Research Methods in
Education
This completely rewritten and updated fifth edition of the long-running bestseller, Research Methods in Education covers the whole range of methods currently employed by educational researchers. It continues to be the standard text for students undertaking educational research whether at
undergraduate or postgraduate level.
This new edition constitutes the largest reshaping of the text to date and includes new material on:
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qualitative, naturalistic and ethnographic research methods;
curricular and evaluative research;
critical theory and educational research;
feminist perspectives on research;
research and policy-making;

planning educational research;
critical action research;
statistical analysis;
sampling reliability and validity;
event-history analysis;
meta-analysis and multi-level modelling;
nominal group technique and Delphi techniques;
case study planning;
qualitative data analysis;
questionnaire design and construction;
focus groups;
testing;
test construction and item response theory;
recent developments in educational research including Internet usage, simulations, fuzzy logic,
Geographical Information Systems, needs assessment and evidence-based education.

This user-friendly text provides both the theory that underpins research methodology and very
practical guidelines for conducting educational research. It is essential reading for both the professional researcher and the consumer of research—the teacher, educational administrator, adviser,
and all those concerned with educational research and practice.
Louis Cohen is Emeritus Professor of Education at Loughborough University. Lawrence Manion is
former Principal Lecturer in Music at Didsbury School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan
University. Keith Morrison is Senior Professor of Education at the Inter-University Institute of Macau.



Research Methods in
Education
Fifth edition
Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion
and Keith Morrison


London and New York


First published 2000 by RoutledgeFalmer
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeFalmer
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
RoutledgeFalmer is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
©2000 Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion and Keith Morrison
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cohen, Louis
Research methods in education/Louis Cohen, Lawrence Manion, and Keith
Morrison.—5th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-415-19541-1 (pbk.)
1. Education—Research. 2. Education—Research—Great Britain. I. Manion, Lawrence.
II. Morrison, Keith (Keith R.B.) III. Title.
LB 1028 .C572 2000

370’.7’2–dc21
ISBN 0-203-22434-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-22446-9 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-19541-1


‘To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy.’
(Sun Yat Sen, 1866–1925)



Contents

List of boxes
Acknowledgements
Introduction

xi
xiii
xv

Part 1
The context of educational research

Part 2
Planning educational research

1 The nature of inquiry
Introduction

The search for truth
Two conceptions of social reality
Positivism
The assumptions and nature of science
The tools of science
The scientific method
Criticisms of positivism and the
scientific method
Alternatives to positivistic social
science: naturalistic approaches
A question of terminology: the
normative and interpretive paradigms
Phenomenology, ethnomethodology
and symbolic interactionism
Criticisms of the naturalistic and
interpretive approaches
Critical theory and critical educational
research
Criticisms of approaches from critical
theory
Critical theory and curriculum research
A summary of the three paradigms
Feminist research
Research and evaluation
Research, politics and policy-making
Methods and methodology

2 The ethics of educational and social
research
3

3
5
8
10
13
15
17
19
22
23

Introduction
Informed consent
Access and acceptance
Ethics of social research
Sources of tension
Voices of experience
Ethical dilemmas
Ethics and research methods in
education
Ethics and teacher evaluation
Research and regulation
Conclusion

49
50
53
56
58
59

60
66
67
69
71

3 Research design issues: planning
research

26
27
31
32
34
34
38
43
44

Introduction
A framework for planning research
A planning matrix for research
Managing the planning of research
Conclusion

73
73
80
88
90


4 Sampling
Introduction
The sample size
Sampling error
The representativeness of the sample
The access to the sample
The sampling strategy to be used
Conclusion

92
93
96
98
98
99
104


viii

CONTENTS

5 Validity and reliability
Defining validity
Triangulation
Ensuring validity
Defining reliability
Validity and reliability in interviews
Validity and reliability in experiments

Validity and reliability in questionnaires
Validity and reliability in observations
Validity and reliability in tests
Validity and reliability in life histories

9 Case studies
105
112
115
117
120
126
128
129
130
132

Part 3
Styles of educational research
6 Naturalistic and ethnographic research
Elements of naturalistic inquiry
Planning naturalistic research
Critical ethnography
Computer usage
Some problems with ethnographic and
naturalistic approaches

137
140
153

155
156

7 Historical research
Introduction
Choice of subject
Data collection
Evaluation
Writing the research report
The use of quantitative methods
Life histories

158
159
160
162
163
164
165

8 Surveys, longitudinal, cross-sectional and
trend studies
Some preliminary considerations
Survey sampling
Longitudinal, cross-sectional and trend
studies
Strengths and weaknesses of cohort
and cross-sectional studies
Event history analysis


172
174
174
176
177

Introduction
What is a case study?
Types of case study
Why participant observation?
Recording observations
Planning a case study
Conclusion

181
181
185
187
188
189
190

10 Correlational research
Introduction
Explaining correlation and significance
Curvilinearity
Co-efficients of correlation
Characteristics of correlational studies
Interpreting the correlation co-efficient
Examples of correlational research


191
193
197
198
199
201
202

11 Ex post facto research
Introduction
Characteristics of ex post facto research
Occasions when appropriate
Advantages and disadvantages of
ex post facto research
Designing an ex post facto investigation
Procedures in ex post facto research

205
206
207
208
209
209

12 Experiments, quasi-experiments
and single-case research
Introduction
Designs in educational
experimentation

A pre-experimental design: the one
group pretest-post-test
A ‘true’ experimental design: the
pretest-post-test control group design
A quasi-experimental design: the
non-equivalent control group design
Procedures in conducting
experimental research
Examples from educational research
Single-case research: ABAB design
Meta-analysis in educational research

