The Center for Research Support provides assistance
at any or all steps in the research process. Assistance
ranges from simple advice to total involvement in the
process. In the statistical process, the research consultant
tries to ensure that clients are fully aware of what
is being done so that the process becomes educational
as well as useful.
Assistance includes:
- Reading and critiquing grant proposals to check
the evaluation component or statistical procedures
(if necessary, planning such components)
- Designing or revising a research instrument to
ensure that it will answer the questions the researcher
has posed
- Validating an instrument to determine the reliability
and validity of the scores it produces
- Selecting a sample so that correct generalizations
are possible with the results
- Conducting the survey/re search within appropriate
ethical constraints and within the guidelines of the
USM Institutional Review Board
- Compiling the data, with appropriate coding, into
computer-readable files
- Analyzing the data with appropriate statistical
procedures and with safeguards against data snooping
- Displaying the results appropriate to the original
questions of the research
- Teaching seminars or classes on statistical software
(particularly SPSS and AMOS) or on statistics/research
- Providing consultation to users whose research
articles receive a “revise and re-submit”
request from a journal
- Providing support on designing and implementing
program or project evaluation
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