The purpose of my research is to study what effect, if any, the implementation of a character education program has on the outcomes of high school students high schools. Many of the journal articles I have come across in research on character education and student achievement point to more of an indirect relationship where, for example, increased student achievement is considered to be a product of improved attendance resulting from participation to character education. Most of these articles include studies on the development and effectiveness of specific character education programs. Therefore, my research study will focus solely on character education implementation and student outcomes in an effort to determine if there is a direct correlation. According to Gay, Mills & Airasian (2009, p. 196), “correlational studies typically investigate a set of variables believed to be related to an important and complex variable, such as success.” One of the primary purposes of correlational studies is “determine relationships between variables” through a study of relationships (Gay, Mills & Airasian, 2009, p. 196). I plan to collect and use “ready available data” including CST scores and grade point averages, the two major determinants of measurable student achievement, both before and after the research study, in order to determine whether a correlation actually exists between character education implementation and student outcomes (Gay, Mills & Airasian, 2009, p. 147) . A notable advantage of using a correlational research design is that it allows the researcher to not only determine whether or not and to what extent a relationship exists between two variables, it also allows researchers to test hypotheses regarding predicted relationships (Gay, Mills...... center of document ......table the correlation coefficient (Gay, Mills & Airasian, 2009). Gay, Mills & Airasian ( 2009, p. 201) argue that Pearson r results are the preferred method in educational research because they “result in the most precise estimate of correlation.” Of particular interest in the data analysis and interpretation part of the study is whether a linear or curvilinear relationship exists between the variables and whether or not a relationship exists between the variables for certain defined subgroups, such as 9th, 10th, 11th and 12a; however, a sufficiently large sample size is required to denote any relationship in the latter (Gay, Mills & Airasian, 2009). ReferencesGay, L.R., Mills, G.E. and Airasian, P.W. (2009) Educational research: skills for analysis and applications. (9th edition) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. ISBN-10: 0135035015