Challenges and Solutions in the Research Design - Essay Example

Identification of Research Design Challenges Introduction In this methodology section, I will focus my investigation on the identification of the research design challenges using the study conducted by the Reis Sally and McCoach, (2000). The analysis of this study and particularly its methodology section with respect to the challenges of its research design will help me form the basis upon which such challenges will be eliminated in my research. In particular, I will examine such key elements of the design as the sampling techniques applied, methods used in exclusion and inclusion of study subjects, the sample size used as well as the analytical tools applied in the examination of findings. In addition, I will evaluate the article in terms of whether it was purely qualitative, quantitative or a mixture and mainly focus on the merits and demerits of each design based on the relevancy and the outcomes of the research. Accordingly, the data collection methods and techniques applied in the study will be probed and unearth their contribution to the study. In addition, I will investigate the relevance of the research question applied in the study and not whether there were challenges and their relevance to the purpose of the study. In addition, I will focus on the possible ethical issues that were a limiting factor the study or encountered by the research. Finally, the investigation will collapse on the possible mitigating or intervention that effectively corrects the noted problems and challenges so that the current study can purely be free from such difficulties to guarantee satisfactory findings and the real interventions that effectively help reverse the Underachievement amongst the potential and high ability/talented Gifted Students. Body Challenges and Solutions in the Research Design Data Collection and Analysis The researcher did an error in their data collection as it was only focused on the review of the existing literature. They only applied the secondary data collection method and thus left out the primary data. The secondary data thus could not give the true position of the identification of the gifted students that had posed a challenge for the past two decades. The researchers ought to have combined both the secondary and primary data collection to incorporate the current changes and upcoming trends in dealing with the gifted student’s underachievement. Therefore, the study was never current as it was premised on the unworking previous studies that purely focused on the remediation of the problem and silent on the development of the strengths and talents attached to the gifted students. The researcher did not deeply employ the effective content analysis in their review. With secondary qualitative research method, there was an inevitable need for a satisfactory content analysis. The content analysis would have presented the authors with an opportunity to infer via objectives that systematically collapse into recognition of core problems associated with the Underachievement in Gifted Students. The authors never appreciated the need to classify and categorize the information so as to infer about the antecedents of the literature available, describe and design interference about the key elements of the literature that would have otherwise emptied into making justifiable interferences about the impacts of such reviewed literature on the reversal of Underachievement amongst the Gifted and Talented high ability Special Needs students. On the hand, the analysis of the data from the reviewed literature flawed (Reis & McCoach, 2000). The analysis from the various literature only based on the remediation of the underachieving and totally silent on developing the strength and talents noted amongst the gifted students. Therefore, the researchers also focused on the use of discrepancy in performance amongst these students. Such a strategy massively led to establishing interventions that had fewer impacts on the reversal of the Underachievement due to the daunting problem of cause-intervention mismatch. The researcher needed to know that qualitative research analysis is a continuous process where data analysis instigates immediately as data gathering advances based on an interactive framework for collection and analysis. Therefore, such a framework could have informed that authors of the need to eliminate unwanted literature that were not satisfactory but this was never evident. There was a mix up as the authors applied the quantitative data analysis framework where data analysis only begins upon the completion of data gathering and cleaning. Such mix up could be attributed to the presence of extraneous variables the skewed the results in the study. In addition, the researcher did not sufficiently applied the forth and backward movement principle between the data collection and analysis sections to incorporates a range of new avenues of inquiries to develop as data gathering progressed. The constant comparative method that was applied in the analysis of data in this study did not dig deep to uncover the roots causes of difficulties in identifying the underachievement amongst the students. The constant analysis did not provide effective opportunity to determine the number of students with special needs underachieving alongside those special needs students that possess hidden talents and abilities. In addition, the common analytical framework for identifying underachieving student noted in the literature review is through examination of a significant discrepancy between ability and individual standardized achievement test scores. However, the analysis is a challenging based on the variation amongst countries with respect to duration of achievement