Methodology Plan for Mock Dissertation

Use feedback from Dr. Miller on your Rough Draft Methodology Plan to revise and present your final Chapter 3 Methodology Plan for your mock dissertation.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY PLAN

Research Methodology Plan

Using Data Science Techniques to Enhance Data Security

Bindu Priyanka Ganta

University of the Cumberlands

ITS 837 – Prof Writing & Proposal Devel

DeAnna Miller

09/09/2020

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY PLAN

Using Data Science Techniques to Enhance Data Security

Problem Statement
The purpose of this study was to describe how data security can be enhanced using data science techniques. Data science became very prominent field of study that is being used by many domains to solve problems that human cannot. Data science is study of data in which algorithms are developed using machine learning which are called models. These models are trained using the existing dataset with scenarios and possible outcomes. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, data science adopted AI as well to make models adapt itself in various scenarios and threats. In this study we discuss the use of solution to enhance data security using ML techniques including supervised learning and unsupervised learning.
Research Approach and Strategy
Researcher’s goal was to use Machine learning models to enhance the data security by developing ML  based authentication and ML based auto audit feature on access controls to protect the privacy of the data. Researcher used supervised learning, unsupervised learning and reinforcement learning as main strategies. The main goal was to come with a framework which is powered by multiple machine learning models to implement effective and efficient security layer on top of data. This layer includes ML-based IoT authentication, access control, secure offloading, and malware detection schemes to protect data privacy.
Researcher followed below approaches to the solution.
1) Learning based authentication
2) Learning based malware-detection
3) Secure IOT devices using Learning
4) Machine learning based access control.
Sources and Data collection
Researcher chose NSL-KDD dataset to evaluate the performance of the detection method. This dataset is a benchmarking dataset for network intrusion. Dataset contains both test and training samples. We need training samples to train the machine learning model. We have a total of 125,973 training traffic samples and 22,554 test traffic samples. Seven weeks of network traffic data is used for training in the form of raw tcpdump.
Data Collection and analysis methods
Researcher used neutral network-based machine learning models to analyze the data. This model contains two phases training phase and test phase. As per researcher “There are three steps in training phase – data preprocessing, multi-feature extraction, multi-channel training, and also there are three steps in testing phase – data preprocessing, multi-feature extraction and attack detection. The first two steps are the same in the two phases. In the training phase,
data preprocessing is a combination of processing steps to provide high-quality data, including data sampling, data cleansing and data dimensionality.”[Deep Learning Based Multi-Channel Intelligent Attack Detection for Data Security]. Researcher also used Recurrent Neural Network which is widely used in natural language processing. RNN is powerful for modeling sequences by having cyclic connections. Comment by DeAnna: Independent variable? Dependent variable? Comment by DeAnna: What are your research questions? Comment by DeAnna: See rubric – you need more details here Comment by DeAnna: This is not a research data analysis tool. This is an IT tool. This paper is about your research study. What tool will you use to analyze your data from the study?

Ethical Considerations and Limitations

Data Science is a vast subject and mastering it with respect to enhance data security is tedious. As cited earlier, mastering the concepts of data science to have a deep knowledge in order to enhance data security is very difficult to achieve. The involved data is so contextual and may not help in achieving the expected result, due to its arbitrary nature. Comment by DeAnna: This is section is about the ethical considerations and limitations of your research study – not data science.

References

Jiang, F., Fu, Y., Gupta, B. B., Liang, Y., Rho, S., Lou, F., Meng, F., & Tian, Z. (2020). Deep Learning Based Multi-Channel Intelligent Attack Detection for Data Security. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, 5(2), 204–212.

https://doi.org/10.1109/tsusc.2018.2793284

Xiao, L., Wan, X., Lu, X., Zhang, Y., & Wu, D. (2018). IoT Security Techniques Based on Machine Learning: How Do IoT Devices Use AI to Enhance Security? IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 35(5), 41–49.

