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Dr Sarah Miller

Lecturer

Room 01.010
20 College Green
School of Education
Queen's University Belfast

Tel: 028 9097 5944
Fax: 028 9097 5066
Email: s.j.miller@qub.ac.uk

 

Leadership roles

  • Deputy Director of the Centre for Effective Education

Teaching

  • Research Methods in Education (M-Level Module)
  • Quantitative Research, Methods, Data and Theory (EdD)
  • Survey Methods in Education (EdD)
  • Experimental Methods in Education (EdD)

Current research projects

Recently completed research projects

Recent publications

  • Miller, S., Connolly, P., & Maguire, L.K. (2013) Wellbeing, academic buoyancy and educational achievement in primary school students. International Journal of Educational Research  DOI: 10.1016/j.ijer.2013.05.004
  • Miller, S. & Connolly, P. (2013). A randomized controlled trial evaluation of time to read, a volunteer tutoring program for 8 to 9 year olds. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(1), 23-37.
  • Linden, M., Braiden, H-J., & Miller, S. (2013). Educational professionals’ understanding of childhood traumatic brain injury. Brain Injury, 27(1), 92-102.
  • Miller, S., Connolly, P., & Maguire, L.K. (2012). The effects of a volunteer mentoring programme on reading outcomes among eight- to nine-year-old children: A follow up randomized controlled trial. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 10, 134-144.
  • Miller, S., Maguire, L.K., & Macdonald, G. (2011). Home-based child development interventions for preschool children from socially disadvantaged families. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 12, 1-49.

Recent and upcoming conference presentations

  • American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 2013: Wellbeing, academic buoyancy and educational attainment in primary school children.
  • European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Zurich, 2012: Home-based child development interventions for preschool children from socially disadvantaged families.
  • Campbell Collaboration Colloquium, Copenhagen, 2012: The effectiveness of volunteer tutoring programmes.
  • Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, Sixth Annual Conference, York, 2011: A randomised controlled trial evaluation of the Lifestart parenting programme.
  • American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, 2011: A randomised controlled trial evaluation of a school-based volunteer tutoring programme aimed at increasing reading skills amongst 8-9 year olds.
  • Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), Washington DC, 2011: A follow up randomized controlled trial of Time to Read: a volunteer mentoring program.

 

Dr Sarah Miller is a Lecturer in Quantitative Methods in the School of Education and Deputy Director of the Centre for Effective Education.  She has a degree and PhD in Psychology and her areas of research expertise are organised around three inter-related themes: programme evaluation, literacy (preschool and primary) and child development and parenting.

Sarah's experience lies in designing, conducting and completing large-scale studies including: large cross sectional surveys, simple and cluster randomised controlled trials, quasi-experimental evaluations (including cohort sequential and crossover designs), systematic reviews and mixed-methods studies  (integrating qualitative and quantitative methods).

She has worked alongside a number of educational providers in a service design capacity.  This has included: providing research and evidence to inform the development of new programmes; conducting systematic literature reviews to provide evidence of the effectiveness of existing programmes; and providing organisations with support to develop programme manuals.

Sarah has extensive experience of quantitative and qualitative methods with both children and adults.  In particular her expertise lies in quantitative methods and statistics including a wide range of parametric and non-parametric tests; multivariate statistics including analysis of variance, linear and logistic regression; multilevel modelling (linear and logistic); the analysis of quasi-experimental and experimental studies (including the analysis of cluster randomised trials and the use of propensity score matching in quasi-experimental studies); systematic reviewing and meta analyses.