Research Design and Students

Participants and Instruments The anticipated participants in the study I would like to conduct (the effect of teaching diagramming on students learning the basics of English grammar) are 6th grade students of predominantly white students in the outlying DC area of Winchester, VA. This is a suburban community about an hour outside of Washington, DC. The approximate number of students involved in this study will be about 200 students from seven different middle schools in Winchester.

The demographics of the community are predominantly white, which is why the ethnicity of the sample is predominantly white. This will also reduce the number of variables that could inadvertently impact the DV.

Proportional stratified sampling will be used so that the percentage of the population's boys and girls are reflected in the sample used in the study, unless identifying subgroups within the population appears to be beyond the scope of this study, in which case a simple random sample will be chosen (Chapter Five: Selecting a Sample, n.d.; Cheat Sheet Topic: Sampling, n.d.).

The instruments that will be used to collect data in this study will be surveys, tests and interviews with students and teachers, which will allow for both quantitative and qualitative assessments to be made. Surveys will be used to provide quantitative data. These will consist of simple closed-questions that may be answered either yes or no or by supplying a numeric response from one to five. The Likert scale may be used to assess these responses (Cresswell, 2007).

Questions could include: 1) Rate the effectiveness of sentence diagramming from 1 to 5, 1 being not very effective and 5 being very effective. Tests will be uses to provide quantitative data. These will give a formal assessment type of reading on the effectiveness of sentence diagramming and may be measured against a control group's test scores (the control group of participants will receive no diagramming and aside from teaching will be similar in demographics and ability to the experimental group). Interviews will be conducted with teachers and.