https://doi.org/10.1109/msp.2018.2825478

Topic	Distinguished	Proficient	Apprentice	Novice
Problem Statement	The problem statement is concise, includes descriptor variables and informs the reader of the exact purpose of the study	The problem statement is concise and informs the reader of purpose of the study	The problem statement is stated	The problem statement is not stated
Research Approach & Strategy	Describes research approach used with rationale for addressing the research questions , citing appropriate methodological literature	Describes research approach used with rationale for addressing the research questions	Lists research approach used	Does not list research approach used
Sources & Data Collection	Explains and justifies type of sample to be used and, if using human participants, how human rights will be protected. Describes and justifies data collection methods and procedures, including how, when, where, and by whom data were collected.	Explains and justifies type of sample to be used and, if using human participants, how human rights will be protected. Describes and justifies data collection methods and procedures	Lists the type of sample to be used	Does not list the type of sample to be used
Data Collection & Analysis Methods	Describes and justifies methods and statistical tools (if applicable) used for analysis. Discusses measures taken to enhance study validity.	Describes and justifies methods and statistical tools (if applicable) used for analysis.	Lists methods and statistical tools (if applicable) used for analysis.	Does not lists methods and statistical tools (if applicable) used for analysis.
Ethical Consideration & Limitations	Discusses ethical considerations and limitations of research	Discusses ethical considerations	Lists ethical considerations	Does not list ethical considerations

Methodology Plan Rubric

Chapter 3: Research Methodology Plan

Problem Statement

The purpose of this descriptive qualitative case study was to describe the rigor of gifted education in a four-district consortium in rural Kentucky. It was believed that through the participants’ lived experience with teaching gifted students, information would be revealed by this study that would further our understanding of whether gifted students are receiving instruction and strategies that have been deemed “best practice” in order to meet their learning needs (Siegle, 2015). Furthermore, it was expected that understanding the lived experiences of teachers who must differentiate and plan for their exceptional learners and ultimately decide if the educational needs of gifted students in their classrooms are being met might increase the possibility of school administrators, K-12 teachers, and gifted education advocates to make changes that could improve educational services for gifted students. A case study method was chosen for this study so that a detailed account of the lived experience of teachers of gifted students could be reported. The independent variable for this study was the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the dependent variable was teachers’ attitudes on the serves that gifted students received during NCLB.

Research Approach & Strategy

The researcher’s goal was to explore and describe the relationship between gifted education and the Accountability Era. This qualitative descriptive case study used two interviews to gather data. A qualitative design was chosen for this study so that educators could describe their opinions of and experience with the current educational Accountability Era and how it is affecting the services that they provide to gifted students in their classrooms. By choosing a case study, the researcher was able to describe what gifted education services look like during the NCLB Accountability Era throughout the four-district consortium from the perspectives of teachers. The case study was performed using Yin’s (2014) qualitative case study research design. Case study methodology was appropriate for this study due to it being designed to follow these parameters: (a) answering “how” and “why” questions are the focus, (b) the behavior of the study participants cannot be manipulated, and (c) the context in which the behavior of concern occurs is relevant to the study (Yin, 2014). The two research questions of this case study were open-ended questions. The open-ended questions supported the qualitative case study methodology.

The research questions underlying this study were:

RQ1. What does gifted education look like in general classrooms in the NCLB Accountability Era in the four-district consortium?

RQ2. How do teachers in the four-district consortium perceive their ability to meet the needs of gifted students?

These research questions aligned with the purpose statement of this study and addressed the phenomenon of gifted education services in the Accountability Era. The two interviews used open-ended questions with a semi-structured design.

The researcher used a descriptive qualitative instrumental case study to examine the quantity and quality of gifted education service opportunities provided to gifted education students in a rural public educational setting. The researcher interviewed general classroom teachers to describe if and how the NCLB Waiver has had a positive effect or a negative effect on gifted education from the view point of educators. Case studies are a popular method among researchers who use a qualitative design (Hyett, Kenny, & Dickson-Swift, 2014). Case studies allow researchers to get an in-depth view of the phenomenon through interviews and “case study methodology maintains deep connections to core values and intentions” (Hyett et al., 2014, p. 2). The researcher aimed to describe the phenomenon of gifted education services in this study and case study methodology is ‘‘particularistic, descriptive and heuristic’’ (Merriam, 2009, p. 46). A case study is a good choice of methodology when the researcher wants to describe a situation (Yin, 2014). This descriptive case study was patterned after Yin’s (2014) definition in that it describes a detailed study of a real life case with that case being the four-school district consortium in rural Kentucky.

