HMPYC80 Exam Preparation Notes
, The Research Review Inventory (R.R.I. revised)
Rating Scale: 1 = Absent or incorrect;
2 = Partially correct;
3 = Completely correct and up to standard.
A. THE TITLE
01. The title contains a central psychological construct from the research proposal or study.
Intelligence, motivation, anxiety, and fear are all examples of constructs. In psychology, a construct is a skill,
attribute, or ability that is based on one or more established theories
02. The title indicates the research setting or demographic information of the sample population.
Demographic information examples include: age, race, ethnicity, gender, marital status, income, education,
and employment.
The research setting can be seen as the physical, social, and cultural site in which the researcher conducts
the study.
03. The title points to, or refers to the research method, design or paradigm.
This may be signalled by key words such as: “lived experiences”, “perceptions”, “attitudes”, “constructions”,
“discourses”, “quasi-experimental”, “critical study”, “psychometric properties”, “correlational study”,
“inferential study”, and so on.
Research design is a plan to answer your research question. A research method is a strategy used to implement
that plan. Research design and methods are different but closely related, because good research design ensures
that the data you obtain will help you answer your research question more effectively.
Research methods:
The six types of qualitative research are the phenomenological model, the ethnographic model, grounded
theory, case study, historical model and the narrative model.
There are four main types of quantitative research designs: descriptive, correlational, quasi-experimental
and experimental.
Research designs:
• Action Research Design
• Case Study Design
• Causal Design
• Cohort Design
, • Cross-Sectional Design
• Descriptive Design
• Experimental Design
• Exploratory Design
• Historical Design
• Longitudinal Design
• Meta-Analysis Design
• Mixed-Method Design
• Observational Design
• Philosophical Design
• Sequential Design
• Systematic Review
Research Paradigms:
A paradigm is simply a belief system (or theory) that guides the way we do things, or more formally
establishes a set of practices. This can range from thought patterns to action.
Disciplines tend to be governed by particular paradigms, such as:
• positivism (e.g. experimental testing),
• post positivism (i.e. a view that we need context and that context free experimental design is
insufficient)
• critical theory (e.g. ideas in relation to an ideology - knowledge is not value free and bias should be
articulated) and
• constructivism (i.e. each individual constructs his/her own reality so there are multiple
interpretations. This is sometimes referred to as interpretivism).
B. THE ABSTRACT OR SUMMARY (in HMPYC80 for both articles and proposals)
Proposals do not always require an abstract, but HMPYC80 students are expected to develop one.
04. The abstract indicates the research interest, issue or problem.
A research problem is a statement about an area of concern, a condition to be improved, a difficulty to be
eliminated, or a troubling question that exists in scholarly literature, in theory, or in practice that points to
the need for meaningful understanding and deliberate investigation
5. The abstract indicates the setting, demographic or circumstances pertaining to the research
interest or question. Any one of the following is sufficient: where, who, when, under what
circumstances, or the phenomenon that is being investigated.
06. The abstract contains the specific research question or statement.
A research question is the objective of a study or a problem to be solved through research.
