Posted by
William Peck on
May 31, 2019; 11:24am
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/need-some-basis-on-research-vs-assessment-surveys-vs-existing-data-analysis-tp5737998.html
I need some high level understanding of the entire statistics industry. I've been doing SPSS for 9 months but now taking a step back.
I deal with a lot of surveys at an institution of higher learning. I understand within surveys there is research and assessment. Generally, Research is to gain new knowledge while Assessment is more program management, accountability, decision-making, and budgeting. And the Research is guided (in the US anyway) by "Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research" which was promulgated in 1979. But in all of this the data is provided by someone taking an online survey (or perhaps a researcher carries a clipboard around and "surveys" patients). We are careful to ensure participation is anonymous.
Another thing I do is assessment of academic performance, where the data is coming from the database. So we don't need to pull in student id's, we just pull grades, academic year/semester, college placement scores, etc. And we can look at things like comparison groups (prep school kids vs high school kids [who came to our college]), success factors for those in XYZ major, etc. etc. So we just pull the data as opposed to taking a survey. Is this activity some other "categorization" of research/assessment?
Anyway, just looking for some broad overview, as opposed to "how the heck do I do this in SPSS?" (which assumes you kind of know your end goal, you know what you are doing [but don't know how to get it in SPSS]). Stuff that's already been written, so if you can refer me to a book, some good site, or even, ahem, a Wikipedia page, that would be great.
Thank you.
=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD