Morehead state university iet 698 Research Methods Technology

Session 12

A Type I error is often represented by the Greek letter alpha (α) and a Type II error by the Greek letter beta (β ). In choosing a level of probability for a test, you are actually deciding how much you want to risk committing a Type I error—rejecting the null hypothesis when it is, in fact, true. For this reason, the area in the region of rejection is sometimes called the alpha level because it represents the likelihood of committing a Type I error.

Type I and Type II errors are inversely related: As one increases, the other decreases. The Type I, or α (alpha), error rate is usually set in advance by the researcher. The Type II error rate for a given test is harder to know because it requires estimating the distribution of the alternative hypothesis, which is usually unknown.

Using your Texts and the Internet, Define, Discuss and provide examples for

Conducting a literature review

"Tour of University Library" Online or Walk in.

A review of the literature is a compilation of the research that has been published on a topic by recognized scholars and researchers. In writing the literature review, your purpose is to convey to your reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic, and what their strengths and weaknesses might be.

A literature review should do the following:

A. Be organized around and related to the research question you are developing.

B. Synthesize results into a summary of what is and is not known.

C. Identify gaps or areas of controversy in the literature.

D. Formulate questions that need further research.

Conducting a Review of the Literature:

Step 1. Familiarize yourself with the scholarly journal literature by browsing the Library's E-Journals lists.

Step 2: Identify the keywords and phrases that describe your topic by making a list of possible synonyms.

Step 3: Select and search appropriate databases or search tools.

Things to Keep in Mind:

1.Library databases are different than Web search engines.

2.The information cycle determines where and when certain types of information are published.

3.Most topics are interdisciplinary, so don't limit your search to one field or subject database.

4.Be aware that research is a cyclical, recursive process.

A problem statement is a concise description of the issues that need to be addressed by a problem solving team and should be presented to them (or created by them) before they try to solve the problem. When bringing together a team to achieve a particular purpose provide them with a problem statement. A good problem statement should answer these questions:

1.What is the problem? This should explain why the team is needed.

2.Who has the problem or who is the client/customer? This should explain who needs the solution and who will decide the problem has been solved.

3.What form can the resolution be? What is the scope and limitations (in time, money, resources, technologies) that can be used to solve the problem? Does the client want a white paper? A web-tool? A new feature for a product? A brainstorming on a topic?

Using your Texts and the Internet, Define, Discuss and provide examples for
Selecting a problem
Sources of problems
Characteristics of good problems

Selecting a problem

The selected research subject should be practical and realistic, so that the related research material/sources are easily available within one’s reach.

Some of the other criteria, which must also be considered while selecting a problem, are: importance of the subject, qualifications and training of the researcher, costs involved, and the time factor. In other words, before selecting a problem, the researcher must ask himself the following questions:

1. 
   
   
2. 
   Is he well equipped, concerning his background, to conduct the research?
   
3. 
   Does the research/study come within the budget he can afford?
   
4. 
   Can the necessary cooperation be obtained from those who must participate in the research as subjects?
   

There certainly is no shortage of worthy research problems if you know how to hunt. Perhaps the best way to generate problems is to cultivate the habit of critical reading and listening. This means constantly bringing questions to mind while you are poring over books and journals and while you witness lectures and discussions. The sorts of questions you pose identify the kinds of problems to investigate. Beyond critical reading and listening, a further source of topics is that of problems met on the job, either on your own job or someone else's.

SMART
S-Specific

List several steps researchers can take to optimize the power of their statistical tests.

Statistical power may depend on a number of factors. Some of these factors may be particular to a specific testing situation, but at a minimum, power nearly always depends on the following three factors:

-the statistical significance criterion used in the test

-the magnitude of the effect of interest in the population

-the sample size used to detect the effect

People do not like to feel pressured into taking a survey. Surveys that get mailed out that have a sense of urgency are often discarded as junk mail. Rather than being pushy with people it is best to show them respect. People will typically respond positively to a survey that has some sort of incentive.

Yes I agree because Bias in surveys is undesirable, but often unavoidable. The major types of bias that may occur in the sampling process are:

Non-response bias: When individuals or households selected in the survey sample cannot or will not complete the survey there is the potential for bias to result from this non-response. Nonresponse bias occurs when the observed value deviates from the population parameter due to differences between respondents and nonrespondents.