The researcher chose a case study method as the evaluation tool because it provided the opportunity to understand the quantity and types of service options offered to gifted students in regular classrooms from the perspective of regular classroom teachers (Swan et al., 2015). The researcher strived to provide an in-depth description of the case and the themes of gifted service opportunities provided to gifted students according the perception of classroom teachers that were produced by this study.

Sources and Data Collection

The researcher chose a four-school district consortium in rural Kentucky as the participant case in this instrumental case study. This four-school district consortium has eight schools within a 27 mile radius and included four rural counties. The eight schools consisted of three elementary schools, one middle school, three high schools and one K-12 school. Three of the schools were public county schools. The fourth school was a public independent school. Grades of the schools spanned kindergarten through grade 12. The eight schools had 2,426 students enrolled at the time of the study. Eighteen percent of the enrolled students had met the state guidelines to qualify as a gifted learner within this four-school district consortium. At the time of the study, 182 teachers were employed in the four-school consortium. The Caucasian race made up 97 percent of teachers. The remaining three percent of the teachers were African American. Five percent of the teachers had earned National Board Certification. The teachers in this four-school district consortium had an average of 10 years teaching experience. The majority (81%) of the teachers were female, and 16% of the teachers held a Rank I certification, which equals 30 hours above a master’s degree in the state of Kentucky.

Sample

The researcher’s goal was to select teachers having between eight and twelve years of teaching experience to participate in the study. This prevented the unusual event of selecting a first year teacher or a teacher close to retirement with over 25 years of experience for the study. By selecting teacher participants with teaching experience ranging between eight and twelve years, the profile would be the same as the average teacher’s experience in the four-school district consortium that is the case in this study (Creswell, 2013; Lantz, 2013; Merriam, 2009).

Materials/Instruments

Two data collection instruments were used in this research study. The first type of data collection procedure was a semi-structured interview with study participants. Anyan (2013) described an interview as a resource for researchers to use in order to gather descriptions of the real life experiences of the study participant and then report the finding according to the purpose of the study. Data was collected by conducting interviews with participants using open-ended interview questions during face-to-face interviews (Appendix A). These interview questions were adapted from a survey used by Duffett et al. (2008) in a national study that sought to hear from teachers on how well gifted students were being served in the classroom. The researcher took interview questions from the Duffett et al. (2008) survey that aligned with the two research questions of this study and transformed the questions into open-ended questions in order to allow for descriptive feedback from the study participants. The researcher strategically placed research questions in an order that allowed for the study participants to become comfortable talking about the phenomenon in the general setting of the school.

The second data collection instrument that was used in this study was the Gifted Accommodation Classroom Observation Tool (Appendix B). This classroom observation tool was adapted from the gifted observation tool used by Cassady et al. (2004) in a published study to determine the opportunities provided to gifted students in a classroom compared to non-identified student peers in the same classroom. Following the observation the researcher conducted the second interview of the study with teacher participants in an open-ended interview to review the observation. This open-ended interview allowed the researcher to interact with the teacher participants and provided the opportunity for them to give their perspective on the observation (Neves, Salim, Soares, & Gualda, 2013). This allowed the study participants to validate that the observations were accurately interpreted (Meng, Zhao, & Chattouphonexay, 2012).

Human Rights were protected during this study. Participant names were not used in the study. Participant consent forms were obtained and provided in the completed dissertation. Participation in the study was completely voluntary and participants had the right to refuse answering any question during the two interviews. All voice recordings of the interviews were deleted at the completion of the study. All interviews were conducted in a room that maintains privacy for the participant. Participants were given the opportunity to choose between a private conference room located at their school site or the researcher’s private office that was located off site of the participant’s school for the interviews. All data collection instruments used with participants are located in the Appendices of the completed dissertation. The researcher applied for and was granted approval to conduct this study by Northcentral University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The study was described and ethical assurances required by Northcentral University’s Institutional Review Board were included in the IRB application in order to assure a high code of research ethics would be applied to this research study.

