“(Ab)use of statistics in doing second language research” is a project aims to (re)evaluate quantitative analyses employed in doing second language research in the Sudan. It is an in-depth and extensive project that may finish in 2018. The corpus explored consists of forty-eight PhD/MA theses and dissertations and research articles in the period from 1990 to 2015.
You may inadvertently make a mistake in interpreting a thesis and its use of statistics, and so feedback from the author could help you if the author is contactable.
Please do field work and literature review on quantitative research. Let data from both the research tools Interact to get generic benchmarks. Make an audit framework and then use this framework to evaluate the research work. You may like to see my postings on benchmarking. There is also one book on 'Benchmarking in TESOL'. I hope it helps!
You may inadvertently make a mistake in interpreting a thesis and its use of statistics, and so feedback from the author could help you if the author is contactable.
Dear Arif,
Thank you a lot. I'll see them. Your advice is significant!
Dear Abdunasir,
If you will quote those works and thus you'll have the complete information of those works in your References, then I think it's not necessary to inform the writers. Otherwise, they should know that their works have been used in your project!
Dear Abdunasir Sideeg et all,
I also think that if you have no acess to data it could be dificult to make wise comments. On the other hand if you are not into the subject it could be also difficult to do any precise commnents.
Statistics should be a tool that suport the analysis we are doing
Have a nice day
Helena.
Is it possible to analyze theses anonymously? For example, thesis 1, thesis 2
It would not be necessary to inform them, unless you have some doubt if you understood them correctly
Please go ahead and if you have issues, please let us know. Very interesting project!
Networking is an important part of research. Researchers can assist to help you interpret their research and you benefit from then network you create.
I found it helpful to reach out to some researchers regarding their work especially if their work was particularly deep and rich in relation to my dissertation topic. Give yourself time to connect and be open to discovery. It is an exciting opportunity to learn.
Regards,
Gloria Bravo-Gutiérrez
As a pre-reader, I would recommend the pdf of "How to lie with statistics" by Darrell Huff.
http://www.horace.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/How-to-Lie-With-Statistics-1954-Huff.pdf
Ian, your're absolutely right. I read the book some years ago. I have it as PDF. It's quite interesting. Thank you a lot.
I think Gary Smith's "Standard deviations: flawed assumptions, tortured data, and other ways to lie with statistics" could also be recommended. I got it online a few days ago.
Yes, it is better to do so. Moreover, in order to make sure the quality of the questionnaires is good, I suggest you have someone (like your peer or classmates) to pre-test the questionnaires.
Hi Tsai.
Thank you for both suggestions.
But actually no questionnaire will be used in this project.
The information about the author, title, and contents of any PhD dissertation and MA thesis are public domain. Therefore, you really do not need to inform anyone who is included in your study. However, I agree with some of the responses here which say that you may need to inform some of the authors on how you interpret their work to give them a chance to respond and defend their work.
yes proper citation is required. if you criticize the specific paper then more information is required.
Yes, you have to make the citation if your research is related to their work. Moreover, when you submit your paper to journal, the reviewer will ask you to describe the information clearly.
As others have correctly suggested above, I would suggest you kind of follow the criteria of Meta-analysis or systematic reviews for inclusion/exclusion of study samples etc..... Good luck.
Very ethical question.
Now my question to you, how are you going to use their theses/ papers? The answer depends on your level of activities with the papers, for example
I hope this will help you.
Good luck.
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