In Chapter 1, we covered the basic concepts of research in economics first by reviewing key terms in research and the roles of theory and data in the study of economics. We noted that the study of economics proceeds within the framework of scientific methods and we engaged in a general discussion of scientific method before moving on to a discussion of various terms and concepts within the scientific method. Clearly, learning about the scientific method and the basic concepts of the scientific method is essential to carry out research in economics. However, our discussion was general in nature and, basically, conceptual. While interesting, this kind of learning about the scientific method, and its basic concepts of research in general terms, offers little help in actually starting and successfully completing an economic research project. Thus, given the understanding of basic concepts of research, what we need to learn now are the specifics of to start our research, and to do it.
When students take a research methods course, they usually learn about research procedures in general terms. When they attempt to apply what they have learned in the research methods course to a real research project, they arguably find that they are not adequately prepared to start and complete a meaningful project.
This outcome is at least in part due to our way of teaching students mainly by feeding information without requiring a deeper understanding the subject. This is also partly due to the fact that undergraduate economic education is organized largely by subject-matter packages. Economics undergraduate students typically take intermediate level micro and macro economic theories, several upper division field-specific courses, depending on their interests, as well as one or two quantitative economics courses. More often than not, economics students do not have an opportunity to take a research methods course. Students in upper division field-specific economics courses seldom have the opportunity to conduct any serious and meaningful research, except for the rare occasions to do an honor’s thesis with individualized assistance from faculty members. Consequently, with or without a research methods course, undergraduate students typically do not learn the subject well enough to apply their conceptual knowledge to finding answers in the context of applied and quantitative research. There is a crying need for a practical guide to conducting applied quantitative economic research. Meeting this need is the main motivation to write this book.
The procedures and steps to follow in research are well-known, and I present below a set of standard procedures for conducting applied quantitative economic research. At each step, I will explain you do, you do it, and finally you do it. But merely listing and describing each step at a time is not enough. What I am striving to accomplish is to integrate research problems, theory, and the analysis of data, and to show how and why decisions are being made throughout the research process. To assure comprehension, I will present discussions on research procedures by working with specific examples.
Research is an orderly and systematic procedure, and this procedure may be presented sequentially from the first step of problem definition through the final step of the writing-up of the final report. However, it is also essential to understand that the research process is essentially in the sense that each preceding and succeeding step feeds on each other.
The five major steps in any typical applied and quantitative economic research process are as follows:
1. Statement of Research Problem 2. Survey of Related Literature 3. Theoretical Model: Formulation of Hypothesis 4. Analysis of Data: Testing of Hypothesis 5. Write-up of Research Report
Research Problem John Dewey
In starting research one obviously must first decide what problem to investigate. Clearly, therefore, a clear definition and statement of the research problem is the most important part of any research activity. When a research topic is given by your professor or supervisor there is no problem to choosing it. But the responsibility to choose research problem is yours, it becomes more daunting and difficult task. In this case, it will be first something your are interested. It is appropriate to choose a topic within a field which the student is familiar. But even if the student identifies a potential topic he or she is interested in and reasonably familiar with, it is still a difficult task to define and state the problem clearly and adequately. It takes a fair amount of mental struggle to understand the research issue thoroughly; and it takes at least an equal amount of effort to be able to write a succinct problem statement. The importance of a succinct problem statement cannot be too emphasized. Inadequate and incomplete delineation of the research problem results in wasting precious time in gathering materials, and may also result in activities not directly related to the research problem.
A research problem may be disciplinary, subject-matter, or problem-solving oriented and, indeed, combination of the three.
Finally, the requirements of a good research problem include , , and .
B. The research problem has to be specific so that it can be addressed given the constraints of time and budget. Broad and general research problems are neither meaningful nor manageable. If one wishes to study the Pacific Ocean, it is a too broad and wide topic. Research has to focus on a specific aspect of the Pacific Ocean.
C. Finally, the research problem has be "manageable" because it has to be finished within the assigned time and budget constraint.
To define the research problem adequately, however, requires substantial knowledge of the problem itself. One way of obtaining this knowledge is to read background materials. Text-books or, better, a recent review article on the topic are often useful as starting points, since they give a balanced summary of present knowledge, and also provide useful references. But as you study these books and articles by other investigators, you need to evaluate these previous works in light of your own research problem. As you read, you must always ask yourself what you are trying to find out. If you cannot state clearly what it is you want to find out, it is obvious that you are going to waste a lot of time before you settle on the specific research problem.
The problem or problem area to research depends on your interest, experience, and career goals. But once you have a research problem or problem area, a decision must be made to focus on one or two specific aspects of the problem. To accomplish this, one has to be familiar with the area; to actually know quite bit about it, fact. How does one gain enough knowledge to embark on serious research? If you are familiar with the subject matter, it is largely a matter of intuition and insight for you to come up with the specific problem. If not, you have to read background materials to gain this knowledge. Suppose, for instance, that you are interested in studying the reasons for the continual increase over time in health care expenditure in the U.S. Searching through the literature, you will find that Chapter 4, "The Economics of Health Care" in the and two symposia articles on health economics and health care reform in (Summer 1992 and Summer 1994) provide adequate background.
As you gain knowledge on the chosen topic, it is also helpful to decide what specific research problems and issues you are interested in. Specifically, are you interested in establishing a comparison? To find a cause or an effect? With the cause-effect relationship in the health care expenditure in mind, one can choose to study the roles of third-party payment mechanism through insurance, of technology, or of government. How about measuring the magnitude of some interesting and important issue, such as measuring the welfare cost of national health care insurance? There are many more interesting questions and issues to be investigated within the general rubric of health care expenditure in the U.S.
The formulation of the statement of the problem usually requires the following two steps.
1. Overview of the problem 2. Narrowing down to specific aspect(s) of the problem
One good way to start the problem statement is to present the problem in an overview. The reason why researchers usually start with presenting the problem in the context of an overview is to present the problem in perspective. This way, the reader is introduced to terminology, definitions, and the relationship under consideration, as well as the relationship of the topic to related questions and fields.
An example of good overview is quoted below. [See Craig S. Hakkio’s article entitled "Is Purchasing Power Parity a Useful Guide to the Dollar?" in pp. 37-51]
(PPP) is a measure of the dollar’s equilibrium value - the exchange rate toward which the dollar moves over time. Because the value of the dollar is currently below its PPP value, academic and business economists
use the concept of purchasing power parity to advocates argue that the dollar is undervalued and therefore likely to rise.
