As in reaching the goal of Educational Psychology, or Psychology of Education, specific tailored researches are THAT important.
For that, we have to be specific on the type of Research we are going to use. Different type of Research serves us different purposes.
There are three main research types.
Descriptive Research
This is the Type of Research which helps us answering questions of 'what'. As the name suggests, it attempts to describe one phenomenon. Descriptive Research can be quantified (with Qualitative Research Method), and it can also be qualified (with Qualitative Research Method).
Questionaires, Surveys, Interviews, and Observations, Measures, are among the methods, which can be used with this type of Research. Which one do we need to use? Can we use all of them? Well, it really depends on what type of Research Questions you are going to answer.
Correlational Research
This research type attempts to helps us understand and infer relationship between two variables. There will be positive correlation or negative correlation, but it can't be both in the same time. The signs of positive and negative determines the direction of the relationship.In doing correlational type of research, we will come across one situation, better understood as confounding variable. This variable(s) can exist within the research, but it is not needed or tested in our research variable. For a correlational research to be successful, confounding variable should not exist at all. Reading literature prior to the attempted research will help us in determining existing confounding variables and its removal.
Correlational Research, apart of having direction, has one magnitude system, with a perfect correlation magnified with 1. It can be -1, or +1. A perfect correlation magnitude shows that one variable fully correlates with another studied variable.
Experimental Research
It attempts to check the dependency of one variable to another variable, through the use of experiment. There is Independent Variable , (the fixed variable) and Dependent Variable (the variable that is studied,).
There is also the concept of control and experimental group. Control group receives no treatment, of experiment, while experimental group, as the name suggests, receives treatment or experiment.
Further studies into research methodology will offer you more on the use of repeated measures, practice effect, and many more concepts which should not be that alien to you, if you have taken Research Methodology seriously, prior to this subject.
