Retrospective Pretest for Professional Development Evaluation

Important Note: This course contains two types of activities that occur within an online Discussion Board. This week you complete a traditional, graded Discussion in which you must post and then respond to your peers. Next week (and for a number of weeks thereafter), you will participate in a Collaboration Lab, an ungraded activity in which you can work with your peers as you master statistical concepts and learn how to perform tests using SPSS.

Some learning is robust. Are you familiar with the phrase “just like riding a bike?” Once you master the skills necessary to balance on two wheels, your muscle memory locks this skill in for life. Even if years and years pass between jaunts on a bicycle, you do not have to relearn the necessary skills—you just jump on and go. Unfortunately, statistics is utterly unlike riding a bike in almost every conceivable way. If months and years pass between uses of statistical tests, often the knowledge begins to fade away. A different adage applied: “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

As you know, conducting research plays an important role in providing answers about natural and social phenomena. Researchers employ a variety of techniques when collecting and analyzing empirical data. In this course you will be introduced to more designs dealing specifically with quantitative analysis and reasoning, which you will examine in greater detail.

When choosing a research design, the design to use depends on your social problem, research problem, gap in the literature, and the research question you’re asking. For this Discussion, you will work a bit backwards as you will be given a design and then you provide an explanation of that design, when it would be appropriately used, the assumptions of the design, strengths/weaknesses, of the design, and an analysis of that research design. By looking at the design from both ends, you will learn this vital concept in more depth than if you had only approached it in one way.

TO PREPARE FOR THIS DISCUSSION:

For this week’s discussion your instructor will assign you a quantitative research design from the list below.

• Pretest/Posttest Control Group Design:
• Solomon Four-Group Design:
• Posttest Only Control Group Design:
• Times Series Experiment:
• Equivalent Materials Design:
• Nonequivalent Materials Design:
• Counterbalanced Designs:
• Separate Sample Pretest/Posttest Design:
• Multiple Time Series Design:
• Recurrent Institutional Cycle Design:
• Correlation & Causation:
• Retrospective Pretest:
• Panel Studies:
• Lazarsfeld Sixteenfold Table:
• Ex Post Facto Analysis:

For your initial discussion response, post by Day 3 a 3 to 5 paragraph analysis of your assigned quantitative research design. Your analysis should include:

• A brief description of the design and where it is most appropriately used
• The assumptions for the design
• The strengths and weaknesses of the design and the threats to internal and external validity
• Analyze the design given in terms of appropriateness, assumptions, strengths and weaknesses, and threats to internal and external validity.

Use a variety of the resources provided in the class as well as resources in the Walden University Library as well as reputable sources found on the internet. Make sure that you are using APA formatted citations to back up your statements and providing APA formatted references.