Other economists acknowledge that PPP may help forecast the value of the dollar over the long run but doubt its usefulness as a short-term guide. They often cite the 1970s, when the dollar frequently strayed from its PPP value and sometimes took years to return. They also note that economic and political forces regularly buffet the dollar, keeping its value away from equilibrium. Thus, even though the dollar is currently below its PPP value, these economists maintain there is no guarantee it will rise in value in the near term.
The research problem in Hakkio’s paper is to evaluate the purchasing power parity as a guide to future direction of the US dollar. In his overview of the problem, Hakkio first defines the term "purchasing power parity" and presents two alternative views to the use of PPP as a guide to the future direction of the US dollar. According to one view, namely the purchasing power parity view, the dollar is likely to rise because current value of the dollar is below its PPP value. According to other view, however, there is no guarantee that the dollar value will rise soon, because the PPP view is known to hold only in the long run. What he skillfully accomplished in the two short paragraphs are: 1) to clearly define the problem, 2) to define the key term, and 3) to present two alternative views on the future direction of the dollar.
After having presented an overview of the problem, the researcher usually focuses in one or two specific issues or aspects of the problem. In the case of Hakkio’s paper, however, he moves directly on to the objective statement because there is no further need to narrow it down. His objective statement and a general outline of his paper is presented in the third paragraph of his paper and is quoted below:
"This article argues that PPP is a useful guide to the dollar in the long run
and - to a lesser extent - in the short run. The first section of the article defines
the concept and discusses why most economists believe it is a useful long-run guide. The second section shows the dollar generally moves toward its PPP
the measure says little about whether the dollar will rise in the near term."
Suppose a student proposes to write a research paper with the title "Trade Deficit", "Budget Deficit", "Exchange Rate", or "U.S. Banking". One can tell immediately see that each of these subjects is too broad and general to be a meaningful research topic. How does one go about narrowing down these broad and general topics to a manageable research problem? To learn how to do that, we need to learn to reduce the topic to manageable size by limiting it by time, space, or geographically a certain aspect of the problem.
With the trade deficit as an example, one may limit it to "U.S. Trade Deficit" or, more specifically, to "U.S.-Japan Trade deficit". Similarly, it may limited to a specific time period as "Persistent U.S. Trade Deficit During 1980s". Indeed, it might be a combination of two aspects, like "U.S.-Japan Trade Deficit during the 1980s". Or one might decide to focus on one particular aspect, such as the major determinants of the U.S. trade deficit or the effect of U.S. trade deficits on the exchange value of the U.S. dollar..
With the budget deficit in mind, one might similarly limit it to "U.S. budget Deficits" or to the well known issue of the twin deficits between the "U.S. Budget Deficits and Trade Deficits". Or perhaps one might decide to limit the topic to the impact of a reduction in U.S. budget deficit on the value of the U.S. dollar..
With the U.S. banking in mind, one may ask whether or not U.S. Banking is declining". If the answer is positive, one can further examine why U.S. banking is not declining
To illustrate further, consider health care expenditure in the United States over the past several decades. We see from the data that U.S. health case expenditure has steadily increased and that it has increased faster than other categories of expenditure. One can raise a number of important and meaningful questions with respect to heath care spending vis a vis other categories of expenditures. One can ask: Why are health care expenditures in the U.S. increasing over time? Or why has health care expenditure in the U.S. increased substantially faster than other expenditure categories? With this general question in mind, one may pose a more specific question like: Why has the share of health care expenditure of total U.S. consumer expenditure increased during the 1960-95 period? To answer this question adequately, one has to examine the major determinants of health care expenditure in the U.S. Relating to this question, one might pursue the financing side of health care expenditure. To restrain this rapid growth, many health care reform proposals deal with the question of how to finance health care expenditure.
For the last illustration of narrowing down to specific aspect of the research problem, let us take up the recent surge in gasoline prices in California. One can raise a number of important and useful questions about this topic. First, why did gasoline price increase so dramatically in the first part of 1996 compared with those in the previous five years? Is it due to higher gasoline taxes or is it due to the "rigging" of gasoline price by big oil companies? Would the proposed sale of the navy petroleum reserve announced by President Clinton help lower gasoline prices or is it merely a political ploy? A second question might be: Why, in recent years, are gasoline prices in California substantially higher than in the rest of U.S.? What, if any, is the role of environmental costs in California’s recent gasoline price hike?
When you have finally defined the research problem adequately, the next task is to state the problem clearly. We often say that it is necessary to state the research problem Success depends largely on one’s ability in organization and in technical writing. Since the writing aspect of research activity is not the primary focus of this chapter, one may refer to publications devoted to this aspect. Two good resources which many students find useful are: by John S. Harris and Reed H. Blake (Nelson-Hall) and by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. (Macmillan)
Review of Related Literature
Almost all research topics have been studied by other researchers. Nothing under the sun is new, as one verse in the Old Testament says. As you consider some problem or research issue, you can be almost assured that somebody else has studied the problem previously. Therefore, the obvious fact is: The more one knows about what was studied earlier, the better the researcher can approach and solve the problem. What then is the purpose of this review? Obviously, it is to assist you in attacking the problem you choose to study. As you review previous research done in related areas, directly and indirectly, you will be better prepared to handle the problem.
The benefits of a review of related literature are many and a few of them are listed here:
How should one go about preparing "Review of Related Literature". While there is no one way of doing this, following the several steps listed below will be helpful.
Before you begin a review of related literature, you first need to find out what has been done on the topic you are interested in. How does one find out what has been done on a particular topic? There are several ways to do this. An increasingly popular method to do a literature search is to tap into two popular electronic data bases. The first one is the compact disc search This handy and economical search software consists of one compact disc and user manual. It has a complete list of all the articles and working papers listed in the , an official publication of the American Economic Association. To use it, however, requires access to an EconLit compact disc and a personal computer with a compact disc drive. The second electronic source is one of several search procedures available on Internet.
When using electronic search procedures, it is important to type in two or three key words to facilitate your search. If the word chosen for your search is broad and general, these search procedures will give you literately few hundreds citations and sorting through so many is not efficient. Thus, when you search previous studies directly or indirectly related to your chosen topic, type only in two or three few key words directly related to your topic.
