RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

Introduction
It is seven years since the fifth edition of Research
Methods in Education was published and we are
indebted to Routledge for the opportunity to
produce a sixth edition. The book continues to
be received very favourably worldwide and is
the standard text for many courses in research
methods.
The sixth edition contains much new material,
including a completely new part on data analysis.
This means that the book now covers all stages of
educational research, from planning and design,
through data collection to data analysis and
reporting. While retaining the best features of
the former edition, the reshaping, updating and
new additions undertaken for this new volume
now mean that the book covers a greater spread
of issues than the previous editions. In particular,
the following new material has been included:
Part One:
feminist theory
complexity theory and educational research.
Part Two:
ethical codes and responsibilities to sponsors
and the research community
informed consent and deception
sampling, confidence levels and confidence
intervals, together with the calculation of
sample sizes
an entirely new chapter on planning and
conducting sensitive educational research,
including researching powerful people.
Part Three:
further coverage of documentary research
postal, interview and telephone surveys
an entirely new chapter on Internet-based
research and computer usage, covering Internet
surveys, experiments, interviews, questionnaire
design, evaluation of web sites, searching
for materials, computer simulations and
Geographical Information Systems
very considerably expanded coverage of experimental
research, reflecting the resurgence
of interest in this method in evidence-based
education.
Part Four:
more detailed coverage of questionnaire design
and administration, with practical guidance on
these matters
interviewing children and telephone interviewing.
Part Five:
an entirely new part, containing five new
chapters, covering qualitative and quantitative
data analysis
how to conduct a content analysis
grounded theory and ‘how to do it’
how to present and report qualitative data
computer usage in qualitative data analysis
an introduction to statistics and statistical
concepts
hypotheses and how to test them
variables and how to handle them
effect size and how to calculate and interpret it
practical ‘hands on’ advice for novice
researchers, on which statistics to choose and
how to use them, from the simplest statistics
to high-level factor analysis and multiple
regression, and from descriptive to inferential
statistics
advice on how to select appropriate statistics,
with charts and diagrams to ease selection
how to avoid selecting incorrect statistics, and
what are the assumptions underlying the main
kinds of statistics
plentiful examples of statistics and how to
interpret them, with worked examples that use
SPSS output and processing (the Statistical