If you use an old bathroom scale to weigh yourself and step on and off it a few times, you’ll probably get different readings, even within seconds. These measurements of your weight (more correctly, your mass, but I’ll stay with weight) vary randomly. But they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, old bathroom scales produce weights that are not …
Lessons from an old bathroom scale on measurement reliability Read More »
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? In a previous post, I spoke about what a significant result means and doesn’t mean. A significant result may mean very little, not necessarily anything to inspire you to throw a party or make a supportive parent proud. What it doesn’t tell …
Effect size: How strong are your statistical results, even your significant ones? Read More »
If you’re involved in research, you’ve likely come across the notation ‘p < .05’ in journal articles or elsewhere, or you’re using this notation in your own writing to indicate a statistically significant result. It is used pretty much everywhere, almost as a mantra across research studies. But do you know what p < …
Sometimes, despite all your efforts, the sample size of your quantitative study turns out to be smaller than you planned. Maybe you received a low response rate to your online survey, your database search for patient records returned many unusable or missing records, or you found yourself in another scenario with a similar outcome. And …
In our next webinar on Thursday 5th October @ 7 pm (GMT + 2:00), Professor Linda Bloomberg and I will be discussing analysing your qualitative and quantitative data. In this post, I discuss the step before the analysis of quantitative data. This is where you inspect and clean the errors in your data before starting …
Do trailers of movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer have anything in common with the abstract of your dissertation? With all the current hype around the two record-breaking movies, you may well have watched their trailers. If so, did either of these trailers entice you to buy a ticket to see the movie? Maybe, maybe …
I’ve selected 10 rules from the APA 7th edition manual you might not know. Some of these may apply to your document. Only abbreviate a term if you use the abbreviation at least three times in the paper (APA 6.24). When presenting a number with a decimal point, do not put a zero before the …
How well do you know the APA 7th edition formatting rules? Read More »
Show academic integrity Even if you feel strongly about your claim, be fair. Don’t pick a side and present a biased argument. Rather, explain the main claims or debates and contrast the strengths of yours against the weaknesses of the other(s). Then, the merits of your claim will emerge and the argument for your research will …
If you were planning to go on one of the most important journeys of your life, you’d most likely think it through carefully beforehand. You might consider the objectives of your trip and ask key questions so that you could meet these objectives. You would likely identify the main problem you faced and find a …
Writing the Introduction Chapter of Your Thesis or Dissertation Read More »
Usually, things come together in the end. But in a dissertation, they need to come together far sooner. Already, in your introduction chapter, you need to piece everything together. Albeit at a high level, you need to establish a balance between the background to the research problem and its foreground and have a balanced …