After your electronic search procedure has produced the necessary citations, you often need to select only those citations which have a direct bearing on your topic. It is a survey of literature, and only the researcher can make the determination of the degree of relatedness.
If you do not have access to an electronic search, you have to rely on manual search procedures through the library. You can go to library and find current and old issues of the This publication lists articles published by journal and by field. It would be advisable to start from a current issue and see if one can find articles and other publications on the topic. Then go to older issues and do the same by writing down citations of all related works.
Having identified all important previous studies which have a direct or indirect bearing on your topic, the next step of writing the review of related literature is to make a plan of how you want to organize your literature review. Without a plan, the literature survey easily becomes "Smith did this; Jones did that" by merely listing what they have done. In making a literature review plan, good advice is always to be mindful of the research problem itself. Without a clear understanding of the research issue and problem, one cannot make a plan for a good literature survey. Any serious attempt to understand the different aspects of each previous work requires substantial effort before one can see clearly how seemingly unrelated work fit together. Only then one can develop a good plan. In organizing your related literature, it is useful first to identify one or two major, or classic, studies. Then you can see the contributions of other works in relation to what was already done or not done in the major works. There may be situations where, in some cases, it is difficult to classify previous works by "major or minor" categories, because the contributions of each work are similar. In this case, it would be reasonable to review previous works by commenting only on the different aspects or focus of these works. One way or another, understanding the main research problem and the contributions of previous works is essential before one can make a plan for literature survey. Finally, it is always a good idea to see how each prior study is related to the problem you are focusing on. The importance of the literature cannot be emphasized too much.
Remember what you are doing is a review of literature. This means that you are presenting your own discussion of existing literature. Because of this, it is to avoid direct quotation. Paraphrasing or restating in your own words is the way to do it. What you are doing is evaluating prior work to shed light on your study.
"Science is built with facts as a house is built with stones, but a collection of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house." -Jules Henri Poincare
"A person "can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way". -C.S. Peirce
After the researcher has chosen a problem and has ascertained what investigations have already been done on it, the next step is to conceptualize the problem.
1. is Conceptual Framework and do we need one?
The conceptual or theoretical framework is the process of conceptualizing the problem by reasoning, recognizing, and synthesizing the problem. It is an abstract process in which the researcher identifies the central versus the peripheral, or the primary versus the secondary components of the problem, and understands how these components fit together.
The economic world is incredibly complex. The economist’s task of explaining the behavior of people, institutions and their interactions is, therefore, a very difficult task. To understand why and how it works, we need, as in all other fields of science, to abstract from reality. Abstraction requires ignoring many details in order to focus on the most important elements in order to understand the functioning of a complex phenomenon. Theorizing is a combined effort of abstracting (from details) and connecting (the essential components), and . As Pierce said, one can stupidly stare at the facts and data. Only with theory, one can begin to attempt to understand it. The process of arriving at a logical structure for organizing and analyzing the problem is, in fact, a deliberate simplification (abstraction) of the factual relationship to explain how those relationships work. So the theory is an of the mechanism behind observed phenomena.
A couple of examples: 1) road map; 2) ocean waves on the surface as facts. Undercurrent and forces below. Focusing on waves make you dizzy with no understanding of why and how’s of pattern of ocean waves. 3) gasoline price and shift in the demand and supply.
Therefore, the first role of conceptualization is to provide a logical structure for organizing and analyzing the problem. The second role of conceptualization is to lead to a hypothesis, which in turn leads to the testing of the hypothesis. Hypotheses are the results of the conceptualization of the problem. One definition: An hypothesis is a tentative assertion that is subject to testing. "As a tentative assertion, it can take the form of a simple proposition of an expected outcome or an assertion of a relationship, or relationships, between or among forces, variables, or events". [Eldridge, p. 136]
:
2) to Star and Develop the Conceptual Framework
How does one get started on the conceptual framework? Source materials for developing the conceptual framework for your research come from existing theories. You will recall that the research process is in the sense that the knowledge obtained in each stage feed on each other from the problem statement, the survey of related literature, and the conceptual framework.
From the review of related literature, one must first existing theory or theories on the problem. Second, when there are competing theories, one has to a particular theory suitable to the problem. Third, and finally, one has to the chosen theory to solve the problem.
To illustrate how to start and develop a conceptual framework, it is best to work with a specific topic. Suppose we are interested in the relationship between transit fares in Sacramento, California and the revenue that the transit system takes in. Specifically, let our question be whether or not a hike in fares, say from a current $1.25 to $1.50, would increase revenue.
In organizing and analyzing our problem to answer that question, we will develop a conceptual framework or, as the economist calls it, build a model. From our knowledge from the micro-economics principles course, we learned that total fare collection (total revenue) is equal to the average fare times the number of rides. In an equational form, this relationship can be stated as:
Equation (1) helps us organize our thinking about the two key variables, namely the fare and number of rides, in the determination of the total revenue. The fare is under the control of and is set by the Sacramento Regional Transit Authority. However, the number rides depends on the fare. The problem is to know how the number of rides will be affected by proposed fare hike by the Transit Authority. Or, more broadly, the question is what determines the number of rides. The economist’s way of answering this question is to view the number of rides as depending on the consumer’s decision to choose between taking transit and alternative transportation modes. The choice of transportation mode is basically an economic decision based on the relative cost and convenience of alternative means of transportation. Once viewed this way, one can see that this is the demand for regional transit.
From the theory of demand, we know that the number of rides, or using the economist’s term, the quantity of transit rides demanded, depends first on fare and the cost of alternative mode of transportation, as well as consumer income. Formally, we can write:
The next step is then to combine the equations (1) and (2) to have the model of total revenue from fare collection. Combining equations (1) and (2) yields:
Total Subway Revenue = fare x quantity of transit ride demanded
We now have a complete theoretical model of transit revenue with the key determining factors. However, one may note that the model specified above is a simplified description of the process involved when compared with real world complexities. It is obvious that important explanatory variables such as parking in downtown, the frequency and quality of service of regional transit and so forth, have been omitted. So the natural question is what is the "right" degree of abstraction. But there is no such thing as one right level of abstraction for all analytical purposes. The proper degree of abstraction obviously depends on the objective of the analysis at hand.
