Research Proposal Design Characteristics

In designing a research proposal, a researcher must pay attention for understanding about the research characteristic. These characteristics depend on the objective of the research. Understanding for these characteristics help us to make a good research to be easy. The characteristics are like in these following (Hartono, 2004/2005):

1. Type of research, wheter exploratory or hypotesting research.
2. If we select hypotesting research, make sure that is a descriptive or causal.
3. Type of research based on timing. whether cross sectional, time series, or pooled data/panel.
4. Type of research based on validity. whether case study or statistical study.
5. Data collection method, whether observation or communication.
6. Type of research based on research setting, whether field setting or laboratory/experiment.
7. Unit analysis of the research, whether individual, dyads, group, or organization.
8. Create empirical model and its variable definitions.
9. The resources needed for the research

Validity

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What is Validity? :)
Question: What is Validity?

Answer: Validity is the extent to which a test measures what it claims to measure. It is vital for a test to be valid in order for the results to be accurately applied and interpreted.

Validity isn’t determined by a single statistic, but by a body of research that demonstrates the relationship between the test and the behavior it is intended to measure. There are three types of validity:

Content validity:
When a test has content validity, the items on the test represent the entire range of possible items the test should cover. Individual test questions may be drawn from a large pool of items that cover a broad range of topics.

In some instances where a test measures a trait that is difficult to define, an expert judge may rate each item’s relevance. Because each judge is basing their rating on opinion, two independent judges rate the test separately. Items that are rated as strongly relevant by both judges will be included in the final test.

Criterion-related Validity:
A test is said to have criterion-related validity when the test is demonstrated to be effective in predicting criterion or indicators of a construct. There are two different types of criterion validity:
* Concurrent Validity occurs when the criterion measures are obtained at the same time as the test scores. This indicates the extent to which the test scores accurately estimate an individual’s current state with regards to the criterion. For example, on a test that measures levels of depression, the test would be said to have concurrent validity if it measured the current levels of depression experienced by the test taker.
* Predictive Validity occurs when the criterion measures are obtained at a time after the test. Examples of test with predictive validity are career or aptitude tests, which are helpful in determining who is likely to succeed or fail in certain subjects or occupations.

Construct Validity:
A test has construct validity if it demonstrates an association between the test scores and the prediction of a theoretical trait. Intelligence tests are one example of measurement instruments that should have construct validity.
By Kendra Van Wagner
http://psychology.about.com/mbiopage.htm

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Added by. Pamenan Mato Nan Hilang
How to know good construct validity
Prior to this issue, Ensure that you have known about construct validity. There are three most widely accepted forms of validity are (Hair et al, 2006, p-137):
1. Convergent validity - assesses the degree to which two measures of the same
concept are correlated. Here the researcher may look
for alternative measures of a concept and then correlate
them with the summated scale. High correlations here indi
cate that the scale is measuring its intended concept.
Criteria: factor loading>0,4; or >0,5-0,6; or >0,7

2. Discriminant validity - is the degree to which two conceptually similar
concepts are disticnt. The empirical test is again
the correlation among measures, but this time the
summated scale is correlated with a similar, but
conceptually distinct measure. Now the correlation
should be low, demonstrating that the summated scale is
sufficiently different from the other similar concept
Criteria: not redundancy in factor loading; AVE; Cross loading.

3. Nomological Validity- refers to the degree that summated scale makes accurate
predictions of the other concepts in a theoritically
based model. The researcher must identify theoritically
supported relationship from prior research or accepted
principles and then assess wheter the scale has
corresponding relationship.
In summary, convergent validity confirms that the scale is correlated with other known measures of the concept; discriminant validity ensure that the scale is sufficiently different from other similar concepts to be distinct; and nomological validity determines wheter the scale demonstrates the relationships shown to exist based on theory or prior research.

Reliability

Source:Google images

What Is Reliability? :)
Question: What Is Reliability?

Answer: Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure. A test is considered reliable if we get the same result repeatedly. For example, if a test is designed to measure a trait (such as introversion), then each time the test is administered to a subject, the results should be approximately the same. Unfortunately, it is impossible to calculate reliability exactly, but there several different ways to estimate reliability.

Test-Retest Reliability

To gauge test-retest reliability, the test is administered twice at two different points in time. This kind of reliability is used to assess the consistency of a test across time. This type of reliability assumes that there will be no change in the quality or construct being measured. Test-retest reliability is best used for things that are stable over time, such as intelligence. Generally, reliability will be higher when little time has passed between tests.

