Quantitative Methods in Physics Education Research: Overview and Examples of Studies

Traditionally, Physics Education Research (PER) embraces several research methods classified as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. These methods help researchers understand students’ and teachers’ ideas and attitudes, as well as evaluate classroom interventions. Quantitative research methods are thoroughly used in all fundamental physics research fields as particle physics or astrophysics. However, in physics education research, quantitative research has not been widespread adopted by PER researchers. While being the norm in educational psychology journals since the 80s, only recently, thanks also to the software availability, rigorous psychometric assessment of new instruments, randomized clinical trials, longitudinal designs and multivariate analyses, have started to appear in PER journals. While quantitative papers can often be difficult to read given some extremely technical parts, they are most likely to promote lasting insights and replicable results to the community. In this paper, I will address foundational techniques in quantitative methods that have traditionally marked social and behavioral sciences—as the Factorial Analysis, Structural Equation Modeling family of methods, and Rasch analysis. Examples of studies recently published will provide a space to examine and challenge current practices, learn how quantitative methods have changed and suggest the latest approaches for the interested researchers.