Once the theoretical model is specified, we need to evaluate the model qualitatively. An increase in the fare is expected to do two things. First, an increase in fare, holding constant all factors other than fare, tends to increase revenue. But second, as the theory of demand tells us, an increase in transit fare is expected to reduce the number of transit rides demanded, holding constant other factors, namely taxi cab fare, cost of owning automobile driving, and consumer income. The prediction of a negative relationship between the subway ride demanded and subway fare would make sense intuitively. But to really understand and an increase in the transit fare usually leads to a reduction in the transit rides demanded, one has to go beyond principles of economics and dig into microeconomics at intermediate level. There we will learn that there are income and substitution effects associated with an increase in subway fare, and that the combined income and substitution effects cause transit rides demanded to fall as a result of the increase in its fare. [See for instance, Nicholson’s Chapter 4, 1994]. Since these two effects work in opposite directions, it is not a priori clear whether the increase in fare will lead to an increase in total revenue or not. There are three possibilities: Total revenue may increase, remain the same, or decrease, all depending on the price elasticity of demand of ridership.
What does the theory of demand tells us about expected impact of an increase in cost of two alternative means of transportation? Theory tells us that an increase in taxi fare and cost of automobile driving, given the transit fare, will raise transit rides demanded because transit ride will become relatively cheaper (through the substitution effect). But how about the effect of an increase in consumer income on transit rides demanded? The theory of demand tells us that whether or not an increase in consumer income will raise or reduce transit rides demanded depends on whether consumers perceive transit rides as an inferior good or as a luxury good.
Now we realize that the theory of demand will provide answers only . That is, the number of transit rides demanded will rise or fall, if such and such conditions are satisfied. But theory of demand will not and cannot provide answers, which is necessary to answer our initial question of whether or not a hike in transit fare would increase transit revenue. What the theory does is to conceptualize the problem to provide a logical structure for organizing and analyzing the problem, and it can predict the direction of change of a change in determining factors only . What we need is a quantitative and empirical answer. The next section is devoted to the discussion of the formulation of an empirical model and its estimation with real-world data, as well as testing of hypotheses.
Empirical analysis covers a wide range of activity of measurement, estimation, and verification of phenomena under consideration. Since it covers a broad range of activity, it is difficult to present discussion of general rules to follow in conducting empirical analysis. But it seems reasonable to classify various empirical analysis into two types of empirical analysis: descriptive empirical analysis and cause-effect analysis which involves estimation and the testing of hypothesis. First, we will present discussions of how to conduct a descriptive empirical analysis with an example.
A descriptive empirical analysis is based on data analysis usually consisting of descriptive statistics and other quantitative measures in analyzing a particular issue(s) or question(s). It does not involve the statistical estimation of relationship and the testing of the hypothesis, as is done in the case of analysis of an assumed cause-effect relationship.
A descriptive empirical analysis may also involve and of the extent and degree of a certain phenomenon
To illustrate how to conduct a descriptive empirical analysis, consider a well-known macroeconomic issue of the trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Some background on this issue may be useful. During the 1950s and 1960s, many empirical studies examined inflation and unemployment data for numerous countries and time periods; and in many cases finding a negative relationship between unemployment and inflation. This negative empirical relationship between unemployment and inflation is known as the In the following decades, however, this relationship between unemployment and inflation failed to hold. In the latter part of the 1960s and early 1970s some economists, notably Milton Friedman and Edmund Phelps, question the logic of the Phillips curve. They argued on theoretical ground that we should not expect a stable relationship between inflation and unemployment. Rather, a stable negative relationship should exist between inflation and the unemployment rate.
Incorporating the negative relationship between unanticipated inflation and cyclical unemployment, we may write
- = )
where h refers to a positive number that measures the strength of the relationship between unanticipated inflation and cyclical unemployment. The latter is defined as the difference between the actual unemployment rate (u) and the natural rate of unemployment (u ). The above equation states that given the expected inflation rate, unanticipated inflation will be positive when the cyclical unemployment rate is negative, negative when cyclical unemployment is positive, and zero when cyclical unemployment is zero.
With the concept of a trade-off between the unemployment rate and the inflation rate, policy makers try to gauge the amount of slack in the economy in formulating monetary policy. When the economy’s resources are not pushed beyond capacity levels, inflation tends to remain under control. But when the economy’s resources are pushed to or beyond the capacity level, then inflation is expected to surge. In assessing the capacity in the labor markets, the natural rate of unemployment (NRU) is a key concept. The natural rate of unemployment is defined as that rate of unemployment at which there is no tendency for inflation to change.
With the above background in mind, let us now consider how Stuart Weiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas examined the relationship between unemployment and inflation in recent papers. First, he defined the concept of the natural rate of unemployment and provided general background information about the relationship between inflation and unemployment, as expected. He then presented two line graphs with data on the U.S. actual unemployment rate and natural unemployment rate for the 1959-1994 period. Since both unemployment rates are measured in percentages on the vertical axis, the vertical difference between them may be considered as the cyclical unemployment rate. In the second graph, Weiner first identified the four episodes of sustained increases in inflation during the period by shaded areas, and then superimposed a line graph of the cyclical unemployment rate.
Using the second graph, he then analyzed whether or not the increases in inflation were accompanied by the actual unemployment rate going below the natural unemployment rate. Examining the graph, he found that "at no times has the actual unemployment rate gone below the natural rate without the economy ultimately experiencing a rise in inflation".
In the discussion of policy implications of his findings, he made several observations. First, he noted that the lead time between a move below the natural rate and the eventual increase in inflation varies. Second, evaluating changes in the demographics and labor market conditions, he made several comments about why he believes that the natural unemployment rate would not be declining from the then currently estimated rate of 6.25%.
Regression analysis of Sacramento Regional transit demand
"Even the best scientific research is useless unless it is communicated to others" Ghebremdhin and Tweeten, 1988, p. 44
1. Introduction 2. Review of Literature 3. Theoretical Model 4. Empirical Analysis 5. Summary and Conclusions 6. Footnotes 7. Tables 8. Appendix 9. References
Research Methods
Chapter 2 introduction.
Maybe you have already gained some experience in doing research, for example in your bachelor studies, or as part of your work.
The challenge in conducting academic research at masters level, is that it is multi-faceted.
