviates from the norm. Discuss the issue with your methodologist and make a joint decision about whether to include the data in the analyses.

Next time I will continue discussing data issues. 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

Data Collection Problems and Resolutions

Things happen in the real world when you are conducting a study, as the researcher it is your responsibility to both recognize the issue and resolve it. I am going to talk over the next few posts about some of the most common issues that may arise.

Confidentiality breach. Imagine that you are doing a program evaluation. You will survey participants before the program begins and again after the program. In order to match each person’s pre and post program survey, you will have them write their names on each form. Somehow during the data collection a few surveys get left behind. This is a breach of confidentiality. Someone else could see the responses and know who wrote them. In a program setting, that may not seem a serious offense, but consider if it was one’s supervisor that saw a derogatory comment about him or herself.

What to do? First, as soon as the loss is realized, get the surveys back in your possession. Second, report the breach to your committee and the IRB. They may want you to notify the individuals involved but let them make that decision. You also may want to consider not using names in studies, instead ask people to pick a number or phrase that they will enter on the pre survey and remember for the post survey.

Next time, we will continue the discussion on data problems and solutions. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Send me an email with your ideas. leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Extreme Scores Effects and Causes

Extreme scores can cause serious problems for statistical analyses. They generally increase error variance and reduce the power of statistical tests by altering the skew or kurtosis of a variable. This can be a problem with multivariate analyses. The more error variance in your analyses, the less likely you are to find a statistically significant result when you should find one (increasing the probability of a Type II error).

Extreme scores also bias estimates such as the mean and SD. Since extreme scores bias your results, you may be more likely to draw incorrect conclusions, and your results will not be replicable and generalizable.

Extreme scores can result from a number of factors. It is possible that the extreme score is correct- an example is although the average American male is around 5' 10" there are males that are 7' tall and some that are 4 foot tall. These are legitimate scores even though they are extreme.

Another cause of an extreme is data entry error, someone that was actually 5' 6" tall may be incorrectly entered as 6' 5". So the first step is to always double check that extreme scores were entered correctly. A third cause may be that participants purposefully report incorrect scores. It can also happen that a participant accidently reports an incorrect score. Thus, an extreme score that has been entered correctly may need to be removed.

*The info in today's post comes from Osborne (2013).

Osborn, J. W. (2013). Best practices in data cleaning. DC: Sage.

Next time I will begin a series on data collection. 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