Introduction
The planned project involves developing and delivering a seven-week math rehabilitation program for grade nine students with low grades in algebra and a brief teaching session for parents. Insights from the textbook and resources in the electronic library, including the characteristics of survey and experimental research, have informed the initial research plan and measures to collect and instrumentalize all relevant data. Based on these takeaways, this paper specifies four steps to avoid missing essential information.
Discussion
To start with, comparing students’ post-program performance to their baseline performance levels in math skills will be crucial to avoid faulty comparisons. The use of former students and the target population’s FSA test scores would not be informative enough due to the risks of meaningful differences in the groups’ baseline algebra knowledge levels and socio-demographic dissimilarities correlated with knowledge levels. In chapter eleven of the textbook, Mills and Gay (2019) explain one-group pretest-posttest designs, and this approach is compatible with the study’s purpose and the research site’s resources. Applying this mode of comparison, the researcher should use various teacher-made math tests that assess students’ FSA math scores before and after the seven-week rehabilitation program.
When it comes to collecting and documenting test scores for comparison, non-response errors will be prevented by scheduling pre-program and post-program tests so that all low-performing students enrolled in the program are present during both testing procedures. If some participants cannot attend the session, they will be allowed to complete the test on another day. Completing the test online without observation will not be made possible to avoid misleading results.
Next, aside from improving students’ FSA test scores, the project aims to reduce stress levels in test-takers, so incorporating stress level measurements into evaluation might be conducive to the project’s practical value and show the program’s potential in the context of psychological well-being. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), which is a ten-question tool for measuring subjective stress levels, could be administered before the pre-intervention and post-intervention algebra skill assessments (Al-Ateeq et al., 2020). In the course textbook, Mills and Gay (2019) demonstrate that internal validity and reliability represent essential tool evaluation criteria and require consideration in tool selection. The ten-item PSS possesses both qualities and is suitable for Hispanic individuals, which is crucial given the study site’s racial statistics (Baik et al., 2019). The tool is widely used in education research and is suitable for secondary and high school students.
In the planned study, to explore social environments’ contributions to poor math skills in the target population, it will also be pivotal to consider participants’ impressions from training sessions for parents using a brief anonymous survey. This cross-sectional survey will ask them to rate the received information’s practical value, supposed impacts on their relationships with children, and their children’s motivation to improve academically. It will be essential to assess parents’ characteristics to make sure that each question explains the involved constructs in plain language rather than professional terms (Cobern & Adams, 2020). Also, the incorrectly set timeframe for response, for instance, enabling participants to fill out online survey forms when it is convenient for them, would be an ineffective strategy due to producing suboptimal response rates (Felderer et al., 2019). It can also create a situation in which participants evaluate the intervention’s contents after forgetting the details of what has been presented, so the survey will be administered shortly after the intervention.
Conclusion
Finally, ensuring the adequacy of comparisons and test results’ relevance to students’ actual knowledge levels will represent high-priority areas in the project. Incorporating students’ stress levels before test-taking and parents’ perceptions of training sessions will also be essential to research the issue extensively and without missing important details. The steps will facilitate the collection of data regarding low math skills and contributors to them, such as a lack of motivation and support at home, stress, and ineffective instructional methods.
References
Al-Ateeq, D. A., Aljhani, S., & Al-Eesa, D. (2020). Perceived stress among students in virtual classrooms during the COVID-19 outbreak in KSA. Journal of Taibah University Medical Sciences, 15(5), 398-403.
Baik, S. H., Fox, R. S., Mills, S. D., Roesch, S. C., Sadler, G. R., Klonoff, E. A., & Malcarne, V. L. (2019). Reliability and validity of the Perceived Stress Scale-10 in Hispanic Americans with English or Spanish language preference.Journal of Health Psychology, 24(5), 628-639.
Cobern, W. W., & Adams, B. A. (2020). Establishing survey validity: A practical guide.International Journal of Assessment Tools in Education, 7(3), 404-419.
Felderer, B., Kirchner, A., & Kreuter, F. (2019). The effect of survey mode on data quality: Disentangling nonresponse and measurement error bias. Journal of Official Statistics, 35(1), 93-115.
Mills, G. E., & Gay, L. R. (2019). Educational research: Competencies for analysis and applications (12th ed.). Pearson.