EDU1024/ED8005 Quantitative Research Methods Assignment 2026 | DCU

EDU1024/ED8005 Assignment 2026

Submission Date: Tuesday 26^th May @ 5pm

Submission Mode: Online via Loop

Formatting: Times New Roman 12pt, 1.5 line spacing

Assignment Part I: Design And Pilot A Quantitative Research Survey (50%) 

• Design a survey on a topic of your choosing (no. questions may vary, but survey should take no more than 10-15 mins to complete). Include open-ended questions at end to allow pilot participants to provide feedback on your survey.
• Upload the survey to Qualtrics and pilot it with your M.Ed. classmates.
  (In the interests of fairness to all students, please ensure you complete each of your classmate’s surveys, and endeavour to provide them with useful feedback!)   
• Complete a formal write-up (1,500 words +/- 10%) in the style of a research paper, using the following headings:
  • Introduction
    Provide a brief rationale for a study on this topic, with reference to relevant literature, concluding with a clear statement of the specific research question(s) to be addressed. (10 marks)
  • MethodResearch Design  

    Identify the type of research design you are adopting (i.e., survey research design) and explain why this is an appropriate choice.  (5 marks)

    Instrumentation 

    Describe the process of designing the survey from start to finish.  Outline the topics covered and reference any sources used to inform the content.  Outline the principles followed when selecting, wording and ordering questions and any other steps taken to promote validity. Describe the final survey instrument (e.g. no. and type of questions, intended duration) and provide a link to your survey on Qualtrics.  (10 marks)      

    Sample 

    Identify the target population for your survey.  Outline the no. people who participated in this pilot and conditions of participation.  Describe a sampling methodology you could use to recruit participants if you were to conduct a large-scale rollout of this survey. Discuss measures you would take to ensure ethical principles are upheld during recruitment.   (10 marks)

  • Pilot Findings & Instrument Revisions
    Outline any insights gleaned from the pilot, and describe amendments made to the survey instrument in light of these.  You may wish to provide a link to “version 2” of your survey at this point.  Note: you do NOT need to present statistics/tables/figures of your participants’ responses to the survey questions.  As this is a pilot, your ‘findings’ relate to the quality of your survey instrument, rather than to your research questions, as would be the case if you were conducting the study proper.  (10 marks)
  • References [NOT TO BE INCLUDED IN WORDCOUNT] (5 marks)
    Provide a full list of references, using APA 7^th referencing style.

Assignment Part II: Data Analysis  (50%) 

The Background: 

Approaches to teaching, learning and assessment are continually evolving in response to the idea that today’s students need to acquire a different set of skills than the generations before them (Geisinger, 2016).  Increasingly, educators are seeking innovative pedagogies that facilitate collaboration and those that actively involve students in their learning.  One such innovative pedagogy is peer assessment (PA).  PA refers to any situation whereby students grade or provide feedback on each other’s work.  Its use has been associated with increased academic performance (Li et al., 2019), which is thought to occur in several ways.  Firstly, it has been suggested that playing the role of the assessor challenges students to develop a better understanding of what constitutes ‘good work’ in their discipline (Raes et al., 2015).  Secondly, if students receive high quality feedback from their peers, they can use this to improve their future performance (Winstone et al., 2017).   The success of PA, however, depends hugely on how it is implemented, and on how students engage with the process. For example, some students may not feel comfortable providing critical feedback to a peer.  Anonymous PA, whereby students do not know the identity of the peer with whom they have been paired, has been posited as a potential solution to this issue (Raes et al., 2015).

The Research: 

Two lecturers conducted a study to investigate the impact of anonymity on the PA process.  Each lecturer set their students a written assignment. When the assignments were complete, each student received an email containing work of one of their peers and were asked to grade this work and provide feedback for their peer. Finally, all students were asked to revise their original piece of work in accordance with the feedback they received.

In Lecturer A’s class, students’ names were retained on the assignment cover sheets such that students were aware of the identity of the peer whose work they were assessing (and who in turn assessed their work).  In Lecturer B’s class, students’ names were removed from the assignment cover sheets, such that the process was anonymous.

Following the activity, all students completed a 20-item questionnaire designed to measure their perceptions about the value of PA (6 items), their trust in the process (8 items) and their social concerns regarding PA (6 items).   The quality of the feedback provided was also analysed, using the following classification system:

• H1: Students in the anonymous group will hold more positive perceptions about the value of PA than those in the non-anonymous group.  

• H2: Students in the anonymous PA group will express a higher level of trust in the PA process than those in the non-anonymous group.
• H3: Students in the anonymous PA group will express fewer social concerns about the PA process than those in the non-anonymous group.
• H4: Students in the non-anonymous PA group will provide fewer negative verifications than those in the anonymous group.
• H5: Higher ability students will provide more suggestive elaborations.

The assignment questions: 

Q1) Identify the research design adopted and explain why you would classify it as such. (5 marks)    

Q2) Critique the design used, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses.  Suggest an alternative design and describe how this could have been implemented in this setting. (5 marks)

A dataset pertaining to this fictional research study is available on Loop.  

Please engage with the dataset in responding to the following questions.

Q3) Within the dataset, change the settings in the ‘measure’ column for each variable to indicate whether each type of data in question is nominal, ordinal or scale.  (5 marks)

Q4) Report the demographic characteristics (i.e. age and gender) for the sample. (5 marks)

Q5) Construct scale scores for the value, trust and comfort scales. (5 marks)

Q6) Report the Cronbach’s alpha values for the value, trust and comfort scales.  Based on these values, what would you conclude about the reliability of these scales?  (5 marks)

Q7) Identify a suitable statistical test that could be used to test Hypotheses 1-4. Explain why this is the correct test to use. (5 marks)

Q8) Identify a suitable statistical test that could be used to test Hypothesis 5.  Explain why this is the correct test to use. (5 marks)

Q9) Test all five hypotheses and report the results of these analyses in the appropriate fashion, using correct statistical notation. (5 marks)

Q10) Suggest one other potential question that could be investigated using this dataset.  Conduct a relevant analysis to investigate this question and report your findings in the appropriate fashion. (5 marks)

Please submit two files to Loop for this assignment.

The first file should be a word document (not a PDF) containing your 1,500 word written write-up of your survey (Part I) AND your answers to the questions pertaining to the PA

study (Part II), with the exception of Q3 and Q5.  Please number your answers clearly. 

The second file should be an SPSS file including the modifications you have made to the dataset to answer Q3 and Q5.  Note you do not need to submit any SPSS outputs.