Data Collection & Analysis Methods

Data was collected by conducting interviews with participants using open-ended interview questions during face-to-face interviews (Appendix A). These interviews were semi-structured interviews. The interviews were determined to be semi-structured because the interview questions were determined before the interviews and documented in the interview protocol but the interview also allowed the researcher the opportunity to follow up a participant’s answer with a question used to clarify the participant’s response (Hancock & Algozzine, 2011; Seidman, 2013). Each participant was interviewed twice with each interview lasting between 30-45 minutes. The interviews were recorded with two separate devices and then transcribed. Information from the transcriptions was categorized with a coding scheme. Secondary data sources were collected through classroom observations and follow-up teacher interviews.

Duffett et al. (2008) used a national teacher survey to conclude that seventy-three percent of the polled teachers agree that their brightest students are bored and under-challenged in school. Sixty-three percent of teachers said that struggling students get the most overall attention from teachers (Duffet et al., 2008). Portions of this survey were used in the author’s study as interview questions. The survey had already been extensively pretested and used in a published study so the credibility for this tool was strong which added to the validity of this study. Most of the constructs of this tool coincided with the author’s study. The initial interview questions are located in Appendix A and were derived from the 2008 Duffett et al. national teacher survey.

The researcher processed data by identifying themes from the transcriptions of the interviews. The data themes were drawn from a coding scheme, which featured both predetermined codes and codes that were unanticipated by the researcher by emerged upon repeated review of the transcripts. The researcher coded the data through content analysis and a thematic analysis was conducted using an inductive approach (Vaismoradi, Turunen, & Bondas, 2013). For data analysis the researcher used Moustakas’s (1994) modified version of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method to examine the data and determine themes that described the status of gifted education in the four-district consortium. The first step of this modified approach was for the researcher to describe her personal experience with the phenomenon under study in order to set this aside and focus on the experiences of the study participants. The researcher used an inductive approach (Creswell, 2012) that involved the interview transcripts being read several times in order for the researcher to thoroughly understand what participants said during interviews and to decide if additional transcription was required by the researcher. The researcher also determined the tone of the interview from the interview transcripts.

The dependability of the author’s study focused on the latest enactment of the No Child Left Behind waiver and the latest recommendations that are made by lobbyist groups for gifted education. The dependability of this study will only be strong for a specific amount of time that includes the life of the current Accountability Era which has continued to put stress on educators to bring low achieving students up to benchmark. Validity and reliability of this study was verified using member check and researcher reflexivity.

A case study design should be used when the purpose of the study is to answer “how” and “why” questions and the researcher cannot manipulate the behavior of the participants in the study. A case study should be used when the researcher wants to cover contextual conditions because they are believed to be relevant to the phenomenon under study and the boundaries are not clear between the phenomenon and context. These circumstances describe the relationship between the No Child Left Behind Act and gifted education (Hughes & Bruce, 2013).

A qualitative researcher’s epistemology is simply the theory of knowledge, which serves to decide how the social phenomena would be studied. The researcher’s epistemological position in this study was formulated as data collection from the perspectives of people that are involved with teaching gifted students during the No Child Left Behind Accountability Era and the engagement of the researcher with the participants as data was collected (Chorba, 2011). The interview questions were designed to describe the experiences of the teachers in a traditional classroom and their effort to provide services for gifted students. To allow the true nature of teachers’ experiences and resulting opinions to emerge during the interviews, the interview questions were open-ended (Cozby & Bates, 2012).

As gifted student characteristics and needs, along with NCLB and the Waiver, may not be completely understood by all study participants, introductory information was shared before any interviews were conducted. There were two research questions that aligned the problem and purpose of this study. The research questions underlying this study were:

RQ1. What does gifted education look like in general classrooms in the NCLB Accountability Era in the four-district consortium?

RQ2. How do teachers in the four-district consortium perceive their ability to meet the needs of gifted students?

