Key Concepts: Methods, Ethics, & Theory

Powell

• Evaluative research - a type of applied research that has as its goal the testing of the application of knowledge within a specific program or project. In most evaluative research, there is an implicit (or explicit) hypothesis in which the dependent variable is a desired value, goal, or effect and the independent variable is usually a program or service.  The two general types of evaluative research are summative (outcome) evaluation and formative (process) evaluation  .
• Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) - the U.S. government requires that all universities and other organizations that conduct research involving human subjects and that receive federal funding for research involving human subjects have an IRB.  The purpose of the IRB is: (1) to help ensure that that no harm will come to human subjects; (2) that the human subjects are informed of and consent to the protocol of the research study; and (3) that the human subjects' confidentiality or anonymity will be protected.
• Survey - the survey is a group of research methods commonly used to determine the present status of a given phenomenon.  The basic assumption of most survey research is that one can make inferences about a large group of elements by studying a relatively small number (sample) selected from the larger group (population) by carefully following scientific procedures.
• Sampling error/standard error of the mean - sampling error represents how much the average of the means of an infinite number of samples drawn from a population deviates from the actual mean of that same population.

Wildemuth

• Middle-range theories - theories that are concrete enough to apply to phenomena of interest to a special field, like library and information science, but are also abstract enough to apply to settings beyond the context of which they were originally developed.
• Grounded theory - theory emerges simultaneously with the collection of data.  It isn't a separate process.  Rather than testing an existing theory, the grounded theory approach begins to formulate a theory that fits the data as the data emerge.
• Typology - a comprehensive list of theoretical concepts/categories and their definitions.