211
212
212
213
214
215
217
219
220


CONTENTS

13 Action research
Introduction
Defining action research
Principles and characteristics of action
research

Action research as critical praxis
Procedures for action research
Some practical and theoretical
matters
Conclusion

226
226
228
231
234
239
241

Part 4
Strategies for data collection and
researching

245
246
248
258
260
262
265

15 Interviews
Introduction
Conceptions of the interview
Purposes of the interview

Types of interview
Planning interview-based research
procedures
Group interviewing
Focus groups
The non-directive interview and the
focused interview
Telephone interviewing
Ethical issues in interviewing

294
297
297
298
300
300
302
302
303

17 Observation

14 Questionnaires
Ethical issues
Approaching the planning of a
questionnaire
Types of questionnaire items
The layout of the questionnaire
Piloting the questionnaire
Postal questionnaires

Processing questionnaire data

Procedures in eliciting, analysing and
authenticating accounts
Network analyses of qualitative data
What makes a good network?
Discourse analysis
Analysing social episodes
Account gathering in educational
research: an example
Problems in gathering and
analysing accounts
Strengths of the ethogenic approach
A note on stories

267
267
268
270
273
287
288
289
290
292

16 Accounts
Introduction
293
The ethogenic approach

294
Characteristics of accounts and episodes 294

Structured observation
Critical incidents
Naturalistic observation
Ethical considerations
Conclusion

306
310
310
314
315

18 Tests
Parametric and non-parametric tests
Norm-referenced, criterion-referenced
and domain-referenced tests
Commercially produced tests
and researcher-produced tests
Constructing a test
Devising a pretest and post-test
Reliability and validity of tests
Ethical issues in preparing for tests
Computerized adaptive testing

317
318
319

321
334
334
334
335

19 Personal constructs
Introduction
Characteristics of the method
‘Elicited’ versus ‘provided’ constructs
Allotting elements to constructs
Laddering and pyramid constructions
Grid administration and analysis
Procedures in grid administration
Procedures in grid analysis
Strengths of repertory grid technique
Difficulties in the use of repertory
grid technique

337
337
338
339
341
341
341
342
344
345


ix


x

CONTENTS

Some examples of the use of repertory
grid in educational research
346
Grid technique and audio/video lesson
recording
347
20 Multi-dimensional measurement
Introduction
Elementary linkage analysis:
an example
Steps in elementary linkage analysis
Cluster analysis: an example
Factor analysis: an example
Multi-dimensional tables
Multi-dimensional data: some words
on notation
Degrees of freedom
A note on multilevel modelling

349
349
350
351

354
364
365
367
369

21 Role-playing
Introduction
Role-playing versus deception:
the argument
Role-playing versus deception:
the evidence

370
372
373

Role-playing in educational settings
374
The uses of role-playing
375
Strengths and weaknesses of role-playing
and other simulation exercises
377
Role-playing in an educational setting:
an example
378
Evaluating role-playing and other
simulation exercises
379

Part 5
Recent developments in educational
research
22 Recent developments
The Internet
Simulations
Fuzzy logic
Geographical Information Systems
Needs analysis
Evidence-based education

383
385
389
389
390
394

Notes
Bibliography
Index

396
407
438


Boxes

1.1

1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
1.8
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
4.1
4.2
4.3

5.1
7.1
7.2

The subjective—objective dimension

Alternative bases for interpreting
social reality
The functions of science
The hypothesis
Stages in the development of a science
An eight-stage model of the scientific
method
A classroom episode
Differing approaches to the study of
behaviour
The costs/benefits ratio
Guidelines for reasonably informed
consent
Close encounters of a researcher kind
Conditions and guarantees proffered
for a school-based research project
Negotiating access checklist
Absolute ethical principles in social
research
An extreme case of deception
Ethical principles for the guidance of
action researchers
An ethical code: an illustration
Elements of research styles
Statistics available for different types
of data
A matrix for planning research
A planning sequence for research
A planning matrix for research
Determining the size of a random

sample
Sample size, confidence levels and
sampling error
Distribution of sample means
showing the spread of a selection of
sample means around the population
mean
Principal sources of bias in life history
research
Some historical interrelations between
men, movements and institutions
A typology of life histories and their
modes of presentation

7
9
11
15
16
16
21
35
50
51
54
56
57

8.1
8.2

8.3
8.4

9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4
9.5
10.1
10.2
10.3
10.4

58
64
10.5
68
71
78
81
83
89
90

12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4

94


13.1
13.2

95

14.1
14.2

96

15.1

133

15.2

159

15.3

166

15.4

Stages in the planning of a survey
Types of developmental research
Advantages of cohort over cross-sectional
designs
The characteristics, strengths and

weaknesses of longitudinal,
cross-sectional, trend analysis, and
retrospective longitudinal studies
Possible advantages of case study
Nisbet and Watt’s (1984) strengths and
weaknesses of case study
A typology of observation studies
The case study and problems of selection
Continua of data collection, types and
analysis in case study research
Common measures of relationship
Correlation scatter diagrams
A line diagram to indicate curvilinearity
Visualization of correlation of 0.65
between reading grade and arithmetic
grade
Correlations between the various
estimates of academic rank
The effects of randomization
The ABAB design
An ABAB design in an educational
setting
Class size and learning in
well-controlled and poorly controlled
studies
Action research in classroom and school
A model of emancipatory action
research for organizational change
A flow chart technique for question
planning