Inter-rater Reliability

This type of reliability is assessed by having two or more independent judges score the test. The scores are then compared to determine the consistency of the raters estimates. One way to test inter-rater reliability is to have each rater assign each test item a score. For example, each rater might score items on a scale from 1 to 10. Next, you would calculate the correlation between the two rating to determine the level of inter-rater reliability. Another means of testing inter-rater reliability is to have raters determine which category each observations falls into and then calculate the percentage of agreement between the raters. So, if the raters agree 8 out of 10 times, the test has an 80% inter-rater reliability rate.

Parallel-Forms Reliability

Parellel-forms reliability is gauged by comparing to different tests that were created using the same content. This is accomplished by creating a large pool of test items that measure the same quality and then randomly dividing the items into two separate tests. The two tests should then be administered to the same subjects at the same time.

Internal Consistency Reliability

This form of reliability is used to judge the consistency of results across items on the same test. Essentially, you are comparing test items that measure the same construct to determine the tests internal consistency. When you see a question that seems very similar to another test question, it may indicate that the two questions are being used to gauge reliability. Because the two questions are similar and designed to measure the same thing, the test taker should answer both questions the same, which would indicate that the test has internal consistency.
By Kendra Van Wagner
http://psychology.about.com/mbiopage.htm
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Added by: Pamenan Mato Nan Hilang
Internal consistency applies to the consistency among the variables in a summated scale. The rationale for internal consistency is that the individual items or indicators of the scale should all be measuring the same construct and thus be highly intercorelated (Hair et al.2006,p-137)
Because no single single item is a perfect measure of a concept, we must rely on a series of diagnostic measures to assess internal consistency.

1. The first measures we consider relate to each separate item, including the item to total correlation (the correlation of the item to the summated scale score) and the inter item correlation (the correlation among items). Rules of thumb suggest that the item-to-total correlation exceed 0.50 and that the inter-item correlation exceed 0.30.

2. The second type of diagnostic measure is the reliability coefficient that assesses the consistency of the entire scale, with cronbach's alpha being the most widely used measure. the generally agreed upon lower limit for CA is 0.70, although it may decrease to 0.60 in exploratory research. One issue in assessing CA is its positive relationship to the number of items, even with the same degree of intercorrelation, will increase the reliability value, researchers must place more stringent requirements for scale with numbers of items.

3. Also available are reliability measures derived from confirmatory factor analysis. Included in these measures are the composite reliability and the average variance extracted (AVE).

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Diskusi Hasil Penelitian

Diskusi Penelitian
Discussion
Your discussion section has two fundamental aims:
to explain the results of your study,
to explore the significance of your study’s findings.
Therefore you need to:
interpret and explain your results;
examine whether and how the questions raised in the introduction section have been answered;
show how your results relate to the literature;
qualify and explore the theoretical importance/significance of your results;
outline any new research questions or areas for future research that your results have suggested.
The discussion is also the place in a report where any qualifications or reservations you have about the research should be aired. Statistically significant results still require analysis and discussion. You might consider questions like the ones below.
How generally do your results apply?
How close to real life are the variables you manipulated in a laboratory situation?
Were their any defects in your experimental design or procedure?
Were their any confounding factors in your design: could some other factor explain your results?
These are the types of questions you will need to consider in terms of your results in terms of defining the generality and limitations of your results.
The discussion section requires you to use both the past tense and the present tense. The past tense is used when you need to explain particulars about your results; for example,
This group achieved this level of performance after less time studying the instructions,
The activity of the enzyme increased with temperatures up to 37°C.
The present tense is used when you are expanding on the implications of your results or drawing conclusions; for example,
The results show the effectiveness of combination drug therapy as a treatment ... .
This research provides powerful evidence that ... .
Separating the Results and Discussion sections is one way of organising this information. It is also possible to combine the Results and Discussion into one section or to include a separate conclusion or general discussion section. It is always advisable to check with your lecturer or tutor about these issues.

by: Team Unilearning
http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Laporah Hasil Penelitian

Hasil Penelitian
Results

This section describes but does not explain your results; it provides the reader with a factual account of your findings (Hay, 1996). You can, however, draw attention to specific trends or data that you think are important. Your aim in your results section is to make your results as comprehensible as possible for your readers/markers (Hay, 1996).

If you are presenting statistical results, place descriptive statistics first (means and standard deviations) followed by the results of any inferential statistical tests you performed. Indicate any transformations to the data you are reporting; for example, you may report percentage correct scores rather than straight scores. Raw data and lengthy whole transcripts of qualitative data should be put in the appendices, only excerpts (descriptive statistics or illustrative highlights of lengthy qualitative data) should be included in the results section.

In the results section you will need to use both the past tense and the present tense. The past tense is used to describe results and analyses; for example,

The knowledge scores were analysed ...,
The results indicated ... .

The present tense is used with results that the reader can see such as means, tables and figures; for example,

The means show that ...
The weekly growth rate illustrated in Table 3 illustrates how ... .

