put in the detailed footnote info here cue for a same document link here cue for a different document link hereRelational Research
As Colin Tredoux points out in his presentation on research methods in Education, things in life relate to each other in various ways. Research into the nature and extent of those relations is called relational research.This term is used as an equivalent term to "correlational research" in several instances, for example:
- in the context of an intro to educational research
- In the context of a psychology exam review
As Thomas Anderson points out, "correlation" is actually a statistical term for the indicator of the degree of relationship between two quantities of items (+1 if it is a perfect direct relationship, -1 if it is a perfect inverse relationship and 0 if there is no relationship, and of course varying amounts in between).
As Sandy Williams points out in an on-line educational research methods course, there is usually a theoretical reason for selection of variables to test for relationship, and that in most cases, it usually involves seeing how lesser variables relate to a larger one in a complex situation, in order to see if it is worth continuing with an investigation of such a relationship.
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