Coverage bias: Coverage bias can occur when population members do not appear in the sample frame. Coverage bias occurs when the observed value deviates from the population parameter due to differences between covered and non-covered units. Telephone surveys suffer from a well known source of coverage bias because they cannot include households without telephones.

Selection Bias: Selection bias occurs when some units have a differing probability of selection that is unaccounted for by the researcher.

Session 13

Here are the major criteria against which your proposal will be judged. Read through your case for support repeatedly, and ask whether the answers to the questions below are clear, even to a non-expert.

• 
  Does the proposal address a well-formulated problem?
  
• 
  Is it a research problem, or is it just a routine application of known techniques?
  
• 
  Is it an important problem, whose solution will have useful effects?
  
• 
  Is special funding necessary to solve the problem, or to solve it quickly enough, or could it be solved using the normal resources of a well-found laboratory?
  
• 
  Do the proposers have a good idea on which to base their work? The proposal must explain the idea in sufficient detail to convince the reader that the idea has some substance, and should explain why there is reason to believe that it is indeed a good idea. It is absolutely not enough merely to identify a wish-list of desirable goals (a very common fault). There must be significant technical substance to the proposal.
  
• 
  Does the proposal explain clearly what work will be done? Does it explain what results are expected and how they will be evaluated? How would it be possible to judge whether the work was successful?
  
• 
  Is there evidence that the proposers know about the work that others have done on the problem? This evidence may take the form of a short review as well as representative references.
  
• 
  Do the proposers have a good track record, both of doing good research and of publishing it? A representative selection of relevant publications by the proposers should be cited. Absence of a track record is clearly not a disqualifying characteristic, especially in the case of young researchers, but a consistent failure to publish raises question marks.
  

Starting now is especially ideal for those who are choosing to do a thesis because you have the opportunity to receive feed back from others, good practice, and if you already know what topic you will choose for a thesis then you also get a head start.

Visit the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, Frequently Asked Questions at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm

Read and discuss the following questions on the Discussion Board Forum 13:

1. 
   Why does the Government collect statistics on the unemployed?
   
2. 
   Where do the statistics come from?
   
3. 
   What are the basic concepts of employment and unemployment?
   
4. 
   Who is counted as employed?
   
5. 
   Who is counted as unemployed?
   
6. 
   Who is not in the labor force?
   

Government statistics tell us about the extent and nature of unemployment. How many people are unemployed? How did they become unemployed? How long have they been unemployed? Are their numbers growing or declining? Are they men or women? Are they young or old? Are they white or black or of Hispanic ethnicity? Are they skilled or unskilled? Are they the sole support of their families, or do other family members have jobs? Are they more concentrated in one area of the country than another? After these statistics are obtained, they have to be interpreted properly so they can be used—together with other economic data—by policymakers in making decisions as to whether measures should be taken to influence the future course of the economy or to aid those affected by joblessness.

Because unemployment insurance records relate only to persons who have applied for such benefits, and because it is impractical to actually count every unemployed person each month, the Government conducts a monthly sample survey called the Current Population Survey (CPS) to measure the extent of unemployment in the country. The CPS has been conducted in the United States every month since 1940 when it began as a Work Projects Administration program. It has been expanded and modified several times since then.

The basic concepts involved in identifying the employed and unemployed are quite simple:

People with jobs are employed.

People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.

People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.

Who is counted as employed?

Employed persons consist of:

All persons who did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week.

All persons who did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-owned enterprise operated by someone in their household.

All persons who were temporarily absent from their regular jobs, whether they were paid or not.

Not all of the wide range of job situations in the American economy fit neatly into a given category. For example, people are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay or profit during the survey reference week. This includes all part-time and temporary work, as well as regular full-time, year-round employment. Persons also are counted as employed if they have a job at which they did not work during the survey week because they were:

On vacation

Ill

Experiencing child-care problems

Taking care of some other family or personal obligation

On maternity or paternity leave

Involved in an industrial dispute

Prevented from working by bad weather

Who is counted as unemployed?

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.

