ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the basic principles of conducting research in the quantitative paradigm, including determining the research questions, enrolling a group of participants, deciding upon instruments and measures, collecting data, and analyzing the data. Occasionally during the analysis of data, the researcher will make some decisions to conduct post-hoc analyses. The researchers were interested in what aspects of the literature were utilized by children in their responses. The categorization process served to reduce the children's responses into numerical data, the number of times each type of response was utilized. Quantitative studies are invariably descriptive; in presenting numerical data, researchers are describing a phenomenon or characteristic. In quasi-experimental studies, researchers use existing groups of individuals but work carefully to ensure that the individuals in one group are similar in key ways to the individuals in the other. Indeed, a strong statistical analysis is dependent upon having a sufficient number of data points.
