As a consumer of research reports, the most important things for me in the methods and results section of a high-quality quantitative research report are identifying the type of the quantitative research design, making sure the measures used to gather the data are good quality, and understanding the statistics.
According to the knowledge gained in this unit, I found an important thing for better understanding a research report from each chapter. The first one is to address the quantitative research design of the study. It is the foundation of understanding the analysis in the study. Because the data collection and the results analysis will correspond to the research design, it is crucial to make sure the direction is right before reading further to meet the following sections.
The second one is to determine whether the instruments are high quality. Before reading the chapter seven, I had no idea about the reliability and validity of the scores from the instruments. I just thought the scores were definitely reliable. The author presented a bathroom scale example to illustrate that the numbers obtained from the instruments could be inaccurate or unreliable. Then I realized that I had not considered the reliability and validity of the scores before because all the studies I had read were journal articles. They were all peer-reviewed and were reliable sources. The explanations of the Reliable and Valid have raised my awareness of the scores gathered from the instruments. Given that one day I may have a chance to conduct my study, the data and scores acting as the most important element have to be correct, accurate, and reliable.
The last one is understanding the statistics in the study. Basically, I used to quickly review the statistics in the result and method section because I did not understand the meaning of the symbols and numbers. Although I am still not very familiar with the definitions of some measures, such as the standard deviation and the effect size, I have gained a general framework of all the statistics, measures, and how they relate to each other, such as statistically significant and nonsignificant result. It is significant for me to analyze the statistics and measures by myself rather than just reading the report presented by the researcher. Furthermore, analyzing the statistics by myself is greatly helpful to build the sense of critical thinking during reading the articles in the future.
My question is: How do you evaluate the results of a quantitative study when the information of the statistics or instruments is not clear enough?
Reference
Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.