Since you are presenting your results, not the figures which represent the results, you should ensure you refer explicitly to your results and not just to your data figures (graphs, tables). As you describe particular results in the text of your results section, make sure you refer to the corresponding figure in brackets after you have mentioned the results. The figures should be inserted into the text as soon as possible after you mention them. Follow this link for more information on using figures.

by: Team Unilearning
http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Metode penelitian

Laporan metode penelitian
Method

The purpose of this section is to precisely describe method and materials used to conduct your experiment with enough detail so someone else could repeat the same procedure. You also need to explain and sometimes justify why you chose a particular method (Hay, 1996). Finally, it is important to add any extra information or observations, such as changes to the method generated via the results of a pilot test or changes caused by some accident.

The method section should be written in paragraph form with as little repetition as possible. This section will often be broken down into subsections such as participants, materials and procedure. (linked to new window) The subsections you use will depend on what is useful to help describe and explain your experiment.

In the method section of the report you should use the past tense since you are describing what you did; for example,
A dilution series was performed…,
The participants were instructed to ... .
Furthermore, as the focus in this section is on what was done rather than who did it, the passive voice is used as it aims to foreground the action, rather than the doer of the action; for example,
The elaiosomes were removed …
as opposed to
We removed the elaiosomes … .

by: Team Uni Learning
http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Cara Membuat Pendahuluan

Pendahuluan
Introduction

In your introduction, you need to let the readers and markers of your report know why the report is important and what exactly the report is about. It is essential to establish these things because it places the reader/marker in a better position to understand the significance of the material presented in the rest of the report (Hay, 1996). Although the introduction comes at the beginning of the report, it is not the first section you should write. It is easier to write the introduction after you have dealt with your method and results section because that way you are introducing the section with knowledge about what you did and what the results were. This knowledge allows you to shape your introduction so it leads up to your findings more specifically.

In your introduction, you need to answer questions such as
What do you hope to learn from the research?
What question is being asked?
Why is this research important?
(adapted from Hay, 1996).

This diagram provides an outline of the sequence of information that needs to be presented in the introduction.


The introduction starts generally, introducing the broad context within which your research fits. You need to provide a review of the literature that impacts on your research area. The literature needs to provide the reader/marker of your report with:

an understanding of the conceptual and theoretical background, context and justification for the research you are undertaking;
an appreciation of the significance of this area and in particular your topic; for example,
why does this question need researching and
how does it contribute to, fit in with, or differ from other available work on this subject (Hay, 1996)?

With your literature review should follow the pattern depicted in the diagram; for example, it should review studies to establish the general area, then move towards studies that more specifically define or are more specifically related to the research you are conducting. It is important to note that your literature review MUST NOT be a series of quotations strung together; instead it needs to provide a critical analysis of previous work (Hay, 1996). Your literature review uses both the past tense and the present tense; for example,

PAST tense: Gilles (1999) examined the effect of…, The model predicted that …..
PRESENT tense: A dormant seed bank is a solution for these populations to survive.

The past tense is used to refer to a particular experiment and the specific results of a particular experiment that has been carried out in the past. The present tense is used to refer to information that is not confined to a particular experiment.

The introduction ends with a statement of your specific hypothesis or hypotheses. This statement of the hypothesis should logically follow on from your literature review and you may want to make an explicit link between the variables you are manipulating or measuring in your study and previous research (O’Shea, 1996). The present tense is used to state your hypotheses; for example,

It is predicted that… ,
It is hypothesised that …

There is no need to write the title Introduction before this section: its position at the start of the report identifies it as an introduction (Findlay, 1993). Some departments or tutors may require you to include the aims or objectives of your study in a separate section after the Introduction so you should check this with your lecturer or tutor.

by: Team Uni Learning
http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Cara membuat abstrak

Abstrak
Abstract


The abstract is a precise summary of the whole report. Its function is to preview the contents of your report so that the reader can judge whether it is worth their while to read the whole report.

It includes a statement of the aim or objective of the experiment, a short description of the method used, the main results, and the conclusions or implications of the results. The abstract should normally be a single paragraph between 100 and 200 words. It should be titled with the word 'abstract'. Given the small amount of words allowed, each word and sentence included in your abstract needs to be meaningful (O'Shea, 1996). In addition, all the information contained in the abstract must be discussed in the main body of the report (Hay, 1996).

by: Team Unilearning http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Bagaimana membuat judul penelitian

Judul laporan penelitian
Title

The title of your report should be concise and informative. It should not be vague and general but should encapsulate the essence of the research.
For example:
Haemolysis of red blood cells in response to salt concentration
The limits of selective attention in tachistospcoic recognition
Social and economic consequences of homelessness for women in Sydney, Australia (1998-2001)