A flow chart for the planning of a postal
survey
Attributes of ethnographers as
interviewers
Summary of relative merits of
interview versus questionnaire
Strengths and weaknesses of different
types of interview
The selection of response mode

170
175
177

178
184
184
186
189
190
192
194
198

201
203
214
220
221


225
234
236
247
264
268
269
271
278


xii

BOXES

16.1
16.2
16.3
16.4
16.5
16.6

16.7
17.1
18.1
18.2
19.1
19.2
19.3
19.4

19.5
19.6
20.1
20.2
20.3
20.4
20.5
20.6

Principles in the ethogenic approach
Account gathering
Experience sampling method
Concepts in children’s talk
‘Ain’t nobody can talk about things
being about theirselves’
Parents and teachers: divergent
viewpoints on children’s communicative
competence
Justification of objective systematic
observation in classroom settings
A structured observation schedule
A matrix of test items
Compiling elements of test items
Eliciting constructs and constructing a
repertory grid
Allotting elements to constructs: three
methods
Laddering
Elements
Difference score for constructs

Grid matrix
Rank ordering of ten children on seven
constructs
Intercorrelations between seven personal
constructs
The structuring of relationships
among the seven personal constructs
Central profiles (percentage occurrence)
at 12-cluster levels
Factor analysis of responsibility for
stress items
Factor analysis of the occupational
stress items

294
295
296
299

20.7

301

20.9
20.10
20.11
20.12
20.13

302

303
307
323
323

20.8

20.14
20.15

338

20.16

340
342
343
343
344

20.17

350
351
351
352
355
356

20.18

21.1
21.2
21.3
21.4
21.5
22.1
22.2

Factor analysis of the occupational
satisfaction items
Correlations between (dependent)
stress and (independent) satisfaction
factors and canonical variates
Biographical data and stress factors
Students’ perceptions of social episodes
Perception of social episodes
Person concept coding system
Reliability co-efficients for peer
descriptions
Sex, voting preference and social class: a
three-way classification table
Sex, voting preference and social class: a
three-way notational classification
Expected frequencies in sex, voting
preference and social class
Expected frequencies assuming that
sex is independent of social class and
voting preference
Sex and voting preference: a two-way
classification table

Dimensions of role-play methods
The Stanford Prison experiment
A flow chart for using role-play
Critical factors in a role-play: smoking
and young people
Categorization of responses to the four
video extracts
Geographical Information Systems in
secondary schools
Location of home postcodes using
Geographical Information Systems

358

359
359
361
362
363
363
365
366
367

368
368
371
372
375
376

378
390
391


Acknowledgements

Our thanks are due to the following publishers and authors for permission to include materials in
the text:
Academic Press Inc. London, for Bannister, D.
and Mair, J.M.M. (1968) The Evaluation of
Personal Constructs, Box 19.2; words from
LeCompte, M., Millroy, W.L. and Preissle, J.
(eds) (1992) The Handbook of Qualitative
Research in Education.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Wokingham,
for words from Boyd-Barrett, D. and Scanlon,
E., (1991) Computers and Learning.
Allyn & Bacon, Boston, Massachusetts, for
words from Bogdan, R.G. and Biklen, S.K.
(1992) Qualitative Research for Education
(second edition).
Associated Book Publishers Ltd., London, for
Fransella, F. (1975) Need to Change? Box 19.3.
Carfax Publishing Co., Abingdon, for
McCormick, J. and Solman, R. (1992) Teachers’ attributions of responsibility for occupational stress and satisfaction: an organisational perspective, Educational Studies, 18
(2), 201–22, Box 20.5, Box 20.6, Box 20.7;
Halpin, D. et al. (1990) Teachers’ perceptions
of the effects of inservice education, British
Educational Research Journal, 16 (2), 163–

77, Box 10.5.
Cassell, London, for words from Tymms, P.
(1996) Theories, models and simulations:
school effectiveness at an impasse, in J.Gray,
D.Reynolds, C.T.Fitz-Gibbon and D.Jesson
(eds) Merging Traditions: the Future of Research on School Effectiveness and School
Improvement, 121–35.
Centre for Applied Research in Education, Norwich, East Anglia, for words from
MacDonald, B. (1987) Research and Action
in the Context of Policing, paper commissioned by the Police Federation.

Corwin Press, Newbury Park, California, for
words from Millman, J. and DarlingHammond, L. (eds), (1991) The New Handbook of Teacher Evaluation.
Countryside Commission, Cheltenham, for
Davidson, J. (1970) Outdoor Recreation Surveys: the Design and Use of Questionnaires
for Site Surveys, Box 8.1.
Deakin University Press, Deakin, Australia, for
words from Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R.
(1981) The Action Research Planner, and
Kemmis, S. and McTaggart, R. (1992:8 and
21–8) The Action Research Planner (third
edition).
Elsevier Science Ltd, for words from Haig, B.D.
(1997) Feminist research methodology, in J.P.
Keeves (ed.) Educational Research, Methodology, and Measurement: an International
Handbook, Oxford: Elsevier Science Ltd,
222–31.
Forgas, J.P. (1976) Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, 34 (2), 199–209, Box 20.10.
George Allen & Unwin, London, for Plummer,
K. (1983) Documents of Life: Introduction

