Conducting educational research involves the exploration, description, explanation, or prediction of

educational phenomenon using systematic data collection and analysis procedures. All educational research studies should follow a planning, data gathering, and analysis and reporting process consisting of the following steps:

Identifying a clear purpose helps determine how the research should be conducted, what research design you will use, and the research question (s) or hypothesis (es) of your study. Four general purposes for conducting educational research are to explore, describe, predict, or explain.

• Consider research implications

Implications are the practical ways your research will affect the field of education. These are the underlying goals, the rationales for, or the importance of your study. Implications are linked to your

research problem or topic, research purpose, and research question (s) or hypothesis (es) .

• Construct a research proposal

relevant literature, research question (s) or hypothesis (es), what information or variables are to be gathered, the participants of the study and potential benefits or risks, the design and procedure for

gathering data, what data collection method (s) will be used, and how the data will be analyzed.

Data gathering focuses on information acquisition that will attempt to answer your research questions or support your hypotheses. Data gathering includes consideration about what variables to investigate, the unit of analysis or participants of the study (population and sample),human subject protections, procedures used for selecting participants, the methods and procedures used for data collection, and any reliability or validity of collection methods.

Data or statistical analysis will depend on whether you collected quantitative data , qualitative data , or both. For quantitative data, there are a variety of statistical analysis tools you can use to identify statistical relationships between variables. For qualitative data, data analysis generally involves holistically identifying patterns, categories, and themes.

help explain a more complete picture.

Conclusions are statements that interpret and evaluate the results found from the study. Make sure to give primary emphasis to the results that relate to the hypotheses or research questions of your

study.

Factors to consider when reporting conclusions, or data dissemination , include tailoring report content for the audience, explaining the purpose of the study, integrating your findings with the results from prior research, and how the findings relate to your research questions and hypotheses. Make sure to discuss what practical or theoretical implications can be drawn for your study, any major shortcomings or limitations of your research, and directions or suggestions for future research.