A Methodological Review of the Articles Publishes in Georgia Educational Researcher from 2003-2010

Abstract

Methodological reviews, reviews that concentrate on research methods rather than research outcomes, have been used in a variety of fields to improve research practice, inform debate, and identify islands of practice. In this article, we report on the results of a methodological review of all of the articles published in Georgia Educational Researcher from 2003-2010. We examined the methodological characteristics, authorial characteristics, and methodological quality of those articles using quantitative content analysis. The major findings were that the (a) proportions of the type and traditions of articles published in Georgia Educational Researcher were similar to the proportions in education research articles in general, (b) case study research and correlational research were most prominent, (c) a few universities accounted for most of the articles published, (d) male and females were published in equitable proportions, and (e) there were no statistically significant differences in methodological quality between first author’s gender and among affiliations, type of research, or year of publication. We interpret these last two findings to be evidence of a lack of editorial bias. A few minor suggestions for improving the quality of qualitative research articles are given.