GCPS Research Standards
GCPS Institutional Review Board Research Standards
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The proposed research has sufficient value for the district (i.e., aligns with the district’s strategic plan) and is consistent with district legal obligations.
- Proposals conform to customary principles of educational research and scientific inquiry
- foundation in theory or prior research
- convincing and logical purpose statement or statement of the problem that demonstrates substantial need and value to educators, educational stakeholders, or the research community
- clear research questions or hypotheses
- appropriate number of participants to achieve research goals
- valid research design
- quantitative studies
- external: results will be generalizable to a defined population
- internal: results may largely be attributed to the treatment
- qualitative studies: clear grounding in qualitative research theory
- valid and reliable instrumentation
- quantitative studies
- Requests for district data prioritize feasibility, preventing undue burden on district staff by promoting efficient and manageable data collection and transfer processes.
- Teacher, student, or staff time, or loss of instructional time or focus is minimized and not deemed to be overly burdensome.
- The collection of personal information about students or their families does not include information beyond that which is necessary to answer the research question.
- Data collection is not scheduled to begin until written approval is issued by the Executive Director of Research, Evaluation, and Analytics.
- Internal researchers have thoroughly addressed any potential or foreseeable conflict of interest concerns.
- Proposals are coherent, complete, and provide sufficient information on which to base approval including all survey questionnaires, informed consent letters, and data collection instruments and protocols.
- Proposals are professionally written and are formatted and submitted according to GCPS requirements.