General Information

At the office, I check my email every half hour when I am physically present, so this is usually a good avenue of exchange.  If I am in the office, I will answer the phone (404-651-3827).  Otherwise, my voice-mail says that you need to send me an email or call me at home since I never check my voice-mail messages.

Course Description

DSc 8820. Experimental Research Design. (3) Prerequisite: DSc 8080. This course examines epistemologies and methods that lie at the heart of experimental research. It covers validation of experimental instruments, internal and external validity, and statistical conclusion validity derived through the family of ANOVA techniques, regression, and structural equation modeling. Students will learn how to properly design an experiment and how to handle problems that come up in actually conducting experiments.

Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, the participant will be able to: 

·         to understand the scientific method as a means to knowing or as a tool to help create knowledge 

·         to define in your own words terms like science, experiment, theory, variables, constructs, controls, randomization, operationalization, empiricism, measurement, and manipulation

·         to describe various methods for collecting data

·         to present the context for ethical discussion of conducting science

·         to identify how one establishes causality

·         to describe threats to validity and how to deal with them

·         to understand the bases for experimental designs

·         to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of random sampling and random assignment

·         to articulate concepts, both philosophical and analytical, of various statistical models in experimental design 

·         to explain in your own words the rationale and logic underlying the various parametric statistical tests

·         to describe the four types of data and to explain the relationship between data type and statistical tests

·         to understand the key assumptions underlying the valid use of various ANOVA models

·         to determine if the various ANOVA assumptions are met

·         to utilize reliability coefficients

·         to propose and defend statistical ANOVA models for various classical designs

·         to compare and contrast ANOVA/regression techniques with LISREL and PLS

·         to implement experimental designs which exhibit the various validities necessary for efficient and effective research

Course Resources

Resource #1: Your Classmates

Labs and projects will be team-executed in groups of three (3) or twp (2) persons.

Your groups should function as a self-managed team and adopt the rules and practices of this organizational work and task structure.  Participation should be relatively equal among the group members, with each member both monitoring one's own level of participation and that of the other members of the group.  Constant, frequent, and open communications among the group members will ensure that the group members feel that all are participating equally, each utilizing his/her own strengths to the fullest.  

Self-managed teams with three or more members are free to make decisions about group processes, including who will continue to be members of the team.  If the majority of the team decides, for whatever reason, to reconstitute the group, then this change will go into effect immediately.  Please inform the instructor, in writing, that this decision has been made and the reasons for it.  Include this document as well in the deliverables for the assignment/project.

All participants bear the responsibility for their performance in self-managed teams.  If a team member has been asked to withdraw from a team, this person may, with the instructor's permission and that of another team, join the efforts of the other team.  If it is too late to do so, then for this assignment/project and only this assignment/project, the participant may complete it on his/her own.

Consistent with the principles and operations of self-managed teams, peer appraisals are, presumably, ongoing.  These appraisals will become formal in one, and only one circumstance.  If the group members feel that participation has not been even, but that this uneven participation was not sufficiently disruptive to change the constitution of the team, then please send, under separate cover and under your own signature, your evaluation of the percentage participation of each group member.  Such personalized peer appraisals will become part of the evaluation of the individual class participation score.  Also, to be above board about this with your team, indicate to them that you have turned in this peer appraisal.  You are not required to reveal your individual assessments; only that your have turned in such an appraisal.

If there is no communication to the contrary to the instructor, the assumption will be that all members contributed equally.

               [Schedule]   

Resource #2: Software

The course statistics software is SPSS.  A CD with SPSS on it will be made available to you along with an ID diskette.  This software can be loaded on your home and/or office PC.  You will need to reimburse the instructor $6 for this software.

You will also need to download the latest shareware version of Winzip in order to decompress some of the files that are located on the Web page server located at the Georgia State University CIS Department.

Readings and topic/discussion/lecture overheads are located on the server and downloadable via the schedule and/or readings or cases citation link below. 

Note: If zipped, the readings are in *.pdf [portable document files], *.rtf (Rich Text Format), or .doc (Word) format (Word 2000).  Topic/discussion/lecture notes overheads are in *.pdf (Portable Document Format) format. All modern word processors can read *.rtf files. 

You will need Adobe's Acrobat Reader to view and print the Adobe *.pdfs. If you do not have this reader, download it here.  In the download.com search box, type the word "Acrobat."  Find the 32 bit version of the latest Acrobat.  It should be compatible with the operating system of PC you are working on (e.g., Windows '98).

Resource #3: Textbook and Other Books

Your textbook is:

Trochim, William, The Research Methods Knowledge Base, atomicdogpublishing.com, Cincinatti, OH USA, 2000.

This is a reasonably good textbook, which has a number of online animations and figures that will help you understand research design and experimental design.  Online Price: $19.95;  Paperback & Online Price: $44.95.

Course Registration ID: 2214275603070

Click here for procedure for buying Trochim textbook.

If you have any problems, contact the publisher at: support@atomicdogpub.com or Matt Walker,Sales Consultant at 1-800-310-5661 Ext. 18

There are three other books assigned, two of which you will need to purchase.  Shadish is the most critical of these.  [Shadish et al. is based on Cook and Campbell (described below) and is the best, and, probably hardest book on validation].  

Kuhn is the classic book on philosophy of science.  We will not be reading the entire Shadish et al. book, but the Kuhn book is relatively short and needs to be read in its entirety.  

The Stone book is for reference purposes, and is available in pdf (granted by special permission from the publisher upon my request).

The citations and further info are as follows.........

               [Schedule]   

Resource #4: Other Materials and Links

Grading

Grading Component

Type

Score

Project

Group

50%

Discussion Leadership

Individual

25%

Class Participation

Individual

25%

Total

-

100%

Symbol

 Meaning

OK or good

This is the idea; you are on point.

vague

The writing is too general or ambiguous. It begins and ends with phrases like "higher productivity" and "achieved cost savings" without providing the case details to back up this assertion.

irr

Irrelevant. This issue is not germane to the question or the answer you are developing.

???

The passage marked is not easy to interpret. Your meaning is not clear.

proof

In order to be accepted and believed by the reader/manager, the marked passage needs further evidence or proof. In the context of this course, proof is considered to be details from topic discussions, readings, cases, and other authoritative sources that can be cited. Lifting simple narrative from the case and reinserting it in your case brief, for example, is not considered to be proof. Interpretive use of facts, figures, quotations from the case is considered to be proof.

logic

There is a flaw in logic in the marked passage. There is a lack of clear flow between the thesis or main assertion in the paragraph and the details that are provided by the author to prove the point.

sp

Spelling error

X

Careless error; often a typographical error, but, in any case, it should not have occurred with careful proofreading.

K

Awkward phrasing. The sentence or phrase needs to be rephrased for greater clarity.

ww

Wrong word. Choose another word. This one is not meaningful in this context or means something different than you want to convey.

lc

Calls for lower case, not upper case (i.e., no capitalizing).

uc

Calls for upper case, not lower case (i.e., needs to be capitalized).

/

Delete this section, word, phrase, sentence or punctuation mark.

^</

Insert the word or phrase that appears into this place in the text

run-on

Run-on sentence. Sentences that run-on do not have proper punctuation at the end of the sentence they continue into the next subject and verb without properly pausing via a punctuation mark like a period or colon.

subj-verb

The subject and verb do not agree in number.

grammar

There is a serious grammatical problem with the sentence and, as it stands, it cannot be understood as an English sentence.

para

There needs to be a new indented paragraph at this point.

Participant Classwork