Measurement

The researcher desired to describe the perceived experiences and opinions of teachers in the four-district consortium during the current Accountability Era. The researcher completed two interviews that were between 30-45 minutes in length with each participant. In order to find patterns in the descriptive data that assisted the researcher to identify themes that participants described, the researcher used a coding scheme of both predetermined codes and emerging codes that developed once the transcribed interviews were read and studied. The researcher identified themes by reviewing transcripts and looking for reoccurring terms and phrases. The reoccurring themes and ideas from the interviews are considered the main themes of the study. The researcher coded the data through content analysis. A thematic analysis was conducted using an inductive approach (Vaismoradi et al., 2013). The researcher made no predictions or hypothesis for this study. For data analysis the researcher used Moustakas’s (1994) modified version of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method to examine the data, the codes, and to determine themes that describe the status of gifted education in the four district consortium. The first step of this modified approach was for the researcher to describe her personal experience with the phenomenon under study in order to set this aside and focus on the experiences of the study participants. The researcher used an inductive approach (Creswell, 2012) that involved interview transcripts being read several times to thoroughly understand what participants said during interviews and to decide if additional transcription would be required by the researcher. The researcher also determined the tone of the interview from the interview transcripts. Hughes and Bruce (2013) recommended that the original interview recordings be reviewed multiple times for context ambiguity and this was done by the researcher.

Triangulation was used as a method of checking to determine that the researcher’s data was valid by using two different methods of gathering data including two separate semi-structured interviews and a classroom observation completed by the researcher. The researcher used a Gifted Accommodation Classroom Observation Tool to record what differentiated services, instruction, and resources were used in the general classroom during the observation (Appendix B). The strategy of using multiple methods to gather data is deemed successful if the multiple methodologies bring about similar results in data (Schwandt, 2015). Member checks were used as a triangulation strategy to give research participants a chance to review the interpretation of the interview. This method gave the participants the opportunity to correct any misinformation or clarify their meaning of terms or phrases that were transcribed from the interviews. In this review by the participant, the opportunity to make additional comments presented itself and resulted to additional depth being added to the information originally received during the interview (Reilly, 2013).

Member checks also served to increase validity and reliability of this study. The validity and reliability of this study was established through the methods of member checks and triangulation of data sources.

Ethical Consideration &

Limitations

The study provided ethical assurance by obtaining approval of the IRB before contacting any participants or collecting any data. Documentation of the IRB was provided in the dissertation at the completion of the study. The researcher strived to maintain confidentiality of the study participants throughout the duration of the study and in reporting the results of the study. In qualitative case studies the researcher is the tool for data collection and analysis. Attempts were made to keep these practices in ethical compliance by avoiding bias in interpretation of data (Merriam, 2009).

Limitations

The small sample of participants in the research study provided some limits of the sample representing the general populations of teachers in the four-school district consortium. Due to the purposeful sampling strategy, the teacher participants were actually quite similar to each other in years of experience and educational level and therefore their perceptions may not have been representative of the body of teachers in the consortium but it likely that they were representative of the body of teachers in the case study consortium. Since 81% of the teachers in the four-school district consortium were female it was also likely that the participants of the study would be female. This could have caused the perceptions of the participants to not be representative of the male population of teachers in the study case; however, there was one male participant in the study. This male represented 25% of the participant sample and resulted in the perceptions of male teachers having representation.

Another limitation of the study was that teachers participated in the study on a voluntary basis. The results of the study could be based on teachers that have an interest in the Accountability Era, gifted students or both. This could have produced results from the study that were not representative of the population of teachers in the case that are neither particularly concerned with gifted education nor the Accountability Era. The researcher’s hope was that all certified teachers had at least a small concern about gifted students and the accountability system that determined both teachers and their schools as adequate or faulty.

The research findings may have limitations due to teachers being dishonest in interviews. Some teachers may have feared reprimand from administration if they spoke unfavorably about their practices as a teacher or the administration’s expectations of teachers instructing gifted students in the classroom. In an effort to prevent this fear in teacher participants, participant names were not used in the study. Teachers may also have given a false impression of educational services provided to gifted students in an attempt to appear to be an advanced level instructor. In an attempt to prevent this from happening, teacher participants were asked to answer all interview questions with complete honesty and accuracy.