The researcher is looking at the correlation between self-efficacy beliefs in students' writing and perceptions on teacher feedback. Basically, if you think you're a good writer and your teacher does too, you'll get good grades on writing assignments. The researcher looked at studies that showed that if a student believes he/she is good at or has the potential to succeed at something that they will work hard at it in order to achieve success. Also teacher feedback can influence the quality of student writing.
The first question I'd have to ask would be why try and correlate something so seemingly obvious? I mean if you think you're good and your teacher tells you you're good, then you're probably going to achieve success.
That's not to say the there aren't interesting questions to be found from this study however. The second question would be if they found any interesting results across the student body? Do girls get more positive feedback than boys? What do the self-efficacy and feedback scores from Latino students in comparison to Caucasians in a Midwestern Community?
The third question would be how were threats to validity controlled i.e. how honest do you think the students taking the survey were? How honest were they with their grades as well?
The fourth question would deal with the survey/scales themselves. How reliable are they? Can/will they be used again on a different population?
The fifth question would be how were the subjects selected? Was it a random assignment, were the subjects assigned, selected, etc?
Great questions. You did a good job looking at the design and thinking like a researcher. Hopefully we can address some of these on Monday.
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