test scores with some designing a benchmark of up to two years beneath grade level in a minimum of one subject for effective identification of the student learning disabled (Reis & McCoach, 2000). However, such an analysis is insufficient as the probability of identifying a growing talented student as a learning disabled based on achievement test scores mechanism proves minuscule. In addition application of similar identification method in recognizing gifted underachievers further proves unsatisfactory. Therefore, such analysis fails to meet the purpose of the study that is primarily focused on the identification of gifted students and thus no effective intervention can be proposed. Existence of Extraneous Variable The presence of the extraneous variables inherited from the previous studies affected the outcomes of the current study as the authors only gathered the previously documented literature and reviewed without the need to exclude the extraneous variables. The presence of such extraneous variable affects the findings by affecting both independent and dependent variable. Furthermore, they lead to skewed findings since some participants might have been familiarized with the treatment and hence give answers based on the previous experience. The OLS parameters are thus biased with the inflated standard errors. Such findings or statistics can therefore not be used in generalizing the population. The result is that researchers find it hard to give a satisfactory recommendation that lead to a reversed underachievement problem. It is therefore, prudent that before any review is conducted by secondary data collection method, the research ensure that extraneous variables that result into autocorrelation are eliminated in advance to remain purely with variables relevant to the study of question. Such a strategy was significant in this study since there is a range of factors that limited the proper identification of the Gifted and Talented Underachieving Students. The presence of such prejudice and misconception amongst the educators such as baseless tagging of Students as Underachievers without proactive and effective assessment to determine the root cause of underachieving despite high ability are some of the extraneous variables amongst the participants that ought to have been sieved. The literature accessible presents Gifted underachieving students as suffering from learning disabilities, hidden features that are only noticeable through deep assessment but classroom teachers find it difficult to assess them and hence would rush to giving answers that mismatch the intervention. Such cause-intervention mismatch results from extraneous variable left amongst the previous studies subjects and hence must be removed for any effective review as such mismatch have only escalated the underachievement amongst these Gifted Underachievers. Purely Qualitative The authors only employed purely exploratory qualitative methods to review the literature and make a conclusion about the identification of gifted students. Even though, such a review of the literature required a qualitative method, a combined a qualitative and qualitative approach would be more precise. Indeed most of the current studies have appreciated the need to use both qualitative and quantitative research methods in an effective integrative manner to enhance evaluation of available literature as the shortcomings of one type of data is offset by the strengths of the other. Such a combined methods would have culminated into improved understanding through incorporation of a number of knowing. An effective planning on how to gather both qualitative data and qualitative data leads to inference and counter reference of both sets of data thus ensuring unquestionable data available for analysis. In this case, the available literature shows that the number of the underachieving students have remained unknown for a number of years, therefore, it would have been prudent for authors to first use the quantitative approach to determining the number of Underachieving Gifted Students (Reis & McCoach, 2000). Such a strategy would have provided sufficient information on the true position of the problem and then apply qualitative research to propose effective intervention that focus on the developing the strengths and talents of this underprivileged target group. Sampling and Sample Size There was a problem with the research design with respect to the sample size of the subjects. Indeed, the secondary research conducted by the authors inherited such problems from a number of the researchers that had previously flopped on the need to use large sample size. The study thus did not benefit from the merits of large sample size such as minimization of the sampling error. In addition, the qualitative research only applied the non-probabilistic sampling techniques such as purposeful in determining the types of literature to review. Such a non-probabilistic sampling techniques may have left out some literatures that are more significant than the ones utilized hence minimizing the knowledge bases besides facilitating biasedness. In such a case, the findings may never primarily reflect the position of this devastating phenomenon and hence failure to design effective interventions to reverse the problem of underachievement amongst the Gifted Students. Sampling techniques must, therefore, be scientifically and systematically approved to establish satisfactory samples applicable to qualitative and mixed-methods sound that were so much relevant to this study. In this case, therefore, utilization of mixed methods would never be feasible as quantitative methods are only feasible with probabilistic sampling techniques. Despite the fact that qualitative methods involves only the need