Week 4 Discussion

Part 1 will be about research design.  Before putting together any study it is important to familiarize oneself with prior research.  This helps to ground everything and to improve the overall research.   Part 2 is based on the SPSS book and continues with design in relation to hypotheses and variables.  Answer both 1 and 2:

1. Explain why it is important to do a literature review before doing a study. How does this help you to put together a better study? Why do all academic journals require a literature review to be included in empirical studies? Provide 2 examples of sources that you believe to be credible. Why do you believe these sources are credible?

2. SPSS is about quantification. Create a hypothesis for a quantitative study that you would be interested in doing. What are the variables in the hypothesis? How would you measure the variables (ex: number of hours students study each week, earned income, time spent on social media, etc.)? What would you expect to find from a study such as this and why is it important? 

Week 4 Discussion Answer

It is important to do a literature review before doing a study because doing so will provide the researcher with the necessary information about his research topic. A literature review will inform the researcher about what has been done, how experiments and studies were carried out, what the limitations are, and what could be replicated and improved. One important thing to remember when doing a literature review is to always look for credible sources. Examples of these are articles found in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Biomedical Sciences and Health Science Journal.