Research Methods Of China's Education Economics: Content Analysis And Reflection

Education Economics, produced in western countries since the late 1950s and early 1960s, has been developed greatly in its theory and research parading. It was introduced to china in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and made great progress and breakthroughs accompanied by china's economic system reform process. Each science has its method problem, and with the development of science, the importance of method problem stands out more clearly. Research, research methods and disciplinary system are the three essential elements of a subject.This research is based on the research methods of Education Economics, taking all the articles published in Education and Economy Journal during 1985 to 2005 as the object of the research, and according to a classification system to study the application of China's education economics quantitative (positivism) and qualitative (criterion) research methods, data sources, data analysis and the research results presentation. Through content analysis, discussion and reflection, this research found that:1. The articles applying quantitative (positivism) research method consisted 31.9 percent of all the articles, to qualitative (criterion) research method 68.1 percent, therefore there is a considerable gap between the two methods.2. In the way of data sources, China's education economics researchers mainly using literature, the Statistical Yearbook, databases, questionnaires and interviews to collect research data. Literature is the most frequently used method in data collecting, the Statistical Yearbook and databases followed, then the questionnaire, and final the interview.3. In the method of analyzing data, the most frequent method used is descriptive statistics, the second is the modeling and investigation, then regression,comparative,F test,correlation analysis and T test took the third, follows by cluster analysis, ANOVA and factor analysis, experiment and content analysis are the methods not frequently used.4. To represent the conclusion and explanation, more and more Chinese scholars began to use graphic method. 5. From the perspective of methodology, the perspective of history,values and the way of thinking affect researchers' choice of methods, and dualism is also existed in the methodology; The appropriateness between the research object and method were concerned, and were attempted to build a new approach system to keep pace with the developments and changes of research objects of education economics; the trend of using a scientific (quantitative) methodology becomes quite clear in the quantitative (positivism) and qualitative (criterion) methodology; Mathematics as an analysis tool or means increases its value of methodology in the education economics.