Your intended audience is a board of education that is considering policy changes related to absenteeism in their school district.
In your summary, be sure to address the following questions:
What are the adverse impacts of school absenteeism on students, schools, and society?
What are the characteristics of the population of students this research focuses on? Why did the researchers choose to focus on this population?
How did this study’s methods of conducting the research differ from a more idealized design? Why did the researchers make this choice of design for this study?
What did the study say about the effect of student absences on their academic and social-emotional outcomes?
Based on the study’s conclusions, what recommendations would you provide the intended audience of your report?
The research review will include 2 parts:
Part 1 – Summary (1 to 1.5 pages): Your paper should be structured as a narrative in paragraph form. Do not answer the questions in bulleted points, incomplete sentences, or in a disjointed manner. Instead, work on creating a story that introduces and explains the work in a coherent way. This document should be comprehensible to other people in your intended audience (both technical and non-technical).
Part 2 – Research Question Design (1 paragraph): The researchers state the study’s aims rather than presenting their research questions. If you were to phrase the following aim as a research question, how would you do this so that this question is specific and in line with the research in the paper?
“We use data from 2014-2015 to 2017-2018 for students in Grades 3 to 12 to understand…the impact on test scores … of being away from school” (Santibanez & Guarino, 2021, p. 393).
Make sure the revised question includes a comparison among these groups, a metric of performance, and a definition of improvement. Then state and justify an opinion on the smallest change in the metric that would represent a meaningful improvement.
