RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

Part Two
Planning educational research
The planning of educational research is not
an arbitrary matter; the research itself is an
inescapably ethical enterprise. We place ethical
issues at a very early point in the book to signal
this. The research community and those using
the findings have a right to expect that research
be conducted rigorously, scrupulously and in an
ethically defensible manner. All this necessitates
careful planning, and this part introduces some
key planning issues. In planning research, we need
to consider the issues of sampling, reliability and
validity at the very outset, and this part addresses
these. These are complex issues, and we take
readers through them systematically. In addition,
anewchapteronsensitiveeducationalresearch
is included here, taking sensitivity not only in
terms of content, but also in terms of process,
purpose, outcome and usage. This new chapter
also makes the point that often access itself is
asensitivematter,andthiscouldbethemajor
issue to be faced in planning research. This part
sets out a range of planning possibilities so that
the eventual selection of sampling procedures,
versions of reliability and validity are made on the
basis of fitness for purpose, andsothatsensitivities
in research are anticipated and addressed.