Is your research biased? Answer: Yes. (Here’s why.)

October 29, 2012

Sarah Eaton blog technology researchThis semester I am teaching a course on Research Methodology in Education. One of the topics that has come up is bias.

Bias is present is bascially every research study. Even though we strive to be objective — and that is part of our work, we nevertheless start with a set of values, beliefs and philosophies that shape our opinions and world view.  It is important for reasearchers to understand the biases they bring to their work and to acknowledge them.

For example, one of my biases is that I hold is that everyone is capable of learning. Not everyone is capable of earning a Ph.D. (for any number of reasons), but everyone is capable of learning something. This is one of my values and beliefs that shapes my work. If I am an honest researcher, I must declare and acknowlege that bias when I do research. It is one thing to have and acknowledge bias. It is an entirely different matter to purposely bias our research in favor of a particular outcome or do research just to prove a point.

There are two ways to approach research:

Approach #1 – Conduct research in a manner that supports your argument

The first is to start with an argument or a position and conduct research and find literature that supports your point of view.

Though some scholars might disagree, I would submit that is an undesirable starting position. The reason is that you are likely to skew either your research or your results so they fit with your argument. Forcing results to fit to a pre-determined argument may be considered unethical. For example, pharmaceutical companies that conduct drug tests in order to prove the drug is safe and refuse to release research that may contradict that starting point are harshly criticized. Such research is not considered believable because it is skewed.

Approach #2 – Start with a research question, hypothesis or topic. Conduct your research in a manner that seeks to answer a question.

The second way to approach you research is to begin with a problem you want to solve or a question you want to answer. Then, you conduct your research in a manner that seeks to answer your research question. Once you have conducted your research, your argument emerges from your data.

The data is the information that you gather that allows you develop a cogent argument to persuade others. You can gather primary data (e.g. interviews) or secondary data (e.g. literature review).

Part of a research study almost always involves a review of previous literature written on the topic you are studying. In your literature review, it is valuable to cite opposing views. Once you have considered your question or problem from a variety of angles, then you can begin to develop an argument, based on your findings. Considering a variety of viewpoints is highly desirable as it demonstrates that you are not attempting to skew your results in favor of a pre-determined outcome.

Be aware that just because you start your research with a particular question or topic, it is unwise to assume that your starting position is the correct one. Be curious, rather than dogmatic. What themes emerge from the literature that you surveyed? What surprised you? What arguments can be made? What conclusions can be drawn?

In my own research, it has happened to me that I start with a research question, problem or hypothesis and as I surveyed the literature, my hypothesis was proven to be incorrect. Be prepared for that to happen. It does not mean you are a bad researcher. Quite the contrary, it means you have allowed your hypothesis or question to be challenged and your research is driven by the data you find.

We may come to our work with a bias. But ultimately, the research needs to speak for itself. That’s what makes it credible.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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UNESCO’s free advocacy kit for promoting multilingual education

October 24, 2012

UNESCO multilingualism Sarah Elaine Eaton blogUNESCO has a number of initiatives on the go to promote multilingual, bilingual and mother-tongue education. They have come out with a new advocacy kit designed to help raise awareness about the importance of multilingual education. The toolkit is for:

  • education practitioners (teachers)
  • education specialists (learning leaders)
  • policy makers

The kit is a 109-page free, downloadable .pdf. It is very cool. Get yours here.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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5 Tips to make writing easier

October 4, 2012

This past spring I taught a course on Writing Educational Research to a group of Master’s students, most of whom taught English as an Additional Language as their job. I was surprised how many of them loathed writing. One student said that she was reluctant to teach writing in her EAL courses because it felt like forcing a traumatic experience on them.

Over the course of the six-weeks we learned together, we came up with some strategies that they could use for themselves, and also use with their students. Here they are:

1. Write every day. Saying, “I’m going to write my essay on the weekend,” can turn the weekend into a time of torture instead of a time to relax and recharge your batteries. Instead, commit to writing 30 minutes per day. This helps build the writing habit.

2. Choose a time of the day when you feel fresh and creative.  For me, that time is often first thing in the morning. By mid-afternoon I am crashing and after supper my brain seems capable of basic life support only. In the morning is when I feel both creative and clear-headed.

