Nuts and Bolts of Chemical Education Research
is an informative and engaging book that would be useful for the chemist who is writing the educational outreach or evaluation component of a grant or planning his own chemical education research project. This book brings to the surface the key elements that are common to both. These key elements include establishing clear goals and research questions for your efforts: placing your outreach or research on a firm theoretical foundation so that the results of your work expand the current state of knowledge; developing an outreach or research design that address the goals and questions asked; locating, developing and testing the validity-reliability of the tools used in the study; selecting appropriate data analyses from quantitative, qualitative or mixed design disciplines to address the questions asked; writing conclusions based upon the data presented; and describing the implications of the outreach or research effort for chemistry practitioners. This book will address these key issues from a pragmatic point of view in an effort to assist those who are engaged or considering becoming engaged in this type of scholarly activity.