For the past 20 years Statistics Solutions’ mission is to
help graduate students graduate. Whether
you go to Berkeley or Capella, students need help. Students (“learner” always reminded me of
Milgram’s 60’s Obedience to Authority study) at Capella however have a couple
of things working against them. First,
they’re not on campus to get the help they need, and second, they’re paying
tuition as the process continues. One of
the places students get stuck is writing aspects of the Capella’s Scientific
merit review (SMR).
My staff and I have worked with over 2000 graduate students,
and despite the resources at the universities, some still need help from an
objective, non-evaluative professional.
We are such professionals! When we work with students they typically get
stuck in the same few places: research
questions, proposed data analysis, and the target population and participation
selection.
Research questions are easy to handle: make sure the constructs
(your measures) are obtainable and measure what you want to measure, AND you
arrange these constructs in statistical language. For example, if you have constructs A and B,
and want to relate them (read “correlate” them), then say that. If you are assessing whether A predicts B
(read “regression”), then say predict, impact, or account for variability in B.
Capella’s Scientific Merit Review also asks for a data
plan. When it comes to data analysis
plans, these plans are based on two things: the statistical language you used
in the research questions and the level of measurement of your variables. We have resources on our website or if you
need more 1-to-1 help you can go to click here. By the way, Capella will send you back for a
round of revisions (tuition not included) if you don’t have this correct. When I went to school 100 years ago, the IRB
which we would have sent our SMR to, made sure that we didn’t hurt our
participants but now they look at everything.
And let’s face it, the revision costs you both time and money.
Sample size is typically trickier still (even with the help
of G-power). There are two tricks: selecting
the right analysis (see data plan above) and selecting the effect size. Effect size can be derived by looking at past
research using these constructs and analyses, then calculating or seeing the
effect size used. There’s also a
realistic aspect too: for
dissertations—and I’ve seen 1000’s of them—large and medium effect sizes,
requiring relatively small sample (under 100 participants), is the norm.
Requesting a small effect size (small effect take a lot of people to
detect) requires typically 300-500 participants—and this is just not reasonable
for a dissertation student to obtain.
Here are a couple of resources (sample size tool; power analysis)
to get you started. I should note that
the exception is when you are conducting EFA, CFA, path analysis, and
structural equation modeling; these techniques typically require 150 or more
participants.
I’m going to leave you with a Dissertation Template to look
at. It’s free and you may find some
definition of terms helpful.
Good luck with your Scientific Merit Review and call us if
you run into trouble. Contact us at: http://www.statisticssolutions.com/contact
or call us at (877) 437-8622 (M-F, 9-5 EST)
PS: A Stanford Ph.D.
student just called; their private stats consultant just took another job. See, everybody needs help sometimes, even
schools with lots of resources!