3. Work with a writing partner. Choose someone you get along with and like to work with. Arrange a time to work together to review each other’s writing, make suggestions and do some peer editing. The point of working together is to try to help each other, not to nit pick. Set some ground rules and focus on the positive.

4. Let go. Some students said they hated writing because they couldn’t tolerate being criticized or being asked to revise their writing. They became very emotionally attached to their writing right away. What if the purpose of writing was to share it? And share it in the best form possible? If we start with that idea, then we might become less emotionally tethered to the writing… You can still be proud of your work without having a  Gollum-like attachment to it.

5. Edit and revise. It is said that Mozart never revised his music. He sat down, wrote it and was done. Unfortunately, most of us are not Mozart. I recently submitted the second revision of an article I submitted to a peer-reviewed academic journal. It was “accepted with minor revisions” when I first submitted it. That was almost six months ago. I made the changes the reviewers requested and re-submitted it. Then recently, the editor came back to me with a few more minor changes. He was right in asking me to change a few more things. I had forgotten to add in some citations, which are important in journal articles. I made the changes and sent the manuscript back again. I had been so close to the work, I could no longer see the errors. Working with editors, reviewers and instructors is really a chance to make your writing better.

Writing seems to be very easy for some people and very painful for others. These strategies may help a few reluctant writers and ease their stress so writing does not seem so daunting.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Doing work that matters: Letting values drive how you earn your living… and love your life.

September 27, 2012

Sarah Elaine Eaton leadership speakerAbout a year and a half ago I made a decision that changed my life, both professionally and personally. I made a decision to “do work that matters”; and more specifically, to ONLY “do work that matters”. That is a pretty fuzzy concept and people close to me did not hesitate to let me know.

A good friend with a shrewd business sense who has a high-level position in corporate Calgary put the screws to me by saying, “That’s all well and good, but how do you plan to get ‘work that matters’? Shouldn’t you really define what that means before you decide that you are going to do that and only that? Besides, you are an entrepreneur. Sometimes you have to do work that pays the bills.”

I knew that for too long, I had done work that pays the bills.  Modesty aside, I have a fair number of employable skills, including office skills, technical skills and writing and editing skills. I have also spent almost two decades teaching and facilitating. Then there is the research work… But something shifted. I felt compelled to stop focussing on the skills I have, and start focussing on the values I hold.

I also knew she was right about defining what “work that matters” means. So I asked myself, “What matters?” Here is my answer:

  • Doing work that relates specifically to education, leadership, community and literacy.
  • Working with others to create transformative change for the better.
  • Building capacity in others, helping them grow and realize their potential.
  • Using a strength-based, asset-based approach in all my work.
  • Working with like-minded, highly capable people who share similar values.

The last one turned out to be the most important. Not long after I declared that doing strength-based work matters deeply to me, I was asked to do a project focussed on a Needs Assessment. That is really a fancy term for, “Help us figure out what we need.” The idea is that after the needs have been identified, that you can go about meeting the needs.

A strength-based approach says, “Let’s start by assessing what we already have. Let’s start with the question, what is working well?”

This kind of thinking turns everything on its head. When you insist on examining what is already working well and conducting an inventory all your assets, the result is strangely powerful. The conversation shifts away from what is lacking, what is wrong, what problems there are to be fixed and how terrible things are, to a conversation deeply rooted in strength, resilience and hope.

I started having conversations with friends and colleagues about using strength-based approaches at work, at home and in just about any situation. At first, the conversations were difficult and awkward. I felt like people thought I was naive and out of touch with the real work. I kept reading and educating myself on the notion of asset-based approaches to work, community, leadership and education.

I started partnering with others who were interested in doing similar kinds of work. We began looking at Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for projects that we thought were a precise fit with both our technical skills and our values, in terms of using a strength-based approach to our work.

I can’t give exact details yet because we have not signed the contract yet, but I got word this week that I will get to lead a team of consultants on a major project that fits with all the values that I outlined just over a year ago. The work is amazing. The people we will get to work with are visionaries. The possibility for change is high.

We have all the technical skills we need to do the job. That was not enough though. What ultimately landed us the contract was our clear emphasis on our values. We put a stake in the ground and said, “This is who we are and what we stand for!” Every single one of the values I outlined above come into play for this project.