The types of activities are:
Finding and reviewing literature on your research topic;
Designing a research project that will answer your research questions;
Collecting relevant data from one or more sources;
Analyzing the data, statistically or otherwise, and
Writing up and presenting your findings.
Some researchers are strong on some parts but weak on others.
We do not require perfection. But we do require high quality.
Going through all stages of the research project, with the guidance of your supervisor, is a learning process.
The journey is hard at times, but in the end your thesis is considered an academic publication, and we want you to be proud of what you have achieved!
Probably the biggest challenge is, where to begin?
What will be your topic?
And once you have selected a topic, what are the questions that you want to answer, and how?
In the first chapter of the book, you will find several views on the nature and scope of business research.
Since a study in business administration derives its relevance from its application to real-life situations, an MBA typically falls in the grey area between applied research and basic research.
The focus of applied research is on finding solutions to problems, and on improving (y)our understanding of existing theories of management.
Applied research that makes use of existing theories, often leads to amendments or refinements of these theories. That is, the applied research feeds back to basic research.
In the early stages of your research, you will feel like you are running around in circles.
You start with an idea for a research topic. Then, after reading literature on the topic, you will revise or refine your idea. And start reading again with a clearer focus ...
A thesis research/project typically consists of two main stages.
The first stage is the research proposal .
Once the research proposal has been approved, you can start with the data collection, analysis and write-up (including conclusions and recommendations).
Stage 1, the research proposal consists of he first three chapters of the commonly used five-chapter structure :
Chapter 1: Introduction
An introduction to the topic.
The research questions that you want to answer (and/or hypotheses that you want to test).
A note on why the research is of academic and/or professional relevance.
Chapter 2: Literature
A review of relevant literature on the topic.
Chapter 3: Methodology
The methodology is at the core of your research. Here, you define how you are going to do the research. What data will be collected, and how?
Your data should allow you to answer your research questions. In the research proposal, you will also provide answers to the questions when and how much . Is it feasible to conduct the research within the given time-frame (say, 3-6 months for a typical master thesis)? And do you have the resources to collect and analyze the data?
In stage 2 you collect and analyze the data, and write the conclusions.
Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings
Chapter 5: Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations
This video gives a nice overview of the elements of writing a thesis.
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2 Chapter 2: Principles of Research
Principles of research, 2.1 basic concepts.
Before we address where research questions in psychology come from—and what makes them more or less interesting—it is important to understand the kinds of questions that researchers in psychology typically ask. This requires a quick introduction to several basic concepts, many of which we will return to in more detail later in the book.
Research questions in psychology are about variables. A variable is a quantity or quality that varies across people or situations. For example, the height of the students in a psychology class is a variable because it varies from student to student. The sex of the students is also a variable as long as there are both male and female students in the class. A quantitative variable is a quantity, such as height, that is typically measured by assigning a number to each individual. Other examples of quantitative variables include people’s level of talkativeness, how depressed they are, and the number of siblings they have. A categorical variable is a quality, such as sex, and is typically measured by assigning a category label to each individual. Other examples include people’s nationality, their occupation, and whether they are receiving psychotherapy.
“Lots of Candy Could Lead to Violence”
Although researchers in psychology know that correlation does not imply causation , many journalists do not. Many headlines suggest that a causal relationship has been demonstrated, when a careful reading of the articles shows that it has not because of the directionality and third-variable problems.
One article is about a study showing that children who ate candy every day were more likely than other children to be arrested for a violent offense later in life. But could candy really “lead to” violence, as the headline suggests? What alternative explanations can you think of for this statistical relationship? How could the headline be rewritten so that it is not misleading?
As we will see later in the book, there are various ways that researchers address the directionality and third-variable problems. The most effective, however, is to conduct an experiment. An experiment is a study in which the researcher manipulates the independent variable. For example, instead of simply measuring how much people exercise, a researcher could bring people into a laboratory and randomly assign half of them to run on a treadmill for 15 minutes and the rest to sit on a couch for 15 minutes. Although this seems like a minor addition to the research design, it is extremely important. Now if the exercisers end up in more positive moods than those who did not exercise, it cannot be because their moods affected how much they exercised (because it was the researcher who determined how much they exercised). Likewise, it cannot be because some third variable (e.g., physical health) affected both how much they exercised and what mood they were in (because, again, it was the researcher who determined how much they exercised). Thus experiments eliminate the directionality and third-variable problems and allow researchers to draw firm conclusions about causal relationships.
2.2 Generating Good Research Questions
Good research must begin with a good research question. Yet coming up with good research questions is something that novice researchers often find difficult and stressful. One reason is that this is a creative process that can appear mysterious—even magical—with experienced researchers seeming to pull interesting research questions out of thin air. However, psychological research on creativity has shown that it is neither as mysterious nor as magical as it appears. It is largely the product of ordinary thinking strategies and persistence (Weisberg, 1993). This section covers some fairly simple strategies for finding general research ideas, turning those ideas into empirically testable research questions, and finally evaluating those questions in terms of how interesting they are and how feasible they would be to answer.
Finding Inspiration
Research questions often begin as more general research ideas—usually focusing on some behaviour or psychological characteristic: talkativeness, memory for touches, depression, bungee jumping, and so on. Before looking at how to turn such ideas into empirically testable research questions, it is worth looking at where such ideas come from in the first place. Three of the most common sources of inspiration are informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
Informal observations include direct observations of our own and others’ behaviour as well as secondhand observations from nonscientific sources such as newspapers, books, and so on. For example, you might notice that you always seem to be in the slowest moving line at the grocery store. Could it be that most people think the same thing? Or you might read in the local newspaper about people donating money and food to a local family whose house has burned down and begin to wonder about who makes such donations and why. Some of the most famous research in psychology has been inspired by informal observations. Stanley Milgram’s famous research on obedience, for example, was inspired in part by journalistic reports of the trials of accused Nazi war criminals—many of whom claimed that they were only obeying orders. This led him to wonder about the extent to which ordinary people will commit immoral acts simply because they are ordered to do so by an authority figure (Milgram, 1963).
Practical problems can also inspire research ideas, leading directly to applied research in such domains as law, health, education, and sports. Can human figure drawings help children remember details about being physically or sexually abused? How effective is psychotherapy for depression compared to drug therapy? To what extent do cell phones impair people’s driving ability? How can we teach children to read more efficiently? What is the best mental preparation for running a marathon?
