Methodology of the Study…

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The methodologies of Educational Research are based on

research methodologies in Behavioural and Social-Sciences, as
research in these fields emphasis logical–positivism. This part
consists of three sub-parts; subjects or sample, procedures and
data analysis. The subject or sample section details the sampling
procedure of the population which researcher aims to study. The
procedure section outlines the research plan. It describes what
has done, how it has been done, type of data collected, tools to
collect data etc. The data analysis details tools and techniques of
data analysis and interpretation.

3.1 Research Design

It is often impractical or unethical to arrange occurrences,

an analysis or past events or of already existing conditions in
such a case research design followed is ex-post-facto. Studying
the review of literature and considering the objectives of the
study ex-post-facto type of descriptive design was found to be
most suited for the present study. Here the researcher was aware
that the information used and results found may not put forward

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 Methodology of the Study…

a complete and exact picture because of the lack of control on

the variable and impact of number of extraneous variables,
altering the result.

3.2 Sampling Procedure

The population of the study is the 10th class students of

Mandi District of Himachal Pradesh. The selection of schools has
been done on the basis of area or cluster sample. The sample of
students taken is the batch sample of 25 boys and 25 girls of
10th class of each school. One school each was selected from the
categories- Government-Rural, Government-Urban, Private-Rural
and Private-Urban. The total sample size was 200. The sample
description is given as under :

Categories Urban Rural

25 Boys 25 Boys
Private 50 50
25 Girls 25 Girls

25 Boys 25 Boys
Government 50 50

25 Girls 25 Girls

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3.3 The Instrumentation

The instrument used to collect the data in the present

study is an Attitude scale developed by the investigator himself.
Different dimensions and the items included in them are
prepared by consulting school teachers, principals and personnel
from educational field. The scale has been developed as per the
principles of Likert’s Attitude scale.

Responses to a single Likert item is treated as ordinal data,

because when using only five levels, one cannot assumes that
respondents perceive the difference between adjacent levels as
equidistant. When responses to several Likert items are summed,
they may be treated as internal data measuring a latent variable
provided the summed responses fulfill relevant assumptions.
The five response categories represent an ordinal level of
measurement, representing an inherent order (more to less,
stronger to weaker, bigger to smaller), but the numbers assigned
to the categories in the way that an internal or ratio scale would.

Attitudes scale developed by the investigator comprises of

60 items distributed under 9 dimensions. Due to the shortage of
time and material resources, the scale could not be standardized,
validity and reliability be calculated.

3.4 Data Collection

The investigator personally seeked the permission of all the

4 schools for the administration of the tool and administered the
tool himself. At the time of administration of the tool, the rules
and regulations for the data collection were stringently followed.
The students were asked to respond to all the items. All items
were verbally translated in Hindi also. The investigator at the
time of data collection also explained and clarified the response

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 Methodology of the Study…

procedure and doubts of the children for ensuring exact

response. The data pertaining to 10th class students towards
opting science at senior secondary level is collected by means of
responses to each item on Likert scale. The responses on the
Likert scale varied from- Strongly-Disagree, Disagree, Undecided,
Agree to Strongly-Agree.

3.5 Techniques of Data Analysis and Interpretation

The objectives of the study are to study of attitude of 10th

class students of Mandi District towards opting science at Senior
Secondary Level. Accordingly the technique of attitude
assessment selected is ‘Attitude scale’. The tool was to be
responded on a Likert type 5-point scale.

The statistical techniques used in the study are based on

the testing of null hypotheses. Such as, test of significance of
difference between means of the contrasting groups. Student’s t-
test is used to find out the inter-variable differences in the
contrasting groups. In order to have a clear and easily
comprehensible knowledge of the results, tables and graphs have
been used as and where possible. The responses to the Attitude
scale are scored on Nominal scale and are tabulated on MS-
Excel. The investigator took the help of both descriptive as well
as inferential statistics for analyzing the data and the obtained
results were interpreted as per the objectives and hypotheses
stated earlier.

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