Educational research starts by asking a question about an educational phenomenon, addressing such variables as student learning, motivation, and behaviors or teachers' motivation and practices. Then the researcher needs to carefully plan the research design, including measurement (how will observations be made) and sampling (how will participants be selected to participate in the study). After thorough and thoughtful planning, then data is collected, processed (perhaps by entering it into the computer), and then analyzed and interpreted.

Each step in this research process requires much thought and planning. Therefore, a researcher, particularly a beginning researcher, should not expect to be able to conduct a study in a short period of time. Instead, a beginning researcher should plan on spending a few weeks to many months at each of these stages of research.

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