Workers expecting to be recalled from layoff are counted as unemployed, whether or not they have engaged in a specific jobseeking activity. In all other cases, the individual must have been engaged in at least one active job search activity in the 4 weeks preceding the interview and be available for work (except for temporary illness).

Who is not in the labor force?

Persons not in the labor force are those who are not classified as employed or unemployed during the survey reference week.

Labor force measures are based on the civilian noninstitutional population 16 years old and over. (Excluded are persons under 16 years of age, all persons confined to institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, and persons on active duty in the Armed Forces.) The labor force is made up of the employed and the unemployed. The remainder—those who have no job and are not looking for one—are counted as "not in the labor force." Many who are not in the labor force are going to school or are retired. Family responsibilities keep others out of the labor force.

Visit the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey, Frequently Asked Questions at: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm

1. 
   How large is the labor force?
   
2. 
   How are seasonal fluctuations taken into account?
   
3. 
   
   
4. 
   What do the unemployment insurance figures measure?
   
5. 
   Is there a measure of underemployment?
   
6. 
   How are the unemployed counted in other countries?
   

The labor force is not a fixed number of people. It increases with the long-term growth of the population, it responds to economic forces and social trends, and its size changes with the seasons. On average in 2008, there were roughly 145 million employed and 9 million unemployed making up a labor force of 154 million persons. There were about 80 million persons not in the labor force.

The seasonal fluctuations in the number of employed and unemployed persons reflect not only the normal seasonal weather patterns that tend to be repeated year after year, but also the hiring (and layoff) patterns that accompany regular events such as the winter holiday season and the summer vacation season. These variations make it difficult to tell whether month-to-month changes in employment and unemployment are due to normal seasonal patterns or to changing economic conditions. To deal with such problems, a statistical technique called seasonal adjustment is used.

When a statistical series has been seasonally adjusted, the normal seasonal fluctuations are smoothed out and data for any month can be more meaningfully compared with data from any other month or with an annual average. Many time series that are based on monthly data are seasonally adjusted.

What do the unemployment insurance (UI) figures measure?

The UI figures are not produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Statistics on insured unemployment in the United States are collected as a by-product of UI programs. Workers who lose their jobs and are covered by these programs typically file claims ("initial claims") that serve as notice that they are beginning a period of unemployment. Claimants who qualify for benefits are counted in the insured unemployment figures (as "continued claims"). Data on UI claims are maintained by the Employment and Training Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor, and are available on the Internet at:

Because of the difficulty of developing an objective set of criteria which could be readily used in a monthly household survey, no official government statistics are available on the total number of persons who might be viewed as underemployed. Even if many or most could be identified, it would still be difficult to quantify the loss to the economy of such underemployment.

The sample survey system of counting the unemployed in the United States is also used by many foreign countries, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Economic Community. More recently, a number of East European nations have instituted labor force surveys as well. However, some countries collect their official statistics on the unemployed from employment office registrations or unemployment insurance records. Many nations, including the United States, use both labor force survey data and administrative statistics to analyze unemployment.

The International Labor Comparisons program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusts foreign unemployment rates to U.S. concepts. Comparative labor force statistics tables showing annual averages from 1960 onward, as well as monthly estimates of unemployment rates approximating U.S. concepts for selected countries, are available.

Do you know of any research that has been conducted without a QUESTION or OBJECTIVE?

How long would it take to conduct a seemingly simple research such as "finding the reasons for students tardiness?

What do we need to conduct such research? Do we need a questionnaire? Do we need to pilot test that questionnaire? Do we need to identify a sample? Do we need enough time to send and receive surveys if needed?

1. Do you know of any research that has been conducted without a QUESTION or OBJECTIVE?

I think that even if someone was researching solely for the sake of learning they are doing so because of an initial question or personal objective that spawned their interest. So to answer the question, no I have never heard of research that is as spontaneous and ill planned as beginning without even a general goal in mind.

2. How long would it take to conduct a seemingly simple research such as "finding the reasons for students tardiness?

Depending on the size of the study which was not given in the question this research could take hours for a small class like ours, months for the entire university, and a year or more if the study were to be conducted nation-wide. Large studies are followed by many variables.

3. What do we need to conduct such research? Do we need a questionnaire? Do we need to pilot test that questionnaire? Do we need to identify a sample? Do we need enough time to send and receive surveys if needed?