to the Problems and Literature of a Humanistic Method, Box 2.8; Whyte, W.F. (1982)
Interviewing in field research. In R.G.Burgess
(ed.) Field Research: a Sourcebook and Field
Manual, 111–22.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, for
Tuckman, B.W. (1972) Conducting Educational Research, Box 16.5, and Box 15.2.
Harper & Row Publishers, London, for Cohen,
L. (1977) Educational Research in Classrooms and Schools, Box 20.1, Box 20.2, and
Box 20.3.
Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, London,


xiv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

for Hoinville, G. and Jowell, R. (1978) Survey Research Practice, Box 8.1.
Hodder & Stoughton, Sevenoaks, for words from
Frankfort-Nachmias, C. and Nachmias, D.
(1992) Research Methods in the Social Sciences.
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, for words from
Reynolds, P.D. (1979) Ethical Dilemmas and
Social Science Research.
Kogan Page, London, for words from Norris,
N. (1990) Understanding Educational Evaluation.
Krejcie, R.V and Morgan, D.W. (1970) Determining sample size for research activities, Educational and Psychological Measurement 30,
609, copyright Sage Publications Inc, reprinted
by permission of Sage Publications Inc.
Kvale, S. (1996) Interviews, pp. 30, 88, 145,
copyright Sage Publications Inc., reprinted by

permission of Sage Publications Inc.
Lincoln, Y.S. and Guba, E.G. (1985) words from
Naturalistic Inquiry, copyright Sage Publications Inc., reprinted by permission of Sage
Publications Inc.
Methuen & Co, London, for words from
Shipman, M.D. (1974) Inside a Curriculum
Project.
Mies, M. (1993) for words from Towards a
methodology for feminist research, in M.
Hammersley (ed.) Social Research: Philosophy, Politics and Practice, reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc.
Multilingual Matters Ltd, Clevedon, for figures
from Parsons, E., Chalkley, B. and Jones, A.
(1996) The role of Geographic Information
Systems in the study of parental choice and
secondary school catchments, Evaluation and
Research in Education, 10 (1), 23–34; for
words from Stronach, I. and Morris, B. (1994)
Polemical notes on educational evaluation in
an age of ‘policy hysteria’, Evaluation and
Research in Education, 8 (1 & 2), 5–19.
Open Books, London and Shepton Mallet, for
Bennett, S.N. (1976), Teaching Styles and
Pupil Progress, Box 20.4.
Open University Press, Milton Keynes, for
words from Bell, J. (1987) Doing Your Re-

search Project; Hopkins, D. (1985) A Teacher’s Guide to Classroom Research; Pilliner,
A. (1973) Experiment in Educational Research, E 341, Block 5; Rose, D. and Sullivan,
O. (1993) Introducing Data Analysis for Social Scientists.
Parsons, E., Chalkley, B. and Jones, A. (1996)

The role of Geographic Information Systems
in the study of parental choice and secondary school catchments, Evaluation and Research in Education, 10 (1), 23–34, published
by Multilingual Matters Ltd, Clevedon,
Boxes 22.1 and 22.2.
Patton, M.Q. (1980) Qualitative Evaluation
Methods, p. 206, copyright Sage Publications
Inc., reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc.
Peter Francis Publishers, Dereham, Norfolk, for
material from Morrison, K.R.B. (1993) Planning and Accomplishing School-Centred
Evaluation.
Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for
words from Denzin, N.K. (1989) The Research Act (third edition).
Routledge, London, for words from Hitchcock,
G. and Hughes, D. (1989) Research and the
Teacher: a Qualitative Introduction to
School-based Research, Box 7.2; words from
Hitchcock, G. and Hughes, D. (1995) Research and the Teacher (second edition);
words from Carspecken, P.F. (1996) Critical
Ethnography in Educational Research;
Wragg, E.C. (1994) An Introduction to Classroom Observation.
Taylor & Francis, London, for words and figure from: Zuber-Skerritt, O. (ed.) (1996) New
Directions in Action Research, published by
Falmer, pp. 99 and 17; James, M. (1993)
Evaluation for policy: rationality and political reality: the paradigm case of PRAISE, in
R.G. Burgess (ed.) Educational Research and
Evaluation for Policy and Practice, published
by Falmer.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, for words
from Diener, E. and Crandall R. (1978) Ethics in Social and Behavioral Research.



Introduction

It is six years since the fourth edition of Research
Methods in Education was published and we
are indebted to RoutledgeFalmer for the opportunity to produce a fifth edition. The book continues to be received very favourably worldwide
and we should like to thank reviewers for their
constructive comments which have helped in the
production of this fifth edition. In particular, this
has led to the substantial increase in the coverage of qualitative approaches to educational
research, which has resulted in a fairer balance
to the book. This new edition constitutes the
largest reshaping of the book to date, and includes a reorganization of the material into five
parts that catch the range of issues in planning
educational research: (a) the context of educational research; (b) planning educational research; (c) styles of educational research; (d)
strategies for data collection and researching;
(e) recent developments in educational research.
Much of the material from the previous editions
has been relocated within these five parts to
make them more accessible to the reader, and
the careful titling of chapters is designed to increase this accessibility. Within these main parts
the book includes considerable additional material to give this edition greater balance and
coverage, and to provide examples and greater
practical guidance for those who are planning
and conducting educational research. This edition includes, also, guidance on data analysis
within both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and issues in reporting research. In
particular the following are included:
Part One:
• additional material on interpretive, ethnographic, interactionist, phenomenological and
qualitative perspectives;


