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Based on the standard criteria for evaluating research questions, diagnose the problems with Dr. Lin's selection method and explain how she should modify her evaluation to align with proper scientific research practices.
Case context: Dr. Sarah Lin is planning a new study. She has generated ten potential research questions about social media use and teenage anxiety. However, she only has the funding and time to investigate one of these questions. To decide which one to choose, she intends to evaluate them. She decides to select the question that she personally finds most fun to think about, regardless of what other researchers care about, and that would require a massive, multi-million dollar national longitudinal survey, even though her lab only has a budget of five thousand dollars.
Question: Based on the standard criteria for evaluating research questions, diagnose the problems with Dr. Lin's selection method and explain how she should modify her evaluation to align with proper scientific research practices.
Sample answer: Dr. Lin is failing to use the correct criteria for evaluating research questions. First, instead of selecting a question based on personal fun, she must evaluate the question's 'interestingness to the broader scientific community'. Second, instead of pursuing a question requiring a multi-million dollar study that far exceeds her five thousand dollar budget, she must evaluate the 'feasibility' of successfully answering the question given her actual constraints.
Key points:
- Dr. Lin's personal interest is not a substitute for interestingness to the broader scientific community.
- The proposed longitudinal survey is not feasible under her budget constraint.
- She must systematically evaluate the questions using interestingness and feasibility to select which one to pursue.
Rubric: The response must identify that Dr. Lin's current criteria are incorrect. It must state that she should replace her personal interest with the criterion of 'interestingness to the broader scientific community', and replace the unfeasible study plan with the criterion of 'feasibility of successfully answering the question' based on her limited resources.
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Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition @ KPU
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Feasibility of a Research Question
Interestingness of a Research Question
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