Best Practices

Social Science research that is evaluative is becoming more important and can be used for many different areas of research, including social welfare, effectiveness of education and clinical trials for medication. This book focuses on eight major areas of usability and touches on how the need for usable social science is changing.

Investigating University-School Partnerships: A Volume in Professional Development School Research, the fourth book in the PDS Research Series developed by the same editors, includes a collection of organized papers that represent the best and latest examples of practitioner thinking, research, and program design and evaluation in the field at the national level.

Learning can no longer be divided into a place and time to
acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply the knowledge acquired (the
workplace). This new and important book gathers the latest research from around the globe in
this dynamic field and highlights such topics as: lifelong learning for physicians, faculty learning in online courses, and more.

The authors seek to better understand why faculty do or do not engage in the research-practice cycle. Specifically, they employ expectancy value theory and examine the success and value beliefs motivating individuals' choices.

In this study, the authors used expectancy theory to examine key factors that motivate business faculty to conduct research. The survey results, from 320 faculty members at 10 business schools, showed that faculty members who assign higher importance ratings to both the extrinsic and the intrinsic rewards of research exhibit higher research productivity.

This guide is for helping faculty begin a research project about conducting research for current and best practices. The guide includes helpful resources, search tips and professional associations that could be helpful in the research process.

This PowerPoint presentation from the Director of the Survey Research Center at Penn State guides potential researchers through the process of putting together a survey-based research project.