Notes from Gage 1991

1
Notes from Gage (1991)

• Obviousness of Social and Educational Research
  Results

2
Obviousness of Social and Educational Research
Results

• Several distinguished luminaries have commented
  on what they perceive as the obviousness of
  social and educational research results.
• Frank Keppel (former Dean of Harvard Graduate
  School of Education)
• James Bryant Conant (former President of Harvard
  University)
• Denis Phillips (Stanford Professor of Philosophy)

3
Obviousness of Social and Educational Research
Results

• Rice (in 1897 and 1913), after studing 33,000
  youngsters was unable to establish a correlation
  between time devoted to learning spelling and
  competence in spelling.
• What about Lazarsfelds (1949) hoax?
• What appears obviousness is not necessarily so.

4
Empirical Investigations of Obviousness

• Mischel (1981) and Mischel Mischel (1979)
• 4th an 6th graders.
• Factual and non-factual statements of situations
  involving psychological principals.
• The task was to select, from a set of choices,
  would happen in each situation.
• The majority, but by no means all, of the
  students selected the correct result.

5
Empirical Investigations of Obviousness

• Baratz (1983)
• Students were asked to indicate how predictable
  or obvious each statements appeared.
• Both true and false statements were identified,
  by a majority of students, as obvious.

6
Empirical Investigations of Obviousness

• Wong (1987)
• An extended replication of Bratz.
• Selected individual who differed in terms of what
  they might be expected to know about the subject
  matter (process outcome findings in elementary
  education).
• The study was conducted in Singapore (n 862)
  and America (n 353)

7
Empirical Investigations of Obviousness

• Wong (1987), continued
• Five forms of here questionnaire
• Form A asked respondents to select the TRUE
  finding from each pair (one true, one false) of
  statements.
• In Form B1 respondents rated the truefullness of
  each of 16 statements (half were true half
  false)
• Form B2 was similar to Form B1 but contained a
  different set of 16 statements.
• In Form C the statements from Form B were
  accompanied with explanations.

8
Empirical Investigations of Obviousness

• Wong (1987) continued
• Singaporeans rated more items obvious than did
  Americans.
• All respondents tended to rate both factual and
  non-factual statements obvious.
• Level of experience did not seem to make a
  difference.

9
Where should the research go from here?

• How would you design the next study in the
  sequence?