I think I have finally figured out that a combination of excellent technical skills, solid experience and unapologetic declaration of values is really what allows a person to love the work they do… and do work that matters.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Is the pyramid a hoax?

August 4, 2012
Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Did you know that this pyramid, that has become commonly known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” never actually appears in Maslow’s original work? Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg

I’m a big believer in going back to original sources, rather than relying on secondary sources.

Recently I was reading Maslow’s original 1943 article, “A theory of human motivation”. I was curious about his hierarchy of needs and wanted to learn more about it. When I began poking around on the Internet, I found that the pyramid was commonly cited as being from either his 1943 article or his 1954 book.

Wanting to find the original, I went to the oldest work first. I quickly flipped through the 27-page article from 1943, which was available on line through my university library. I looked for the pyramid figure. It was nowhere to be found. Maslow does talk about a hierarchy of needs, but there was no diagram of a pyramid.

I wondered if maybe it was in the 1954 book, Motivation and personality. I went to the University library and took out a copy of the book. The pyramid is not there either. In fact, there isn’t even one diagram or drawing in the entire book.

Maslow Motivation and Personality (1954)While the original ideas are Maslow’s, the pyramid is not. Someone, somewhere along the way, adapted his original work into the pyramid graphic. The pyramid is someone else’s interpretation of Maslow’s original work; and it has become an iconic representation of his ideas.

What Maslow does say about the hierarchy of needs is, “if I may assign arbitrary figures for the sake of illustration, it is as if the average citizen is satisfied perhaps 85% in his physiological needs, 70% in his safety needs, 50% in his love needs, 40% in his self-esteem needs and 10% in his self-actualization needs” (Maslow, 1943, pp. 388-389). So if we were to draw a diagram to represent Maslow’s hierarchy, the physiological needs would need to represent a much bigger piece of the pyramid.

The iconic pyramid of what has become known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” is, arguably, a mutation or an interpretation of  the original work. (Some might even call it a bastardization, but that may be a little harsh…)

Recently in the class I was teaching on technology and inquiry-based learning, I posed a question to my grad students: “Where did Maslow’s pyramid come from?” Some of them thought it was a trick question. Others thought it was too easy. In their quest to answer the question I had posed for them, they embarked on their own inquiry-based learning. Some drew parallels between the mysterious origin of Maslow’s pyramid and the origin of the Egyptian pyramids. Others said they wanted to go to the library straight away and find the 1954 book. (An electronic copy of the book was not available, at least not through our library.) Other students began asking how they could have accepted the pyramid as a true representation of Maslow’s work, when in fact it is not.

Neither the students nor I were able to find the source of the pyramid representation. This surely means that we did not dig deep enough. What we were able to find out for certain though is that the pyramid never appears anywhere in any of Maslow’s work that we were able to access and read, including two of his major works.

What can we learn from this?

1. Original works are adapted by others. Some purists argue that mash-ups are an aberration; that they defile the original work. Well, people have been modifying and adapting original works for centuries.

2. Find the original sources whenever possible. In today’s world, it is easier than ever to find original source documents. Libraries have digitized versions of primary sources going back for decades. It is important for students and researchers to learn to “drill down” and find the original sources of information. If Maslow’s original article from 1943 has been digitized and is accessible through the local library, it is worth the effort to go and at least try to find the original source for your own research. It may be easier than you think to access it.

3. Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet. The pyramid figure that has come to represent Maslow’s work appears all over the Internet. Yet, it never appears anywhere in his original work. There is value in learning to discriminate between original research and was is presented on the Internet as “truth”.

4. Check others’ citations. Maslow’s pyramid has been cited in both academic and popular articles as originating from both his 1943 article and his 1954 book. Yet, the pyramid appears in neither original source. It is important for researchers, scholars and students to (respectfully) check other authors’ citations. Do not take it for granted that simply because a  reference appears in a bibliography that it means the citation is correct.

5. Learn to “drill deep” in your research. Often we take it for granted that others’ research is “the real deal”. Part of our professional practice means that we allow our curiosity to drive our search for knowledge. Learning to “drill deep” means that you take on the challenge of finding out for yourself, learning to analyze and think critically and not simply rely on what others say.

References:

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers.

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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