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| Why Do Research On Higher Education? | |
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| Many Questions, Many Options | |
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| Our Philosophy of Research | |
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| Design How This Book is Organized | |
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| What Are Your Questions? | |
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| Why Are Research Questions So Important? | |
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| Getting Specific | |
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| Building on the Work of Others Correlation versus Causation | |
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| The Wheel of Science | |
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| What Groups Do You Want to Study? | |
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| Specifying the Target Population | |
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| Where Should you Conduct the Study Selecting | |
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| Your Sample More Than One Type of Respondent Nonresponse Bias | |
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| What Predictors Do You Want to Study? | |
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| Types of Predictors | |
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| The Important Role of Variation | |
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| Other Reasons for Selecting Predictors | |
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| The Integrity of Your Treatment | |
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| Choosing Which Predictors to Study | |
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| Compared to What? | |
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| Why Do You Need a Comparison Group? | |
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| Randomized Control Groups: The Best Comparisons | |
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| Requiring Informed Consent | |
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| Volunteer Bias Comparison Groups without Random | |
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| Assignment Retrospective Case-control Studies | |
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| Design Effects Can Swamp Treatment Effects | |
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| What Are Your Outcomes? | |
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| Different Kinds of Outcomes | |
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| Will You Measure Status or Development | |
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| Short-term versus Long-term Effects Are Your Measures Valid? | |
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| How Can You Improve Your Measures? | |
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| What is Measurement Error? | |
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| Reliability and Measurement | |
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| Error Six Strategies for Improving Measurement Quality | |
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| Looking at Measurement Quality | |
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| How Many People Should You Study? | |
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| Why Is Sample Size So Important? | |
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| What Size Effect Do You Want to Detect? | |
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| What Type of Analysis Will You Use? | |
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| Instruments Precision and Sample Size | |
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| What If Students Drop Out? | |
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| Should You Try It out on a Small Scale? | |
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| The Advantages of Pilot Studies | |
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| Piloting Instruments Relational Studies | |
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| Informal Small-scale Experiments | |
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| Generalizing From a Small Study | |
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| Where Should You Go From Here? | |
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| Getting Started Lessons | |
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| From Our Seminar Decisions | |
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| You Must Make Planning a Longer-term Research Program | |
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| Reference | |
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| Index | |