• additional material on curricular and evaluative research;
• new material on critical perspectives on educational research, including ideology critique
from Habermas and the Frankfurt School,
and feminist perspectives;
• new material on research, politics and policymaking.
Part Two:
• an entirely new part that is designed to assist
novice researchers to design and conduct educational research, from its earliest stages to
its completion. It is envisaged that this part
will be particularly useful for higher education students who are undertaking educational research as part of their course requirements.
Part Three:
• considerable new material on naturalistic,
qualitative and ethnographic approaches, including critical ethnographies;
• additional material on action research, aligning it to the critical approaches set out in Part
One;
• new material and chapters on sampling, reliability and validity, including qualitative approaches to educational research;
• additional explanations of frequently used
concepts in quantitative educational research,
for example statistical significance, correlations, regression, curvilinearity, and an indication of particular statistics to use for data
analysis;
• new and additional material on event-history
analysis, meta-analysis and multilevel modelling;


xvi

INTRODUCTION

• an introduction to Nominal Group Technique

and Delphi techniques;
• additional material on case study planning
and implementation;
• additional material on data analysis for qualitative data, e.g. content analysis and coding,
analysis of field notes, cognitive mapping,
patterning, critical events and incidents, analytic induction and constant comparison.
Part Four:
• new material and chapters on questionnaire
design and construction, interviews, focus
groups, telephone interviewing, observation,
the laddering and pyramid designs of personal
constructs, speech acts, and stories, including analysis of data derived from these instruments for data collection;
• a new chapter on testing, test construction,
item response theory, item analysis, item difficulty and discriminability and computer
adaptive testing;
• additional material on contingency tables and
statistical significance.
Part Five:
• a new chapter on recent developments in educational research, including material on
Internet usage, simulations, fuzzy logic, Geographical Information Systems, needs analysis/assessment and evidence-based education.
By careful cross-referencing and the provision
of explanations and examples we have attempted to give both considerable coherence to
the book and to provide researchers with clear
and deliberately practical guidance on all stages
of the research process, from planning to
operationalization, ethics, methodology, sampling, reliability and validity, instrumentation
and data collection, data analysis and reporting. We have attempted to show throughout how
practices derive from, and are located within,

the contexts of educational research that are set

out in Part One. The guidance that we provide
is couched in a view of educational research as
an ethical activity, and care has been taken to
ensure that ethical issues, in addition to the specific chapter on ethics, are discussed throughout the book. The significance of the ethical dimension of educational research is underlined
by the relocation of the chapter on ethics to very
early on in this edition.
We have deliberately reduced the more extended discussion of published examples in response to feedback on previous editions from
reviewers, but we have included detailed backup
reference to these and additional references to
updated examples for the reader to follow up
and consult at will.
We are joined by Keith Morrison for the authorship of this new edition. We welcome the
additions and amendments that he has made, in
the firm knowledge that these will guarantee the
book’s continuing success. Overall, this edition
provides a balanced, structured and comprehensive introduction to educational research that
sets out both its principles and practice for researchers in a user-friendly way, and which is
guided by the principle of Occam’s razor: all
things being equal, the simplest explanation is
frequently the best, or, as Einstein put it, one
should make matters as simple as possible but
no simpler! Balancing simplicity and the inescapable complexity of educational research is a
high-wire act; we hope to have provided a useful introduction to this in the fifth edition of
Research Methods in Education.
Louis Cohen, Ph.D., D.Litt., is Emeritus Professor of Education at Loughborough University.
Lawrence Manion, Ph.D., is former Principal
Lecturer in Music in Didsbury School of Education, Manchester Metropolitan University.
Keith Morrison, Ph.D., is Professor of Education at the Inter-University Institute of Macau.



Part one

The context of educational
research

This part locates the research enterprise in several contexts. It commences with positivist and
scientific contexts of research and then proceeds to show the strengths and weaknesses
of such traditions for educational research. As
an alternative paradigm, the cluster of approaches that can loosely be termed interpretive, naturalistic, phenomenological,
interactionist and ethnographic are brought together and their strengths and weaknesses for
educational research are also examined. The
rise of critical theory as a paradigm in which
educational research is conducted has been
meteoric and its implications for the research
undertaking are addressed in several ways in
this chapter, resonating with curriculum research and feminist research. Indeed critical
theory links the conduct of educational research
with politics and policy-making, and this is

reflected in the discussions here of research
and evaluation, arguing how much educational
research has become evaluative in nature. That
educational research serves a political agenda
is seen in the later sections of this part, though
the links between educational research and
policy-making are typically far from straightforward. The intention in this section is to introduce the reader to different research traditions,
and, rather than advocating slavish adherence
to a single research paradigm, we suggest that
‘fitness for purpose’ must be the guiding principle: different research paradigms are suitable
for different research purposes and questions.

Different research traditions spawn different
styles of research; researchers must make informed choices of research traditions, mindful
of the political agendas that their research might
serve.



1

The nature of inquiry1

Introduction
This chapter explores the context of educational
research. It sets out three significant lenses
through which to examine the practice of research: (a) scientific and positivistic methodologies; (b) naturalistic and interpretive methodologies; (c) methodologies from critical theory.
Our analysis takes as a starting point an important notion from Hitchcock and Hughes
(1995:21) who suggest that ontological assumptions give rise to epistemological assumptions;
these, in turn, give rise to methodological considerations; and these, in turn, give rise to issues
of instrumentation and data collection. This view
moves us beyond regarding research methods
as simply a technical exercise; it recognizes that
research is concerned with understanding the
world and that this is informed by how we view
our world(s), what we take understanding to be,
and what we see as the purposes of understanding. The chapter outlines the ontological, epistemological and methodological premises of the
three lenses and examines their strengths and
weaknesses. In so doing it recognizes that education, educational research, politics and decision-making are inextricably intertwined, a view
which the lens of critical theory, for example,
brings sharply into focus in its discussions of
curriculum decision-making. Hence this introductory chapter draws attention to the politics

of educational research and the implications that
this has for undertaking research (e.g. the move
towards applied and evaluative research and
away from ‘pure’ research).

