Lesson Introduction
According to our model blow, you are now on the third step of conducting an action research project – plan an action. In the previous lesson, you’ve been asked to think about the action already. In this class, you will plan your research carefully to be prepared for the “hands-on”.
Research Plan
Now, you have already decided your research focus and specified your research questions, and envisioned the action. You may feel like you have had enough of thinking and being eager to implement your action. Anyhow, “action” is the soul of action research. Hold on, there is another thing that you need to think about – your research plan. Any construction needs a blue print. So is action research. Conducting a research study is complicated. There are a lot of things that you need to think about and plan out ahead of time. For example, you will have limited time to conduct the research; you may have constrains to access your subjects; and you may have to implement your action in a specific time slot. There are questions that you need to answer to plan out your action research, such as 1) how are you going to schedule your research? 2) What is your study design? Are you going to employ a qualitative design or a quantitative design? 3) How will the subjects be recruited or selected?
Research plan is often called research design. It is the glue that holds a research project together. A design is used to structure the research, and to show how all of the major parts of the research project - the samples, measures, treatments or programs, and methods -- work together to try to address the central research questions. If you want to know more about research design, read What is research design 
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As we have discussed in the first class, there are various research types. They are normally categorized under three major groups: 1) qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods study. Creswell (2003) recommended a general framework as shown in the following table. We will also use this framework for our class.
Quantitative |
Qualitative |
Mixed Methods |
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It is useful to organize the methods by their degree of predetermined nature, their fuse of closed-ended versus open-ended questioning, and their focus for numerical versus non-numerical data analysis.
1. Quantitative research methods use close-ended questions. The collected data can be performance data, attitude data, observational data, or census data. The data analysis is statistically. For collecting observation data, the researcher can observe the subject’s behavior by using a behavioral checklist.
2. Qualitative research methods use open-ended questions. The collected data can be interview data, observation data, document data, and audiovisual data. The data analysis will go through text or image analysis.
3. Mixed methods research methods can include both open- and closed- ended questions. The collected data are multiple forms of data drawing on all possibilities. The data analysis can be both statistical and text analysis.
The data collection methods of action research can be quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. In addition, the data can be collected through survey, interview, observation, or archives. Different research methods illuminate particular aspects of a situation. The mixed-methods approach is quiet popular in action research.