This paper examines how higher education researchers approach writing the rationale and justification for their work published in journal articles. A common way for establishing this justification is through claiming a gap, but the problem is that it is often hard to find a research gap, and if it is included, there is too often no explanation for…

Background: Understanding knowledge utilisation in policymaking is a core task for the social and political sciences. However, limitations and biases abound in commonplace approaches to measuring such use. Consequently, we have little systematic evidence of the extent to which knowledge sources are used in policy decisions. Aims and objectives:…

Experimental designs in the social sciences have received increasing attention due to their power to produce causal inferences. Nevertheless, experimental research faces limitations, including limited external validity and unrealistic treatments. We propose combining qualitative fieldwork and experimental design iteratively--moving back-and-forth…

This paper explores using data mining in English teaching assessment in higher education within the 'Internet + Education' era. Traditional assessment methods struggle to meet modern teaching needs. By collecting diverse data like student performance and learning behavior, and employing data mining, a comprehensive assessment model is built. This…

The impersonal nature of high-enrollment science courses makes it difficult to build student-instructor relationships, which can negatively impact student learning and engagement, especially for members of marginalized groups. In this study, we explored whether an instructor collecting and sharing aggregated student demographics could positively…

Educational data mining has allowed for large improvements in educational outcomes and understanding of educational processes. However, there remains a constant tension between educational data mining advances and protecting student privacy while using educational datasets. Publicly available datasets have facilitated numerous research projects…

Balancing coverage of qualitative, quantitative and combined methods, "Educational Research" offers a truly inclusive and integrated overview of the processes involved in planning, conducting and evaluating research. It first examines the general steps in the research process and then details the procedures for conducting specific types…

The study investigated school-to-family communication efforts to improve daily attendance among economically disadvantaged students at the R Elementary School (pseudonym). Research questions during this study included to what extent does a 6-week school-to-family communication initiative impact student attendance rates and what are the existing…

Institutional researchers use skills from their diverse backgrounds to collect, analyze and report data about their institutions to stakeholders representing various interests and levels of data literacy. However, there is little research into how these professionals process data and none into what aspects are important to institutional…

This article analyzes whether response patterns in surveys differ between the general population, regular immigrants, and recent refugees. Analyses show that the address quality of refugees contacted in the first wave of a panel study is worse than that of the general population, but of a similar quality to that of other recent immigrants. Once…

Exploratory data analysis (EDA), data visualization, and visual analytics are essential for understanding and analyzing complex datasets. In this project, we explored these techniques and their applications in data analytics. The case discusses Tableau, a powerful data visualization tool, and Google BigQuery, a cloud-based data warehouse that…

This guide by DaSy, NCPMI, and ECTA provides cross-sector teams at the state, territory, tribal, and local levels with strategies for collecting and using data across the mixed delivery system of early care and education programs. Collecting and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data can help inform teams to develop policy and practices that…

Jokes, cartoons, songs, videos, and quotes can be useful ways to engage students in discussion and learning key concepts about polling.

In this chapter, we draw on the data collected during our evaluations of six TAACCCT grants to describe the challenges, successes, and transformative effect of adopting a developmental evaluation approach for community college programs.

Background: During systematic reviews, "data abstraction" refers to the process of collecting data from reports of studies. The data abstractors' level of experience may affect the accuracy of data abstracted. Using data from a randomized crossover trial in which different data abstraction approaches were compared, we examined the…