The search for truth
People have long been concerned to come to
grips with their environment and to understand

the nature of the phenomena it presents to their
senses. The means by which they set out to
achieve these ends may be classified into three
broad categories: experience, reasoning and research (Mouly, 1978). Far from being independent and mutually exclusive, however, these categories must be seen as complementary and overlapping, features most readily in evidence where
solutions to complex modern problems are
sought.
In our endeavours to come to terms with the
problems of day-to-day living, we are heavily
dependent upon experience and authority and
their value in this context should not be underestimated. Nor should their respective roles be
overlooked in the specialist sphere of research
where they provide richly fertile sources of hypotheses and questions about the world, though,
of course, it must be remembered that as tools
for uncovering ultimate truth they have decided
limitations. The limitations of personal experience in the form of common-sense knowing, for
instance, can quickly be exposed when compared
with features of the scientific approach to problem-solving. Consider, for example, the striking
differences in the way in which theories are used.
Laypeople base them on haphazard events and
use them in a loose and uncritical manner. When
they are required to test them, they do so in a

selective fashion, often choosing only that evidence that is consistent with their hunches and
ignoring that which is counter to them. Scientists, by contrast, construct their theories carefully and systematically. Whatever hypotheses
they formulate have to be tested empirically so
that their explanations have a firm basis in fact.
And there is the concept of control distinguishing the layperson’s and the scientist’s attitude
to experience. Laypeople generally make no


4

THE NATURE OF INQUIRY

attempt to control any extraneous sources of influence when trying to explain an occurrence.
Scientists, on the other hand, only too conscious
of the multiplicity of causes for a given occurrence, resort to definite techniques and procedures to isolate and test the effect of one or more
of the alleged causes. Finally, there is the difference of attitude to the relationships among phenomena. Laypeople’s concerns with such relationships are loose, unsystematic and uncontrolled. The chance occurrence of two events in
close proximity is sufficient reason to predicate
a causal link between them. Scientists, however,
display a much more serious professional concern with relationships and only as a result of
rigorous experimentation will they postulate a
relationship between two phenomena.
The second category by means of which people attempt to comprehend the world around
them, namely, reasoning, consists of three types:
deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and
the combined inductive—deductive approach.
Deductive reasoning is based on the syllogism
which was Aristotle’s great contribution to formal logic. In its simplest form the syllogism consists of a major premise based on an a priori or
self-evident proposition, a minor premise providing a particular instance, and a conclusion.
Thus:
All planets orbit the sun;

The earth is a planet;
Therefore the earth orbits the sun.

The assumption underlying the syllogism is that
through a sequence of formal steps of logic, from
the general to the particular, a valid conclusion
can be deduced from a valid premise. Its chief
limitation is that it can handle only certain kinds
of statement. The syllogism formed the basis of
systematic reasoning from the time of its inception until the Renaissance. Thereafter its effectiveness was diminished because it was no longer
related to observation and experience and became merely a mental exercise. One of the consequences of this was that empirical evidence as
the basis of proof was superseded by authority

and the more authorities one could quote, the
stronger one’s position became. Naturally, with
such abuse of its principal tool, science became
sterile.
The history of reasoning was to undergo a
dramatic change in the 1600s when Francis Bacon began to lay increasing stress on the observational basis of science. Being critical of the
model of deductive reasoning on the grounds
that its major premises were often preconceived
notions which inevitably bias the conclusions,
he proposed in its place the method of inductive reasoning by means of which the study of
a number of individual cases would lead to a
hypothesis and eventually to a generalization.
Mouly (1978) explains it like this: ‘His basic
premise was that if one collected enough data
without any preconceived notion about their
significance and orientation—thus maintaining
complete objectivity—inherent relationships

pertaining to the general case would emerge to
be seen by the alert observer.’ Bacon’s major
contribution to science was thus that he was
able to rescue it from the death-grip of the deductive method whose abuse had brought scientific progress to a standstill. He thus directed
the attention of scientists to nature for solutions to people’s problems, demanding empirical evidence for verification. Logic and authority in themselves were no longer regarded as
conclusive means of proof and instead became
sources of hypotheses about the world and its
phenomena.
Bacon’s inductive method was eventually followed by the inductive-deductive approach
which combines Aristotelian deduction with
Baconian induction. In Mouly’s words, this consisted of:
a back-and-forth movement in which the investigator first operates inductively from observations
to hypotheses, and then deductively from these
hypotheses to their implications, in order to check
their validity from the standpoint of compatibility with accepted knowledge. After revision, where
necessary, these hypotheses are submitted to further test through the collection of data specifically


