Things that could make my research suck.

Things that could threaten internal validity.

Research Question: Is homelessness associated with higher rates of introverted behavioral issues in grade school students?

History: This could have a fairly large effect on my research question considering the behavioral issues could be due to something that has happened previously in the student's life other than being a homeless or transient student. To some students, being homeless or transient may not be something that they have a very hard time dealing with, whereas there are other possible situations that could cause more harm, like a divorce or death of a parent. Every person's reaction to a situation is different.

Selection: The selection is based solely on information within the student's records at the school that the counselor doing the research would be working in. This could be leaving people out because of a lack of records. Also, since the selection is limited to the school that the counselor is working in, then the sample will be very small and may not produce much information.

Maturation: Would I only be doing the research on students that are currently homeless/transient? Or would I be looking at the students that have been in the past as well? If I look at student's that were previously homeless, then their behavior may be different because of the time difference. Also, it may depend on how long a student has been homeless, because those that have dealt with it for a long time may be affected differently than those who are newly homeless.

Pretesting: This would not be an issue with my research because I would not be doing any pretesting, because there is no way to test the students before they were homeless. Unless I do a behavioral test and then a certain amount of time later do another one in order to see if there is a change with the amount of time being homeless, but I do not think that is the direction I would go.

Instrumentation: This could be an issue with the validity of my research if the survey given regarding the behavior is not reliable. Also, it could be a threat if the survey is not particularly related to the variables that you want to study. It is important to try to match the instruments to the variables.

Treatment Replication: When it comes to my research question, replication within the same school may not be very useful because chances are the information would not change much, unless there has been some sort of intervention set in place to try to help the students with the behavioral issues. However, having other counselors replicate the study at their schools would be very helpful in order to get a higher sample size.

Subject Attrition: Students dropping out of the study could affect the internal validity, however, with my research question, there is only a one part study, therefore the participate once and that is it. Either they participate or they do not, so there is no room to drop out and skew data.

Statistical Regression: This is a threat to validity when you administer and pretest and post-test. It is the chance that the participants who score low on the pretest will score higher on the post-test whether the intervention worked with them or not. This would not be an issue with my participants since there will not be a set up like this one.

Diffusion of Treatment: This is definitely a possible issue with the study that I am proposing. If the students  that are homeless are aware of each other, they may discuss what the study is about and how they feel about being homeless or transient. This is unlikely, however, because it is not a topic commonly brought up between students. It is possible, but unlikely.

Experimenter Effects: Being a counselor in a school means that the students in your research have most likely interacted with you before. This interaction, or the way the counselor is dressed, or the demeanor of the counselor when administering the survey, may have an effect on how the student answers questions. 

Subject Effects: There is always a chance that the student will answer differently because they know they are being researched. This is where "subjects effects" could cause the validity of the research to go down. Some students do not feel comfortable being honest, or they will answer the way they think the researcher wants them to.

There's a lot that could cause problems.