What practitioners need to know to evaluate research

IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 168-181

  Krull, Robert ^a,b  

^a IEEE   (United States)

^b RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE   (United States)

Author keywords

Causality; Quantitative research; Refereed journals; Research methods; Technical communication; Typography

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION ANALYSIS; TECHNICAL WRITING;

CAUSALITY; QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH; REFEREED JOURNALS; TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION; TYPOGRAPHY;

PROFESSIONAL ASPECTS;

EID: 0031237623     PISSN: 03611434     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1109/47.649553     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. For an insightful and concise overview of qualitative methods, see David Silverman, Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analyzing Talk, Text and Interaction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1993.
2. R. Krull, P. S. Helyar, and K.-E. Bystrom, "Patterns in technical writing guidelines," in IPCC91 Proc.: The Engineered Communication. New York: IEEE, 1991, pp. 238-243.
3. W. K. Horton, Designing and Writing Online Documentation. New York: Wiley, 1990.
4. _, Illustrating Computer Documentation. New York: Wiley, 1991.
5. E. Barrett, Ed., The Society of Text: Hypertext, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
6. _, Text, ConText, and HyperText: Writing with and for the Computer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
7. J. R. Brockmann, Writing Better Computer User Documentation. New York: Wiley, 1990.
8. T. Duffy and R. Waller, Eds., Designing Usable Texts. New York: Academic, 1985.
9. L. Odell and D. Goswami, Eds., Writing in Nonacademic Settings. New York: Guilford, 1985.
10. M. Coe, Human Factors for Technical Communicators. New York: Wiley, 1996.
11. J. M. Lauer and J. W. Asher, Composition Research. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988.
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14. M. Tinker, Legibility of Print. Ames, IA: Iowa State Univ. Press, 1963.
15. C. Burt, A Psychological Study of Typography. Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959.
16. P. Rubens, Ed., Science and Technical Writing. New York: Henry Holt, 1992.
17. M. Tinker, "Prolonged reading tasks in visual research," J. Appl. Psychol., vol. 39, pp. 444-446, 1955.
18. Causality and theory development are discussed in texts on quantitative research methods such as the following: D. T. Campbell and J. C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1963.
19. G. Hage, Techniques and Problems of Theory Construction in Sociology. New York: Wiley, 1972.
20. A. L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1968.
21. H. M. Blalock, Jr., Ed., Causal Models in the Social Sciences. Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1985.
22. See, for example, the analysis of rote typing by S. K. Card, T. P. Moran, and A. Newell, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1983.
23. R. Krull, P. Rubens, and M. D. Whitburn, "Empirical research concerning graphics in documentation," Rep. to IBM Corp., Dec. 1981.
24. For a discussion of verbal protocols in general see K. Anders Ericsson and H.A. Simon, Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984.
25. D. L. Dionne and R. Krull, "The effects of module size and user practice in online tutorials," in Proc. Int. Technical Communication Conf. (Atlanta, GA), pp. 669-672, May 1992.
26. J. M. Carroll and S. A. Mazur, "LisaLearning," IEEE Computer, vol. 31, no. 11, pp. 35-49, 1986.
27. F. N. Kerlinger, Foundations of Behavioral Research. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1986; for a description based on common factor variance see [7] for a description of correlation and the coefficient of determination.
28. D. Bakan, On Method: Toward a Reconstruction of Psychological Investigation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1968.