Case studies

There are potential answers to each of these, but it may be a better learning experience for students and/or their tutors to do some wrangling.

You have a selection of different measures derived from studies of bullying at school. Are there different types of bully?

Looking at a battery of results from different educational tests, you wish to see if a particular model is especially robust.

Do immigrant students who are awaiting asylum decisions have different educational results profiles compared to those with refugee status? You believe that age, ethnicity and gender may also affect the classification.

Is a type of teaching method likely to differ in its effectiveness depending on the type of educational setting? For example, if we used inquiry-based learning, would it have very different effects on students in prisons, universities and schools? Age, ethnicity and gender may affect the classification.

You are interested in the willingness of students to participate in sports. Which psychological attributes tend to be associated with keen, apathetic and hostile attitudes? You may wish to consider attributes such as the number of fellow students with similar attitudes, the age and gender of the respondents.

Kidd and Castano (2013) found that reading novels, as opposed to popular fiction, non-fiction and nothing at all, improved empathy, as represented by Theory of Mind skill. You want to try this design out with young people with behavioural problems and see it has an effect on social skills, attitudes and behaviour.

You are interested in how long it takes children in care to be provided with mainstream education. Are there differences between age groups, or ethnicity, or behavioural problems, or whether or not children have been sexually abused?

Three groups of children with learning disabilities each attend different types of reading class. One group receives a phonics method, another primarily 'whole word' reading and a third a mixed model of teaching. Are there significant differences in test results and is there a difference between male and female students?

Each year, over three years, a different classroom control technique is used with students with conduct disorders. Each method is used in three different types of educational setting. By the end of the period, each setting would have experienced all of the methods.

Students in a state's police academy have over the years found certain statutes on domestic violence to be very difficult to understand. Over the year, two sessions with somewhat different teaching methods are tried: one focuses mostly upon case studies, while one pays more attention to the legal principles involved. The sessions are in fact held four times, so that half the students get to use the case studies first while the other half do legal underpinnings first, each attending the other session later.

Are there particular types of student who drop out of university? (Assume that there is no knowledge of the topic.)

Statistics without Mathematics series - General Editor: Cole Davis

ISBN numbers: Hardback - 978-1-915500-09-0 Paperback - 978-1-915500-10-6
                         Ebook - 978-1-915500-11-3