Writing Methodology Section (Quantitative Research)

COMPONENTS Research Design Dependent/independent variables (if present) Participants Instruments Data Analysis Procedure of the Study Reliability/Validity

Research Design Identify the strategy of method you have used: Descriptive / Survey-based Experimental Correlational Causal/Comparative Single-Subject Describe the characteristic of the design, citing sources when needed.

Research Design: A sample This study is designed as a quantitative study, aiming to understand teachers’ and students’ conceptions of assessment and the differences and similarities between their assessment practices at a Preparatory School of a foundation university in Turkey. Hopkins (2000) defines quantitative research design as … According to Dörnyei (2003), “the essential characteristic of quantitative research is that … Among the quantitative research methods, survey research was used in this study to investigate the teachers’ conceptions and students’ conceptions about the assessment by using the appropriate data-gathering tool. “The major purpose of all surveys is to describe the characteristics of a population” (Fraenkel& Wallen, 2006, p. 423). Moreover, a cross-sectional survey was adopted in the study to find out the opinions of the participants (Fraenkel& Wallen, 2006) through demographic information questionnaire.

Variables Introduce your dependent and independent variables if you have them

Variables: A sample Teachers’ gender, teaching year, role, education level, department and nationality were independent variables in this study for teachers…Teachers’ department they graduated from is the other independent variable, which is used to examine the effects on teachers’ conceptions of assessment. It was a categorical variable with levels “Literature, Linguistics, Translation, ELT, Other”. The first dependent variable in this study is Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment, which has four subscales, “Improvement, School Accountability, Student Accountability, and Irrelevance”. These subscales give information about how teachers perceive assessment in their profession. The mean scores of each subscale indicate teachers’ agreement level of each conception. If the mean scores are high for each conception, it means that these groups of teachers have higher level of agreement for each conception.

Participants Write who your participants are Give info about the sampling method that you used, giving details about sampling procedures (random/non-random; type of random/non-random) Give demographic information such as age, gender, … Write how you got permission from the participants and/or the aministration: mention the consent form here and attach it at the end as attachment

Participants: A sample taken from Çınar,, G. (2014). The eEfect of Peer Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing Anxiety and their Perceptions about the Use of Peer Feedback in Writing Classes. (Unpublished M.A. Thesis). Çağ University, Mersin. Although the number of the participants in this study was expected to be 18, two of them did not want to participate in the study. Thus, the total number of the participants was decreased to 16, eleven of whom were female students and five of whom were male students. The participants were students at one of the English preparatory department of a university in Turkey. Their level of English was intermediate, which was determined by a placement and proficiency exam organized and done by the Testing Office of the department. These students were in their first term and took courses such as Reading and Writing, Listening and Speaking, Expansive Reading, Applied Linguistic Skills in which group work is expected to apply excessively, and lab classes. The students were selected by taking into account the fact that they were the-would-be doctors who are going to need English throughout their career pathway.

Consent form sample

Instruments Give detailed information about each instrument you have used: If you have used an already existing instrument, write where you got it from and why you used it If you have adapted an already existing instrument, write where you got it from and why you have adapted it. Give your justification for adaptation and present credibility If you have developed your own instrument, give all the details of the process of development and present its credibility In all situations, give the instrument in the Appendix section

Instruments: A sample This study of perceptions of English classroom assessment included two instruments. One instrument was for students: self-reported survey questionnaire called “Students Conceptions of Assessment” (SCoA) (the adapted form of TCoA), which is about student perceptions and understandings of assessment (See Appendix A). This instrument contained two components: demographic information and Students Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) (Brown, 2003)...

Data Analysis Be careful! This is not the section where you present the findings of your analysis Write how you analyzed your data; what techniques you used, and how you used them

Data Analysis: A sample The data obtained from the Students’ Conceptions of Assessment (SCoA) Questionnaire and Teachers’ Conceptions of Assessment (TCoA-IIIA) were computer coded and processed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The negatively worded statements were recorded before calculating the composite scale scores. The analysis of the amount of data gathered from 432 participants, 400 of whom are students and 31 teachers, was done by inferential statistics. “Inferential statistics is … Descriptive statics was also included to describe the identified features of the data in the study. The means and standard deviations for the items were demonstrated. In order to calculate descriptive statistics, questionnaire items were grouped in accordance with independent variables, and also descriptive categories were developed from the data itself for the sections…

Procedure of the Study Write all your steps one by one (like a recipe book) If someone else wants to replicate your study, s/he shoud do it reading this section without asking any further questions to you (may not be needed if you only applied a questionnaire; but if you used an experiemental study, you will need it)

Procedure of the Study: A sample …Firstly, the original scale was translated into Turkish by two different faculty members teaching English at a university. It is believed that “the relationship of target language receptors to the target language text should be roughly equivalent to the relationship between the original receptors and the original text” (Nida, 1993, p. 112). Su-ju (2006) also adds that it is important to “render receptor words from one language to another, and caters to the receptor’s linguistic competence and cultural needs” (p. 72). Therefore, the translators were chosen cautiously as the translation should be roughly equivalent to the original text. Then, back-translation from Turkish to English was conducted by two experts in English who again teach English at Çağ University specialized in the field of translation language. Moreover, the opinions of two different English teachers revised the translations carefully.

Reliability/Validity Check It is important to give the reliability and validity results of your scales here (e.g. Cronbach alpha)

Reliability/Validity: A sample In order to find out the reliability of the students’ and teachers’ questionnaires, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was calculated for each factor separately after the data were collected (see Table 7). Overall scales was accepted to be reliable (r=.89 for students; r=.77 for teachers) In validation process of the scale, the items were subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using SPSS. … The details for the variances of the components obtained in factor analysis were given in Table 4.7. According to the scree plot of the data, there were four eigenvalues for teachers and five eigenvalues for students, which showed the sharp changes in the curve. Figure 3.1 and 3.2 show the scree plot of our data.