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    Joined: Nov 2011
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    "I have been invited to speak at this year's Asia Pacific Conference on Giftedness, and will be presenting three papers on the topic of "nurturing giftedness in alternative learning environments". One paper involves a survey on gifted children's experience of academic extracurricular programs. It is designed to be taken by children, parents, and activity leaders/teachers. It is completely anonymous unless you choose to give your name, and takes about fifteen minutes"

    the questions sound like sociology qualitative research preliminary data gathering to me.
    I really dont understand all the criticism of the OP. Everyone here is constantly complaining about lack of research on their kids. When someone is starting out to do something interesting and asks for help All i see is criticism because its not quantatative hypothesis driven research. It may not be the study you would do, it may not be ready to publish in Nature but its a start. if you can do a better study, then do one. but please stop harping on this poor researcher. S/he is probably chased off for good with all the non constructive criticsm. I was hoping they would come back and share some results, but in their place, I would be afraid to reveal anything to this lot of criticism.

    Joined: May 2012
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    Originally Posted by AlexsMom
    Originally Posted by Kjj
    I don't think the information is going to be valuable because you're not controlling who is taking the test.

    Selection bias is always the bane of the social sciences. And it can't be eliminated, so the best you can do as a researcher is disclose the shortcomings of the selection process up front.

    It seems like it would be relatively easy to find kids who've taken appropriate tests to pre-screen them, then have their parents take the quiz.

    Shooting it out into the ether and hoping you get a reliable result because you've plopped it on a gifted chat forum is not what I'd consider "doing your best".

    I think it's an interesting question, but I don't know if the answer is ultimately valuable-I deliberately look for extracurriculars that are non-academic so the girls can work on their social skills with regular people.

    The last thing I want them in is the gifted kid hip hop class. Blech, no thanks.

    Joined: Sep 2007
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    Val Offline
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    Originally Posted by g2mom
    I really dont understand all the criticism of the OP. Everyone here is constantly complaining about lack of research on their kids.

    I could have added a note to my message. The criticisms I've read here are the kinds of points that drive responsible peer review in any discipline. Science wouldn't advance if people couldn't criticize other people's work. I can see that if you aren't a scientist, it may sound kind of harsh.

    The goals of peer review are to help authors improve their work, to reduce the numbers of substandard studies the make it into journals, and sometimes, to force a revision to an idea or set of findings. It's not a perfect system, but it's a lot better than the alternative. In most cases, a badly designed study is worse than no study at all. A lot of researchers, myself included, prefer to hear honest comments up front so that we don't hear them later when the stakes are higher (such as when you're standing in front of 200 people at a conference).

    If the OP works as a researcher, she's been getting these kinds of comments since she did her first undergraduate research project. We all get them. I get comments like this every week and just received some a half-hour ago (and will get more tomorrow after people read a grant application I wrote).

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    But Zhian (I thought it was a male name) did not ask for peer review. S/he asked for help with a survey.

    and what was given was pretty harsh "peer" review in a negative tone. not with an aim to improvement.
    also based on the comments, I doubt any of you are Social Scientists (which brings in the question of peer) and are familiar with qualitative research. it is very different from what you might be used to.
    for the record I am a scientist of the empiric nature. I give and get reviews daily. but when someone starting out in a field is brave enough to bring out an idea, I dont shut them down with overwhelming criticism (intitially anyway). especially when it is not asked for.
    also asking for help gathering preliminary data hardly requires a study section review. I am glad i wasnt a student with some of you guys. i never would have enjoyed science enough to go on.
    Rigorous peer review has a place. unfettered criticism of a student on a web site asking for help gathering preliminary data isnt it. I agree peer review is a process that makes science better. but the OP didnt ask for peer review.
    however, if youre available i'd love some comments on my next grant before it goes in.....
    and i have this paper that i've never been able to get the discussion just right........

    Joined: Jan 2008
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    I agree with Val, there are too many papers poorly done that get published.

    I wrote about CTY math. Twice in her survey questions, I answered, it provides accelerated subject work that she doesn't get at school and it let's her work at her own pace.

    Findings that the conference on giftedness will be surprised to learn.

    Joined: Nov 2009
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    zhian Offline OP
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    I'd like to thank everyone for responding - both to the survey itself and to this thread with your comments.

    For the record I will note that I am a man. smile

    I appreciate everyone's comments criticising and defending my study. While Wren's points about being asked to choose a single activity are valid, so are the responses he/she has received; the fact is, no one would complete a survey asking detailed questions about every single activity in the list. The list is merely to give some ideas about what types and numbers of activities gifted kids participate in; the main purpose of the survey is to take a sample of such activities and research opinions of those.

    The type of activity may make a big difference in each individual case, but over a large enough sample you arrive at generalizable patterns. For example, thus far I am seeing the strongest patterns in the differences between children’s and parents’ perceptions of the most common and most important benefits of these activities.

    In terms of selection criteria, sending the message out on this forum is far from the only thing I've done, and each vehicle I've used to get responses has been chosen because I knew I would get respondents who fit the criteria for giftedness stated at the beginning of the survey. Anyone who does not fit those criteria should not be taking the survey. Of course I can’t be certain that people are not lying about fitting the criteria, but I can’t be certain they’re not lying about anything else either - the potential for dishonesty is part of the game in the social sciences.

    Also, I did not change the survey questions after I posted my initial message, Wren. If there were new questions popping up on you, your computer must not have loaded the survey properly the first time.

    And finally, g2mom is correct; this is a qualitative, preliminary survey, aimed primarily at identifying avenues in need of deeper research that I cannot begin to realize given that I am not currently teaching in a school or associated with an academic institution (I finished my MA in December and will start my PhD in August), and thus have no support for this research, financial or otherwise.

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    zhian Offline OP
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    By the way, it would be wonderful if any of you who have responded would be willing to ask your kids to do the same (particularly older kids, as the questions are probably at a reading level that's a bit high for elementary kids, even gifted ones).

    Joined: May 2012
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    Originally Posted by zhian
    Anyone who does not fit those criteria should not be taking the survey. Of course I can’t be certain that people are not lying about fitting the criteria, but I can’t be certain they’re not lying about anything else either - the potential for dishonesty is part of the game in the social sciences.

    My take on it is that I know parents who have bright children, but who believe their children are, in fact, gifted. They are walking bubbles of cognitive dissonance-you can't tell them their kid's not brilliant, and they have excuses for every result that doesn't show giftedness.

    I'm assuming these people are going to be taking your test, as well. In some social circles, having a smart kid is a status symbol.

    But maybe it's not enough to skew the results appreciably.

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    I do feel like the results will be skewed in other ways too, because there is no baseline about how we feel about our kids' current education setting. If I had responded to this before my son was grade-skipped and then moved to an HG school, my responses would have been much different because he wasn't getting what he needed at school and we did try to do more afterschool stuff to fill the void. But now, he's in a great school setting and the afterschool classes he takes are not more of an academic challenge than he currently gets during school.

    But I also do appreciate that you are starting to get data. I hope it will lead to useful information. Thanks.

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    I also think how randomly I chose the activity that I did. I chose the math and answered the questions about accelerated math.

    What about if I chose Chinese language classes, which she has been doing for 3 years. The answers would have been different.

    Or piano. And even ballet, because physical activity is good for brain development.

    So if you get a bunch of people like me, focusing on the accelerated studies, particularly in math, you don't get the multiple other activities. DD gets chess in school, others will take chess as an extracurricular. How does that skew because so many kids do get chess in school. That less parents of gifted kids are taking chess?

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