TWO CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY

Although both deduction and induction have
their weaknesses, their contributions to the development of science are enormous and fall into
three categories: (1) the suggestion of hypotheses; (2) the logical development of these hypotheses; and (3) the clarification and interpretation of scientific findings and their synthesis
into a conceptual framework.
The third means by which we set out to discover truth is research. This has been defined
by Kerlinger (1970) as the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about the presumed relations among natural phenomena. Research
has three characteristics in particular which distinguish it from the first means of problem-solving identified earlier, namely, experience. First,
whereas experience deals with events occurring
in a haphazard manner, research is systematic
and controlled, basing its operations on the inductive-deductive model outlined above. Second, research is empirical. The scientist turns

to experience for validation. As Kerlinger puts
it, ‘subjective belief…must be checked against
objective reality. Scientists must always subject
their notions to the court of empirical inquiry
and test’. And, third, research is self-correcting. Not only does the scientific method have
built-in mechanisms to protect scientists from
error as far as is humanly possible, but also
their procedures and results are open to public
scrutiny by fellow professionals. As Mouly says,
‘This self corrective function is the most important single aspect of science, guaranteeing
that incorrect results will in time be found to
be incorrect and duly revised or discarded.’
Research is a combination of both experience
and reasoning and must be regarded as the most
successful approach to the discovery of truth,

particularly as far as the natural sciences are
concerned (Borg, 1963).2
Educational research has at the same time
absorbed two competing views of the social sciences—the established, traditional view and a
more recent interpretive view. The former holds
that the social sciences are essentially the same
as the natural sciences and are therefore concerned with discovering natural and universal
laws regulating and determining individual and
social behaviour; the latter view, however, while
sharing the rigour of the natural sciences and
the same concern of traditional social science to
describe and explain human behaviour, emphasizes how people differ from inanimate natural
phenomena and, indeed, from each other. These
contending views—and also their corresponding reflections in educational research—stem in

the first instance from different conceptions of
social reality and of individual and social behaviour. It will help our understanding of the
issues to be developed subsequently if we examine these in a little more detail.

Two conceptions of social reality
The two views of social science that we have
just identified represent strikingly different ways
of looking at social reality and are constructed
on correspondingly different ways of interpreting it. We can perhaps most profitably approach
these two conceptions of the social world by
examining the explicit and implicit assumptions
underpinning them. Our analysis is based on the
work of Burrell and Morgan (1979) who identified four sets of such assumptions.
First, there are assumptions of an ontological kind—assumptions which concern the very
nature or essence of the social phenomena being investigated. Thus, the authors ask, is social
reality external to individuals—imposing itself
on their consciousness from without—or is it
the product of individual consciousness? Is reality of an objective nature, or the result of individual cognition? Is it a given ‘out there’ in the
world, or is it created by one’s own mind?
These questions spring directly from what is

Chapter 1

designed to test their validity at the empirical level.
This dual approach is the essence of the modern
scientific method and marks the last stage of man’s
progress toward empirical science, a path that took
him through folklore and mysticism, dogma and
tradition, casual observation, and finally to systematic observation.
(Mouly, 1978)


5


6

THE NATURE OF INQUIRY

known in philosophy as the nominalist-realist
debate. The former view holds that objects of
thought are merely words and that there is no
independently accessible thing constituting the
meaning of a word. The realist position, however, contends that objects have an independent existence and are not dependent for it on
the knower.
The second set of assumptions identified by
Burrell and Morgan are of an epistemological
kind. These concern the very bases of knowledge—its nature and forms, how it can be acquired, and how communicated to other human beings. The authors ask whether ‘it is
possible to identify and communicate the nature of knowledge as being hard, real and capable of being transmitted in tangible form, or
whether knowledge is of a softer, more subjective, spiritual or even transcendental kind,
based on experience and insight of a unique
and essentially personal nature. The epistemological assumptions in these instances determine extreme positions on the issues of
whether knowledge is something which can be
acquired on the one hand, or is something
which has to be personally experienced on the
other’ (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). How one
aligns oneself in this particular debate profoundly affects how one will go about uncovering knowledge of social behaviour. The view
that knowledge is hard, objective and tangible
will demand of researchers an observer role,
together with an allegiance to the methods of
natural science; to see knowledge as personal,

subjective and unique, however, imposes on
researchers an involvement with their subjects
and a rejection of the ways of the natural scientist. To subscribe to the former is to be positivist; to the latter, anti-positivist.
The third set of assumptions concern human nature and, in particular, the relationship
between human beings and their environment.
Since the human being is both its subject and
object of study, the consequences for social
science of assumptions of this kind are indeed
far-reaching. Two images of human beings
emerge from such assumptions—the one

portrays them as responding mechanically to
their environment; the other, as initiators of
their own actions. Burrell and Morgan write
lucidly on the distinction:
Thus, we can identify perspectives in social science which entail a view of human beings responding in a mechanistic or even deterministic
fashion to the situations encountered in their
external world. This view tends to be one in
which human beings and their experiences are
regarded as products of the environment; one
in which humans are conditioned by their external circumstances. This extreme perspective
can be contrasted with one which attributes to
human beings a much more creative role: with
a perspective where ‘free will’ occupies the centre of the stage; where man [sic] is regarded as
the creator of his environment, the controller
as opposed to the controlled, the master rather
than the marionette. In these two extreme
views of the relationship between human beings and their environment, we are identifying
a great philosophical debate between the advocates of determinism on the one hand and
voluntarism on the other. Whilst there are social theories which adhere to each of these extremes, the assumptions of many social scientists are pitched somewhere in the range between.