Probably the most common inspiration for new research ideas, however, is previous research. Recall that science is a kind of large-scale collaboration in which many different researchers read and evaluate each other’s work and conduct new studies to build on it. Of course, experienced researchers are familiar with previous research in their area of expertise and probably have a long list of ideas. This suggests that novice researchers can find inspiration by consulting with a more experienced researcher (e.g., students can consult a faculty member). But they can also find inspiration by picking up a copy of almost any professional journal and reading the titles and abstracts. In one typical issue of Psychological Science, for example, you can find articles on the perception of shapes, anti-Semitism, police lineups, the meaning of death, second-language learning, people who seek negative emotional experiences, and many other topics. If you can narrow your interests down to a particular topic (e.g., memory) or domain (e.g., health care), you can also look through more specific journals, such as Memory Cognition or Health Psychology.
Generating Empirically Testable Research Questions
Once you have a research idea, you need to use it to generate one or more empirically testable research questions, that is, questions expressed in terms of a single variable or relationship between variables. One way to do this is to look closely at the discussion section in a recent research article on the topic. This is the last major section of the article, in which the researchers summarize their results, interpret them in the context of past research, and suggest directions for future research. These suggestions often take the form of specific research questions, which you can then try to answer with additional research. This can be a good strategy because it is likely that the suggested questions have already been identified as interesting and important by experienced researchers.
But you may also want to generate your own research questions. How can you do this? First, if you have a particular behaviour or psychological characteristic in mind, you can simply conceptualize it as a variable and ask how frequent or intense it is. How many words on average do people speak per day? How accurate are children’s memories of being touched? What percentage of people have sought professional help for depression? If the question has never been studied scientifically—which is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing.
If scientific research has already answered the question of how frequent or intense the behaviour or characteristic is, then you should consider turning it into a question about a statistical relationship between that behaviour or characteristic and some other variable. One way to do this is to ask yourself the following series of more general questions and write down all the answers you can think of.
· What are some possible causes of the behaviour or characteristic?
· What are some possible effects of the behaviour or characteristic?
· What types of people might exhibit more or less of the behaviour or characteristic?
· What types of situations might elicit more or less of the behaviour or characteristic?
In general, each answer you write down can be conceptualized as a second variable, suggesting a question about a statistical relationship. If you were interested in talkativeness, for example, it might occur to you that a possible cause of this psychological characteristic is family size. Is there a statistical relationship between family size and talkativeness? Or it might occur to you that people seem to be more talkative in same-sex groups than mixed-sex groups. Is there a difference in the average level of talkativeness of people in same-sex groups and people in mixed-sex groups? This approach should allow you to generate many different empirically testable questions about almost any behaviour or psychological characteristic.
If through this process you generate a question that has never been studied scientifically—which again is something that you will learn in your literature review—then it might be interesting and worth pursuing. But what if you find that it has been studied scientifically? Although novice researchers often want to give up and move on to a new question at this point, this is not necessarily a good strategy. For one thing, the fact that the question has been studied scientifically and the research published suggests that it is of interest to the scientific community. For another, the question can almost certainly be refined so that its answer will still contribute something new to the research literature. Again, asking yourself a series of more general questions about the statistical relationship is a good strategy.
· Are there other ways to operationally define the variables?
· Are there types of people for whom the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker?
· Are there situations in which the statistical relationship might be stronger or weaker—including situations with practical importance?
For example, research has shown that women and men speak about the same number of words per day—but this was when talkativeness was measured in terms of the number of words spoken per day among college students in the United States and Mexico. We can still ask whether other ways of measuring talkativeness—perhaps the number of different people spoken to each day—produce the same result. Or we can ask whether studying elderly people or people from other cultures produces the same result. Again, this approach should help you generate many different research questions about almost any statistical relationship.
2.3 Evaluating Research Questions
Researchers usually generate many more research questions than they ever attempt to answer. This means they must have some way of evaluating the research questions they generate so that they can choose which ones to pursue. In this section, we consider two criteria for evaluating research questions: the interestingness of the question and the feasibility of answering it.
Interestingness
How often do people tie their shoes? Do people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw? Are women more likely to wear makeup than men? Do people prefer vanilla or chocolate ice cream? Although it would be a fairly simple matter to design a study and collect data to answer these questions, you probably would not want to because they are not interesting. We are not talking here about whether a research question is interesting to us personally but whether it is interesting to people more generally and, especially, to the scientific community. But what makes a research question interesting in this sense? Here we look at three factors that affect the interestingness of a research question: the answer is in doubt, the answer fills a gap in the research literature, and the answer has important practical implications.
First, a research question is interesting to the extent that its answer is in doubt. Obviously, questions that have been answered by scientific research are no longer interesting as the subject of new empirical research. But the fact that a question has not been answered by scientific research does not necessarily make it interesting. There has to be some reasonable chance that the answer to the question will be something that we did not already know. But how can you assess this before actually collecting data? One approach is to try to think of reasons to expect different answers to the question—especially ones that seem to conflict with common sense. If you can think of reasons to expect at least two different answers, then the question might be interesting. If you can think of reasons to expect only one answer, then it probably is not. The question of whether women are more talkative than men is interesting because there are reasons to expect both answers. The existence of the stereotype itself suggests the answer could be yes, but the fact that women’s and men’s verbal abilities are fairly similar suggests the answer could be no. The question of whether people feel pain when you punch them in the jaw is not interesting because there is absolutely no reason to think that the answer could be anything other than a resounding yes.
A second important factor to consider when deciding if a research question is interesting is whether answering it will fill a gap in the research literature. Again, this means in part that the question has not already been answered by scientific research. But it also means that the question is in some sense a natural one for people who are familiar with the research literature. For example, the question of whether human figure drawings can help children recall touch information would be likely to occur to anyone who was familiar with research on the unreliability of eyewitness memory (especially in children) and the ineffectiveness of some alternative interviewing techniques.
A final factor to consider when deciding whether a research question is interesting is whether its answer has important practical implications. Again, the question of whether human figure drawings help children recall information about being touched has important implications for how children are interviewed in physical and sexual abuse cases. The question of whether cell phone use impairs driving is interesting because it is relevant to the personal safety of everyone who travels by car and to the debate over whether cell phone use should be restricted by law.
