Educational Media Reviews Online

Can you name the eight steps in the research process? If not, maybe you should watch this video as well as the two companion pieces also available from Insight Media: Research Design—Observational and Correlational Studies and How to Read and Understand a Research Study. The social scientists interviewed for this film explain how to choose a topic, establish a hypothesis, select variables to measure, create a research design, select research participants, collect data, analyze results and publish findings. They go so far as to delineate the content of a scientific paper: introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion. The film addresses social science research, so those researching other fields will adjust their sampling accordingly. Researchers will eventually need to delve into the described processes more fully, but this is a great basic introduction to the research process and I recommend it for high school and college libraries.