WGU C224 Research Foundations Study Guide 1. Deductive Reasoning : Drawing conclusions. Logical deductive process working down - going from big to small. ex. All books sold at that store are new, and all the books I bought came from that store. Therefore, all the books I own are new. 2. Inductive Reasoning : Starts specific. Accepting conclusions. Going from small to big. Ex. The water at the beach has been about 75 degrees anytime I visit in July. Today is July 15th, so I expect the water will be about 75 degrees when I go to the beach tomorrow. 3. Epistemology : the overall pursuit of knowledge, not a specific knowledge con- tention. The study of knowledge itself. 4. Rule of Parsimony : Simple and concise, succinct 5. Criterion of Falsifiability : if it can't be rejected, then its going in the right direction 6. The Principle of Evidence : researchers conduct research to acquire evidence that may support a theory and/or hypothesis. Researchers do not attempt to prove what is true. 7. Ontology : Inherent understanding. Nature of reality/truth 8. Experimental Research : Quantitative. Random assignment - not random selec- tion. 9. Quantitation Research Methods : Experimental and Non-Experimental 10. Non-Experimental Research Methods : Correlation and Casual Comparative 11. Correlation research method : Quantitative. A process to collect data to deter - mine if a relationship exists between two or more quantitative variables, and to what degree. 12. Correlation Coefficient : Strength and direction of a relationship between two variables. range of +1 to -1 13. Positive Correlation : r=+1 (points follow along a line) 14. Negative Correlation : r=-1 (no correlation is a 0 and looks like a gun shot all over) 15. Variables : a condition or characteristic that can take on different values or categories (such as age, GPA, gender, etc.) 16. Quantitative Variable : a variable that varies in degree or amount of a phenom- enon (ex. Temperature, weight, GPA, reading performance, etc.) 17. Categorical Variables : a variable that is made up of different types of categories of a phenomenon (gender, ethnicity, type of school, teaching method, religion, social class) 18. Descriptive Statistics : Goal is to describe, summarize, or make sense of a particular set of data. 19. Inferential Statistics : where researchers use the laws of probability to make inferences about populations based on sample data. In the branch of inferential statistics known as estimation, researchers want to estimate the characteristics
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