Feasibility
A second important criterion for evaluating research questions is the feasibility of successfully answering them. There are many factors that affect feasibility, including time, money, equipment and materials, technical knowledge and skill, and access to research participants. Clearly, researchers need to take these factors into account so that they do not waste time and effort pursuing research that they cannot complete successfully.
Looking through a sample of professional journals in psychology will reveal many studies that are complicated and difficult to carry out. These include longitudinal designs in which participants are tracked over many years, neuroimaging studies in which participants’ brain activity is measured while they carry out various mental tasks, and complex non-experimental studies involving several variables and complicated statistical analyses. Keep in mind, though, that such research tends to be carried out by teams of highly trained researchers whose work is often supported in part by government and private grants. Keep in mind also that research does not have to be complicated or difficult to produce interesting and important results. Looking through a sample of professional journals will also reveal studies that are relatively simple and easy to carry out—perhaps involving a convenience sample of college students and a paper-and-pencil task.
A final point here is that it is generally good practice to use methods that have already been used successfully by other researchers. For example, if you want to manipulate people’s moods to make some of them happy, it would be a good idea to use one of the many approaches that have been used successfully by other researchers (e.g., paying them a compliment). This is good not only for the sake of feasibility—the approach is “tried and true”—but also because it provides greater continuity with previous research. This makes it easier to compare your results with those of other researchers and to understand the implications of their research for yours, and vice versa.
Key Takeaways
· Research ideas can come from a variety of sources, including informal observations, practical problems, and previous research.
· Research questions expressed in terms of variables and relationships between variables can be suggested by other researchers or generated by asking a series of more general questions about the behaviour or psychological characteristic of interest.
· It is important to evaluate how interesting a research question is before designing a study and collecting data to answer it. Factors that affect interestingness are the extent to which the answer is in doubt, whether it fills a gap in the research literature, and whether it has important practical implications.
· It is also important to evaluate how feasible a research question will be to answer. Factors that affect feasibility include time, money, technical knowledge and skill, and access to special equipment and research participants.
References from Chapter 2
Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
Stanovich, K. E. (2010). How to think straight about psychology (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn Bacon.
Weisberg, R. W. (1993). Creativity: Beyond the myth of genius. New York, NY: Freeman.
When I teach undergraduates qualitative research methods, the final product of the course is a “research proposal” that incorporates all they have learned and enlists the knowledge they have learned about qualitative research methods in an original design that addresses a particular research question. I highly recommend you think about designing your own research study as you progress through this textbook. Even if you don’t have a study in mind yet, it can be a helpful exercise as you progress through the course. But how to start? How can one design a research study before they even know what research looks like? This chapter will serve as a brief overview of the research design process to orient you to what will be coming in later chapters. Think of it as a “skeleton” of what you will read in more detail in later chapters. Ideally, you will read this chapter both now (in sequence) and later during your reading of the remainder of the text. Do not worry if you have questions the first time you read this chapter. Many things will become clearer as the text advances and as you gain a deeper understanding of all the components of good qualitative research. This is just a preliminary map to get you on the right road.
Research Design Steps
Before you even get started, you will need to have a broad topic of interest in mind. [1] . In my experience, students can confuse this broad topic with the actual research question, so it is important to clearly distinguish the two. And the place to start is the broad topic. It might be, as was the case with me, working-class college students. But what about working-class college students? What’s it like to be one? Why are there so few compared to others? How do colleges assist (or fail to assist) them? What interested me was something I could barely articulate at first and went something like this: “Why was it so difficult and lonely to be me?” And by extension, “Did others share this experience?”
Once you have a general topic, reflect on why this is important to you. Sometimes we connect with a topic and we don’t really know why. Even if you are not willing to share the real underlying reason you are interested in a topic, it is important that you know the deeper reasons that motivate you. Otherwise, it is quite possible that at some point during the research, you will find yourself turned around facing the wrong direction. I have seen it happen many times. The reason is that the research question is not the same thing as the general topic of interest, and if you don’t know the reasons for your interest, you are likely to design a study answering a research question that is beside the point—to you, at least. And this means you will be much less motivated to carry your research to completion.
Researcher Note
Why do you employ qualitative research methods in your area of study? What are the advantages of qualitative research methods for studying mentorship?
Qualitative research methods are a huge opportunity to increase access, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Qualitative research allows us to engage and examine the uniquenesses/nuances within minoritized and dominant identities and our experiences with these identities. Qualitative research allows us to explore a specific topic, and through that exploration, we can link history to experiences and look for patterns or offer up a unique phenomenon. There’s such beauty in being able to tell a particular story, and qualitative research is a great mode for that! For our work, we examined the relationships we typically use the term mentorship for but didn’t feel that was quite the right word. Qualitative research allowed us to pick apart what we did and how we engaged in our relationships, which then allowed us to more accurately describe what was unique about our mentorship relationships, which we ultimately named liberationships ( McAloney and Long 2021) . Qualitative research gave us the means to explore, process, and name our experiences; what a powerful tool!
How do you come up with ideas for what to study (and how to study it)? Where did you get the idea for studying mentorship?
Coming up with ideas for research, for me, is kind of like Googling a question I have, not finding enough information, and then deciding to dig a little deeper to get the answer. The idea to study mentorship actually came up in conversation with my mentorship triad. We were talking in one of our meetings about our relationship—kind of meta, huh? We discussed how we felt that mentorship was not quite the right term for the relationships we had built. One of us asked what was different about our relationships and mentorship. This all happened when I was taking an ethnography course. During the next session of class, we were discussing auto- and duoethnography, and it hit me—let’s explore our version of mentorship, which we later went on to name liberationships ( McAloney and Long 2021 ). The idea and questions came out of being curious and wanting to find an answer. As I continue to research, I see opportunities in questions I have about my work or during conversations that, in our search for answers, end up exposing gaps in the literature. If I can’t find the answer already out there, I can study it.
