Research Methods and Applications for Student Affairs

J. Patrick Biddix

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119466147
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Student Life

A COMPREHENSIVE RESOURCE FOR UNDERSTANDING AND APPLYING RESEARCH METHODS

Research Methods and Applications for Student Affairs offers students and professionals in the field an authoritative and accessible guide to help navigate research in student affairs. This comprehensive resource on research methods instruction clearly shows how to interpret the various forms of research, how to be critical as a research consumer, and how to use research to inform practice.

Author J. Patrick Biddix—a noted scholar and expert in the field—presents a detailed overview of three qualitative-focused and four quantitative-focused research methods. The text reviews the basics of these qualitative and quantitative approaches and explores how to differentiate the major types of research as well as how to understand, read, evaluate, and apply results. Biddix also includes important information on using mixed methods approaches.

The user-friendly text includes insights on key issues, as well as descriptions of the individual sections that comprise research studies. Also included is an overview of ethical considerations that apply specifically to student affairs.

Research Methods and Applications for Student Affairs is an essential guide for enhancing research methods' skills, and offers direction for applying those skills in actual work situations.

Chapter One
Studying Research

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Learning Outcomes

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe several reasons for the importance of research.
• Identify the historical and contemporary context of research.
• Explain why practitioners need to be researchers.
• Articulate the need for research skills and competencies.
• Relate research skills to student affairs practice skills.

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Research is essential to student affairs. It chronicles the history of professional practice, informs contemporary work, and recommends how the field must shift to address future challenges and opportunities. Practitioners who are skilled and proficient research consumers, capable of understanding, reading, evaluating, and applying evidence-based information, are becoming indispensable to the field. The ability to support and to demonstrate how programs and practices connect to educational outcomes is no longer an advantage but an expectation in all functional areas (Schuh, Biddix, Dean, & Kinzie, 2016). Research-based evidence, collected directly or synthesized from existing studies, is progressively the basis for informing and legitimizing decisions in practice. Yet both new professionals and chief student affairs officers admit to lacking fundamental research competencies (Sriram, 2014; Sriram & Oster, 2012).

Practitioners need research skills to be effective. Research skills can be learned through graduate study and professional development, continually on the job, and through practice to accomplish work. Practitioners need research competencies to thrive. Research demonstrates the value of work, forecasts future needs, and validates effective practices. Research skills and competencies are not mutually exclusive. While some skills are precursors to competencies, many serve as foundations for attaining basic, intermediate, and advanced proficiencies.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce basic research terminology and to articulate the need for competence in student affairs practice. Essential skills and competencies are explained as well as considerations for applying research skills to practice. The chapter begins with an historical overview of how research came to be valued in student affairs practice. Next is context and background for understanding and studying research. This is followed by an overview of concepts and a discussion of research specific to student affairs, which serves as a transition to the contemporary landscape and transitions into recommended skills and competencies.

Understanding Research

Researchers have been directly studying student services and the effects of programs and interventions on students for nearly a century. Staff in the personnel department at Northwestern University, influenced by a research focus brought to the university by President Walter Dill Scott (Biddix & Schwartz, 2012), were among the first to approach college-student problems with empirical data in a systematic way. Student Personnel Point of View (SPPOV) lead author Esther Lloyd-Jones, who began her career as a staff member in the personnel department (Certis, 2014), emphasized research as a core component of practice in the foundational document

Certain problems involving research are common to instruction and student personnel work. Any investigation which has for its purpose the improvement of instruction is at the same time a research which improves personnel procedures. Similarly, the results of any studies, the aim of which is to improve personnel procedures, should be disseminated throughout the instructional staff. In both cases wherever possible such projects should be carried on as cooperative ventures. (American Council on Education, 1937, p. 6)

The authors closed the report with a set of five research-focused future directions, noting that, “student personnel services will never develop as they should unless extensive and careful research is undertaken” (American Council on Education, 1937, p. 12). This statement was intended as a two-fold proposition: The field needs to identify and define its core functions and practitioners need to engage in or direct research to understand students. The report closed with four areas requiring immediate attention from the field (in other words, practitioners should be engaged in the work): student out-of-class life, faculty–student out-of-class relationships, financial aid to students, and follow-up studies of college students. Much of contemporary research on college students shares these areas of focus (Mayhew et al., 2016).

As student affairs practitioners struggled to identify their place and role in the 1920s, a division between those who saw the field as a calling versus those who saw the need for research to inform practice emerged (Schwartz, 1997). By the 1940s, this dual focus began to merge with a rise of professionalism that extended into the 1970s (Brubacher & Rudy, 1997). By the late 1990s extending into the present, an emphasis on practitioners as scholars developed (Blimling, 2001; Komives, 1997; Sriram & Oster, 2012).

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Words Researchers Use—Practitioner–Scholar and Scholar–Practitioner

Educational researchers sometimes refer to practitioners engaged in scholarship as practitioner–scholars or scholar–practitioners. Following are some definitions to help clarify the terms.

Practitioner–Scholar

“An individual who aspires to study problems of practice in a more comprehensive and systematic way, allowing them to better understand the schools, districts, and other educational organizations within which they work. Practitioner–scholarship is both about your practice as an educator and your practice as a researcher” (Lochmiller & Lester, 2015, p. 3).

Scholar–Practitioner

“The scholar–practitioner exists in a space where research and practice inform each other and create a synergy: research informing practice, practice informing scholarship, and the many combinations. A scholar–practitioner understands the importance of practice and research informing each other and the need to ground work in theory and evidence and create measurements that demonstrate impact as well as explore phenomena” (Kupo, 2014, p. 96).

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Studying Research

For many students, the first exposure to student affairs research is in a student development theory class. Unfortunately, faculty teaching theory or research methods courses seldom discuss how those theories were developed—such as the empirical basis of Astin's initial (1970a, 1970b) conceptualization of involvement or the original sample informing Chickering's (1969) theory.

Beyond graduate school, an increased need for research-competent professionals has become evident with the multifaceted concerns and issues that can affect student success. In addition, legislative scrutiny of higher education has led to questions about how student services directly contribute to academic outcomes. This also is related to increased federal accountability for higher education. Heightened attention on learning outcomes from accrediting agencies is an example. Administrators have recognized that demonstrating the value of student affairs work is critical in this environment, giving rise to a proliferation of full-time assessment professionals.

Developing and continuing to cultivate research skills has professional benefits for work and personal benefits for career development. Research experiences, both directly and as a consumer, improve the ability to formulate and ask good questions, evidence an argument, relate concepts across situations, develop and solve problems, and communicate solutions effectively. Research skills also teach professionals to be skeptical, logical, problem solvers who can adapt approaches to practice across varied situations, settings, and audiences. As professionals gain responsibilities in program development and decision making, being knowledgeable about research and assessment pays dividends for evaluating and demonstrating the value of student services.

Defining Research

Definitions for research are varied, emphasizing research as a process, stressing the importance of research questions and hypotheses, or identifying specific procedures. Different academic fields also have assorted definitions of research, ranging from theory verification and hypothesis testing to theory development and open inquiry. Synthesizing these approaches, Creswell (2012) identified a broadly applicable process-based definition, stressing a comprehensive approach

Research is a cyclical process of steps that typically begins with identifying a research problem or issue of study. It then involves reviewing the literature, specifying a purpose for the study, collecting and analyzing data, and forming an interpretation of information. This process culminates in a report, disseminated to audiences, that is evaluated and used in the educational community. (p. 627)

A definition of research suitable for student affairs practice needs to emphasize investigation in educational contexts...