SED 589: Seminar: Research & Practice in Positive Behavior Supports: Research Strategies

Use the guide below to walk you step by step through the research process with everything from developing a question to evaluating your sources. Reach out to a librarian for assistant at any point in the process! 

Keep track of the varied search-terms you might use:

• positive behavior interventions and support
• behavior management 
• classroom management
• positive behavior support
   

Quality Questions:

1. Is the author an expert in their field? Who sponsored the article?
2. Is it current? What is the pub. date?
3. Is it peer reviewed? 

Content Questions:

1. What is the research question?
2. What is the primary methodology used?
3. How was the data gathered?
4. How is the data presented?
5. What are the main conclusions?
6. Are these conclusions reasonable?
7. What theories are used to support the researcher's conclusions?

Take notes on the articles as you read them and identify any themes or concepts that may apply to your research question.

This sample template (below) may also be useful for critically reading and organizing your articles.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a great tool to streamline the research process with ethical usage. AI is a useful tool to locate related papers in databases, brainstorming ideas, generating practice prompts or quizzes, proof-reading content, summarizing or distilling content into basic language, building paper outlines, among other tasks. It's not great when it comes to writing a full paper from a prompt, copy editing, or analysis. 

Explore some of the tools below and check out the research guide to learn more about AI.