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> Thanks for this research example; I'll definitely use this in my Research
> Methods course.
It's my day job to sift through education research and I can tell you the whole bloody field would make a good case study for an entire Research Methods course. Or sociology of social science course. You can find statistical studies supporting and opposing just about any policy measure you can think of, and campaigns are fought between think tanks and research departments picking holes in each other's methodologies. Then enough studies accumulate for someone to do a meta-analysis, which takes debate to another plane, about which studies are appropriate for inclusion and which will not amalgamate properly, one researchers' schoolboy statistical error and another think tank's refusal to release its raw data... etc. Policymakers and politicians pick one side or the other and hire people to pick holes in the other side's case.
Cheers, Mike