Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has profoundly reshaped how graduate students conceptualise, design and conduct academic research in higher education. While current metrics predominantly focus on technology acceptance and usage patterns, they often neglect the diverse cognitive engagements in graduate students' integration of GenAI…

The term "creative" is commonly used in everyday language and in academic discourse to discuss the nature of artistic and innovative productions. This usage inherently implies the existence of a variable of creativity that allows different creative works to be compared. The standard definition of creativity asserts that a production must…

This academic article provides the essential steps for designing an effective English questionnaire in social science research, with a focus on ensuring clarity, cultural sensitivity and ethical integrity. Developed from key insights from related studies, it outlines potential practice in questionnaire design, item development and the importance…

This guide offers a comprehensive handbook to scientific research methodology and experimental design, specifically for novice MA and PhD researchers in Education and Language Learning (TESOL/TEFL). It establishes scientific research as a systematic, objective inquiry focused on identifying cause-and-effect relationships through empirical data.…

By design, randomized experiments (XPs) rule out bias from confounded selection of participants into conditions. Quasi-experiments (QEs) are often considered second-best because they do not share this benefit. However, when results from XPs are used to generalize causal impacts, the benefit from unconfounded selection into conditions may be offset…

An increased focus on transparency and replication in science has stimulated reform in research practices and dissemination. As a result, the research culture is changing: the use of preregistration is on the rise, access to data and materials is increasing, and large-scale replication studies are more common. In this article, I discuss two…

The use of singular methodologies has dominated emotional and behavioral disorder (EBD) intervention research, and by extension, the field has not deployed mixed-methods research (MMR). The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of MMR and demonstrate its utility for conducting EBD intervention research. The basic tenants and design…

Researchers strategically assess youth mental health by soliciting reports from multiple informants. Typically, these informants (e.g., parents, teachers, youth themselves) vary in the social contexts where they observe youth. Decades of research reveal that the most common data conditions produced with this approach consist of discrepancies…

With the research reported here, we specifically aim to develop application products of scientific work independence instruments through science integrated learning (SIL) for various education levels (elementary schools, junior high schools, senior high schools, and universities). The SIL model was applied in learning to determine specific…

Cognitive interviewing (CI) is a method to identify sources of confusion in assessment items and to assess validity evidence on the basis of content and response processes. We introduce readers to CI and describe a process for conducting such interviews and analyzing the results. Recommendations for best practice are provided.

I am currently conducting research for a PhD Public Health. As a result of my previous experience researching my Master's degree thesis, and what I have learned so far about designing and validating a risk-perception instrument, I have gained some insight related to know-how and possible pitfalls that can occur when undertaking research. These…

Although International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement-pioneered international large-scale assessment (ILSA) of education is now a well-established science, non-practitioners and many users often substantially misunderstand how large-scale assessments are conducted, what questions and challenges they are designed to…

In this commentary, the author focuses on the use of design elements for increasing the severity of causal mediation tests. The estimation of causal mediation effects from observational data rests on rather stringent assumptions. In introducing and exemplifying ratio-of-mediator-probability weighting (RMPW), Hong and Nomi (henceforth HN) make…

Evaluation is a key component to learning about the effectiveness of a program. This article provides descriptive statistics of the newly developed National 4-H Common Measures (science, healthy living, citizenship, and youth development) based on data from 721 California 4-H youth. The measures were evaluated for their reliability and validity of…

In mixed methods research (MMR), integrating the quantitative and the qualitative components of a study is assumed to result in additional knowledge (or "yield"). This narrative review examines the extent to which MMR is used in the field of childhood trauma and provides directions for improving mixed methods studies in this field. A…