The progress of arthritis in the retained compartments after medial unicompartmental knee replacement
Memory for explicit and implicit information in picture stories
Antibiotic resistance of various Escherichia coli strains
A title like the one below is inappropriate because it is uninformative about the research contained in the report:

An investigation of a physical stimuli

A title like the one below is slightly more informative

An investigation of memory for sentences

but could be improved by increasing the specificity of the information it contains; for example,
Sentence memory: A constructive versus interpretive approach

Your title should be no longer than 15 words (O'Shea, 1996). The title is generally given on a separate page together with your name, course and instructor details.

by Team Unilearning http://unilearning.uow.edu.au/

Google adsense success story

Google AdSense Case Study
OSTG increased its income from international traffic with Google AdSense and AdSense link units
Case study : OSTG : SourceForge.net
OSTG

Business

Founded in 1996, OSTG (Open Source Technology Group) started out as the tech network Andover.net. Its mission was to provide unbiased content, community and commerce for an audience of Linux and open source users and developers. Over time, Andover.net grew by adding the community-centric sites Slashdot.org and Freshmeat.net to its technology group, and ThinkGeek.com to its e-commerce division. Since VA Software Corp. acquired OSTG in early 2000 and introduced SourceForge.net and Linux.com, OSTG’s network of sites has become even more widely visited among the worldwide Linux and open source communities.

SourceForge.net is among OSTG’s most successful Internet properties, with roughly 25 million unique visitors each month – a number that grows about 20 percent each year. SourceForge hosts more than 140,000 projects, and offers a centralized resource for managing projects, issues, communications and software code. "Given the broad appeal of SourceForge, we are always looking for ways to capitalize on each page and give users content and products to match their needs," says OSTG’s Vice President and General Manager of SourceForge.net, Mike Rudolph.

Approach
"Link units are relevant, potentially interesting to the user, and don’t stick out as ads. They help users get to the content they’re looking for and help advertisers get their information out there."

Mike Rudolph
Vice President and General Manager, OSTG

In 2005, OSTG decided to try link units, a text advertising product available to Google AdSense publishers. Each link unit displays a list of topics relevant to the content of the page it is running on. When visitors click on a topic, they go to a page displaying several text advertisements highly relevant to their chosen topic.

Although link units began producing results right away, OSTG realized there was a way to maximize the benefits even more. The OSTG and SourceForge.net team began to think about how to leverage Google’s expansive worldwide advertising network to better serve international users. Through Google’s geographical targeting, they knew they could maximize the relevant topics and ads delivered to customers in specific regions.

OSTG therefore began serving link units specifically to its international traffic, replacing U.S. targeted ad campaigns, on the Sourceforge.net homepage. This approach made sense: 80 percent of visitors to SourceForge.net come from outside the United States, from places as diverse as Brazil, Europe, Australia and Asia. "We needed to target German ads to German visitors, instead of sending out a generic ad that probably wouldn’t appeal to someone outside the U.S.," explains Rudolph. "We needed to improve the user experience and generate revenues from international traffic, and realized that more precisely geo-targeting link units was a great way to achieve both aims."

Rudolph notes that "the process of using link units was very simple and straightforward. The implementation took little time, and right away a relevant mix of international topics started to appear."

Results

OSTG was immediately pleased with the results from using link units, because they provided a way to earn incremental income from international traffic and improve the user experience. Over a two-month period, link units added more than 20 percent to overall AFC revenue, without any additional real estate being allotted to advertising. "Because international users make up 80 percent of our traffic on SourceForge, they are a top priority for us," says Rudolph. "Geographic targeting through link units helped us overcome the challenge of reaching these users with useful ad content."

Link units and AdSense also complement OSTG’s own ad sales efforts, says Rudolph. "There is a long tail of advertisers Google serves that we will never scale to reach. With AdSense, we can tap these advertisers in a turnkey way that is phenomenal," he notes.

Rudolph says he’s impressed with the quality of ads and the way they mesh with site content, and appreciates the fact that link units are clean and unobtrusive. "Link units are relevant, potentially interesting to the user, and don’t stick out as ads," says Rudolph. "They help users get to the content they’re looking for and help advertisers get their information out there. Trying to do what Google does with AdSense and link units would be a bad decision on any media company’s part. We could never do it with the same level of quality as Google does."

About Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a program enabling online businesses to earn revenue from serving ads precisely targeted to specific web content and search pages. With service levels ranging from online sign-up to dedicated support management, a broad range of sites profit from AdSense. Thousands of Google advertisers also benefit from AdSense by gaining exposure on sites across the Google Network, which includes many of the Top 100 Media Metrix sites such as AOL, About.com, Amazon, Ask.com, and Lycos.