to include information-rich subjects through theoretical and purposeful sampling techniques, that presents in-depth data on the topic of focus, the methods are silent on the determination such information-rich documents or subjects as compared to probabilistic techniques. In addition, the sample sizes in qualitative researchers are usually smaller and thus incorporating large quantitative sample size will balance such a limiting feature of purposeful qualitative sampling leading to satisfactory sample size. The determination of adequate sample size in qualitative research is wrongly left at the discretion of the principle of theoretical saturation where additional concepts from reviewing subsequent information have no impact on the current phenomenon being studied. Such a principle may not be effective in ensuring the adequate sample size for purely qualitative research as it will depend on the discretion of the researcher to put a ceiling on the review thus promoting biasedness. In addition, saturation suffers a setback due to the impossibility of advance definition of the subjects. Ethical Issues Encountered The chief ethical issues faced by the researchers is to come up with an inclusive framework that could not attract criticism from a range of entities such as practitioners, clinicians, and researchers. The course of defining underachievement, recognizing underachieving gifted students and illustrating the factors for underachievement has increasingly attracted controversies. The authors thus faced a daunting challenge in harmonizing a number of literature that could design a conventional framework for defining, identifying and describing underachievement amongst the gifted students. The authors, therefore, had to override such controversies and embrace confident and self-efficacy as there was an urgent need to determine the true position of underachievement amongst such focus group. It was challenging since the authors had to use other author’s works as stepping stone and such approaches had to be given credit despite the controversy noted. In addition, there was a need to seek consent from the previous authors before incorporating their works into the current study and that means that each idea stood to account despite the review and subsequent establishment of merits and demerits of particular article. Also, topics circumventing special needs population attract a number of ethical consideration. The authors had to conduct their review guided by the laws of special needs population and hence had to uphold equity between special needs and privileged individuals. The special needs must always feel human just like other cohorts, and, therefore, discriminatory and segregative studies could face a number of rejections. Therefore, the researchers faced such ethical issues through their secondary data gathering to data cleaning to data analysis and presentation. Other ethical issues that the authors encountered the need to seek permission from the relevant authorities before conducting the reviews of their documents and even some institutions that control the researchers as the approval from particular Boards. Conclusion In conclusion, there is a need for current researchers to appreciate the benefits attached to mixed research designs by effectively combining both qualitative and quantitative research methods in a particular study. In addition, the exploratory researchers work best when secondary and primary data collection methods are blended as the demerits of a particular approach is the balance with the merits of another. In the current reviewed article by Sally and McCoach (2000), the stated problems could have been eliminated by using mixed research methods. For example, the study reveals that the number of special needs underachieving student remains unknown because it was purely executed on the basis of qualitative research and hence incorporating quantitative methods could have uprooted such a challenge. Accordingly, the study reveals a mismatch between causes of Underachievement and the proposed intervention because each cause requires a particular intervention that could either purely be quantitative or qualitative or a mixture of both, further stressing the need for a mixed research design. Moreover, the secondary review approaches that the researchers applied suffered serious setbacks as it inherited flaws in the previous researchers such as the presence of a number of extraneous variables, smaller sample size, and even ineffective sampling techniques. The researchers, therefore, need to integrate quantitative sampling techniques and qualitative sampling techniques such as random sampling and purposeful respectively to net in unbiased subjects for the satisfactory study outcomes. Finally, the constant comparative analytical tool may not independently work in a mixed study as it only focused on remediation of the problem and not developing the talents and strengths. Thus, there is need to analyze the findings in terms of quantitative and qualitative developing of talents and strengths amongst the special needs gifted students. Thus, my research design will sufficiently employ the solution suggested from this discussion to eliminate the unnecessary challenges that may affect my study. References Bergman, M. M. (2008). Chapter 1: The straw men of the qualitative-quantitative divide and their influence on mixed methods research. Bergman, M. M. (2008). Chapter 5: Methodological issues in conducting mixed methods research designs. Bergman, M. M. (2008). Why do research integrate/combine/mesh/blend/mix/merge/fuse quantitative and qualitative research. Reis, S., & McCoach, D. B. (2000). The underachievement of gifted students: What do we know and where do we go? Gifted Child Quarterly. Read More