(Burrell and Morgan, 1979)

It would follow from what we have said so far
that the three sets of assumptions identified
above have direct implications for the methodological concerns of researchers, since the contrasting ontologies, epistemologies and models
of human beings will in turn demand different
research methods. Investigators adopting an objectivist (or positivist) approach to the social
world and who treat it like the world of natural
phenomena as being hard, real and external to
the individual will choose from a range of traditional options—surveys, experiments, and the
like. Others favouring the more subjectivist (or
anti-positivist) approach and who view the
social world as being of a much softer, personal
and humanly created kind will select from a
comparable range of recent and emerging


TWO CONCEPTIONS OF SOCIAL REALITY

Box 1.1
The subjective—objective dimension

Source Burrell and Morgan, 1979

interprets the world in which he or she finds
himself or herself. The approach now takes on
a qualitative as well as quantitative aspect. As
Burrell and Morgan observe,
The emphasis in extreme cases tends to be placed
upon the explanation and understanding of what

is unique and particular to the individual rather
than of what is general and universal. This approach questions whether there exists an external
reality worthy of study. In methodological terms
it is an approach which emphasizes the relativistic nature of the social world.
(Burrell and Morgan, 1979)

Such a view is echoed by Kirk and Miller
(1986:14). In its emphasis on the particular and
individual this approach to understanding individual behaviour may be termed idiographic.
In this review of Burrell and Morgan’s analysis of the ontological, epistemological, human
and methodological assumptions underlying two
ways of conceiving social reality, we have laid
the foundations for a more extended study of
the two contrasting perspectives evident in the
practices of researchers investigating human
behaviour and, by adoption, educational problems. Box 1.1 summarizes these assumptions in
graphic form along a subjective—objective
dimension. It identifies the four sets of
assumptions by using terms we have adopted in

Chapter 1

techniques—accounts, participant observation
and personal constructs, for example.
Where one subscribes to the view which treats
the social world like the natural world—as if it
were a hard, external and objective reality—then
scientific investigation will be directed at analysing the relationships and regularities between
selected factors in that world. It will be pre-dominantly quantitative. ‘The concern’, say Burrell
and Morgan, ‘is with the identification and definition of these elements and with the discovery

of ways in which these relationships can be expressed. The methodological issues of importance are thus the concepts themselves, their
measurement and the identification of underlying themes. This perspective expresses itself most
forcefully in a search for universal laws which
explain and govern the reality which is being
observed’ (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). An approach characterized by procedures and methods designed to discover general laws may be
referred to as nomothetic.
However, if one favours the alternative view
of social reality which stresses the importance
of the subjective experience of individuals in the
creation of the social world, then the search for
understanding focuses upon different issues and
approaches them in different ways. The principal concern is with an understanding of the way
in which the individual creates, modifies and

7


8

THE NATURE OF INQUIRY

the text and by which they are known in the
literature of social philosophy.
Each of the two perspectives on the study of
human behaviour outlined above has profound
implications for research in classrooms and
schools. The choice of problem, the formulation of questions to be answered, the characterization of pupils and teachers, methodological concerns, the kinds of data sought and their
mode of treatment—all will be influenced or
determined by the viewpoint held. Some idea of
the considerable practical implications of the

contrasting views can be gained by examining
Box 1.2 which compares them with respect to a
number of critical issues within a broadly societal
and organizational framework. Implications of
the two perspectives for research into classrooms
and schools will unfold in the course of the text.
Because of its significance to the epistemological basis of social science and its consequences
for educational research, we devote much of the
rest of this chapter to the positivist and antipositivist debate.

Positivism
Although positivism has been a recurrent
theme in the history of western thought from
the Ancient Greeks to the present day, it is historically associated with the nineteenth-century French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who
was the first thinker to use the word for a
philosophical position (Beck, 1979). Here explanation proceeds by way of scientific description (Acton, 1975). In his study of the history of the philosophy and methodology of
science, Oldroyd (1986) says:
It was Comte who consciously ‘invented’ the new
science of society and gave it the name to which
we are accustomed. He thought that it would be
possible to establish it on a ‘positive’ basis, just
like the other sciences, which served as necessary
preliminaries to it. For social phenomena were
to be viewed in the light of physiological (or biological) laws and theories and investigated empirically, just like physical phenomena. Likewise,
biological phenomena were to be viewed in the

light of chemical laws and theories; and so on
down the line.
(Oldroyd, 1986)


Comte’s position was to lead to a general doctrine of positivism which held that all genuine
knowledge is based on sense experience and can
only be advanced by means of observation and
experiment. Following in the empiricist tradition, it limited inquiry and belief to what can be
firmly established and in thus abandoning metaphysical and speculative attempts to gain knowledge by reason alone, the movement developed
what has been described as a ‘tough-minded
orientation to facts and natural phenomena’
(Beck, 1979).
Since Comte, the term positivism has been
used in such different ways by philosophers and
social scientists that it is difficult to assign it a
precise and consistent meaning. Moreover, the
term has also been applied to the doctrine of a
school of philosophy known as ‘logical positivism’.3 The central belief of the logical positivists
is that the meaning of a statement is, or is given
by, the method of its verification. It follows
from this that unverifiable statements are held
to be meaningless, the utterances of traditional
metaphysics and theology being included in this
class.
However the term positivism is used by philosophers and social scientists, a residual meaning is always present and this derives from an
acceptance of natural science as the paradigm
of human knowledge (Duncan, 1968). This includes the following connected suppositions
which have been identified by Giddens (1975).
First, the methodological procedures of natural
science may be directly applied to the social sciences. Positivism here implies a particular
stance concerning the social scientist as an observer of social reality. Second, the end-product
of investigations by social scientists can be formulated in terms parallel to those of natural
science. This means that their analyses must be
expressed in laws or law-like generalizations of

the same kind that have been established in
relation to natural phenomena. Positivism here