—Kim McAloney, PhD, College Student Services Administration Ecampus coordinator and instructor
When you have a better idea of why you are interested in what it is that interests you, you may be surprised to learn that the obvious approaches to the topic are not the only ones. For example, let’s say you think you are interested in preserving coastal wildlife. And as a social scientist, you are interested in policies and practices that affect the long-term viability of coastal wildlife, especially around fishing communities. It would be natural then to consider designing a research study around fishing communities and how they manage their ecosystems. But when you really think about it, you realize that what interests you the most is how people whose livelihoods depend on a particular resource act in ways that deplete that resource. Or, even deeper, you contemplate the puzzle, “How do people justify actions that damage their surroundings?” Now, there are many ways to design a study that gets at that broader question, and not all of them are about fishing communities, although that is certainly one way to go. Maybe you could design an interview-based study that includes and compares loggers, fishers, and desert golfers (those who golf in arid lands that require a great deal of wasteful irrigation). Or design a case study around one particular example where resources were completely used up by a community. Without knowing what it is you are really interested in, what motivates your interest in a surface phenomenon, you are unlikely to come up with the appropriate research design.
These first stages of research design are often the most difficult, but have patience . Taking the time to consider why you are going to go through a lot of trouble to get answers will prevent a lot of wasted energy in the future.
There are distinct reasons for pursuing particular research questions, and it is helpful to distinguish between them. First, you may be personally motivated. This is probably the most important and the most often overlooked. What is it about the social world that sparks your curiosity? What bothers you? What answers do you need in order to keep living? For me, I knew I needed to get a handle on what higher education was for before I kept going at it. I needed to understand why I felt so different from my peers and whether this whole “higher education” thing was “for the likes of me” before I could complete my degree. That is the personal motivation question. Your personal motivation might also be political in nature, in that you want to change the world in a particular way. It’s all right to acknowledge this. In fact, it is better to acknowledge it than to hide it.
There are also academic and professional motivations for a particular study. If you are an absolute beginner, these may be difficult to find. We’ll talk more about this when we discuss reviewing the literature. Simply put, you are probably not the only person in the world to have thought about this question or issue and those related to it. So how does your interest area fit into what others have studied? Perhaps there is a good study out there of fishing communities, but no one has quite asked the “justification” question. You are motivated to address this to “fill the gap” in our collective knowledge. And maybe you are really not at all sure of what interests you, but you do know that [insert your topic] interests a lot of people, so you would like to work in this area too. You want to be involved in the academic conversation. That is a professional motivation and a very important one to articulate.
Practical and strategic motivations are a third kind. Perhaps you want to encourage people to take better care of the natural resources around them. If this is also part of your motivation, you will want to design your research project in a way that might have an impact on how people behave in the future. There are many ways to do this, one of which is using qualitative research methods rather than quantitative research methods, as the findings of qualitative research are often easier to communicate to a broader audience than the results of quantitative research. You might even be able to engage the community you are studying in the collecting and analyzing of data, something taboo in quantitative research but actively embraced and encouraged by qualitative researchers. But there are other practical reasons, such as getting “done” with your research in a certain amount of time or having access (or no access) to certain information. There is nothing wrong with considering constraints and opportunities when designing your study. Or maybe one of the practical or strategic goals is about learning competence in this area so that you can demonstrate the ability to conduct interviews and focus groups with future employers. Keeping that in mind will help shape your study and prevent you from getting sidetracked using a technique that you are less invested in learning about.
STOP HERE for a moment
I recommend you write a paragraph (at least) explaining your aims and goals. Include a sentence about each of the following: personal/political goals, practical or professional/academic goals, and practical/strategic goals. Think through how all of the goals are related and can be achieved by this particular research study . If they can’t, have a rethink. Perhaps this is not the best way to go about it.
You will also want to be clear about the purpose of your study. “Wait, didn’t we just do this?” you might ask. No! Your goals are not the same as the purpose of the study, although they are related. You can think about purpose lying on a continuum from “ theory ” to “action” (figure 2.1). Sometimes you are doing research to discover new knowledge about the world, while other times you are doing a study because you want to measure an impact or make a difference in the world.
Basic research involves research that is done for the sake of “pure” knowledge—that is, knowledge that, at least at this moment in time, may not have any apparent use or application. Often, and this is very important, knowledge of this kind is later found to be extremely helpful in solving problems. So one way of thinking about basic research is that it is knowledge for which no use is yet known but will probably one day prove to be extremely useful. If you are doing basic research, you do not need to argue its usefulness, as the whole point is that we just don’t know yet what this might be.
Researchers engaged in basic research want to understand how the world operates. They are interested in investigating a phenomenon to get at the nature of reality with regard to that phenomenon. The basic researcher’s purpose is to understand and explain ( Patton 2002:215 ).
Basic research is interested in generating and testing hypotheses about how the world works. Grounded Theory is one approach to qualitative research methods that exemplifies basic research (see chapter 4). Most academic journal articles publish basic research findings. If you are working in academia (e.g., writing your dissertation), the default expectation is that you are conducting basic research.
Applied research in the social sciences is research that addresses human and social problems. Unlike basic research, the researcher has expectations that the research will help contribute to resolving a problem, if only by identifying its contours, history, or context. From my experience, most students have this as their baseline assumption about research. Why do a study if not to make things better? But this is a common mistake. Students and their committee members are often working with default assumptions here—the former thinking about applied research as their purpose, the latter thinking about basic research: “The purpose of applied research is to contribute knowledge that will help people to understand the nature of a problem in order to intervene, thereby allowing human beings to more effectively control their environment. While in basic research the source of questions is the tradition within a scholarly discipline, in applied research the source of questions is in the problems and concerns experienced by people and by policymakers” ( Patton 2002:217 ).
Applied research is less geared toward theory in two ways. First, its questions do not derive from previous literature. For this reason, applied research studies have much more limited literature reviews than those found in basic research (although they make up for this by having much more “background” about the problem). Second, it does not generate theory in the same way as basic research does. The findings of an applied research project may not be generalizable beyond the boundaries of this particular problem or context. The findings are more limited. They are useful now but may be less useful later. This is why basic research remains the default “gold standard” of academic research.
Evaluation research is research that is designed to evaluate or test the effectiveness of specific solutions and programs addressing specific social problems. We already know the problems, and someone has already come up with solutions. There might be a program, say, for first-generation college students on your campus. Does this program work? Are first-generation students who participate in the program more likely to graduate than those who do not? These are the types of questions addressed by evaluation research. There are two types of research within this broader frame; however, one more action-oriented than the next. In summative evaluation , an overall judgment about the effectiveness of a program or policy is made. Should we continue our first-gen program? Is it a good model for other campuses? Because the purpose of such summative evaluation is to measure success and to determine whether this success is scalable (capable of being generalized beyond the specific case), quantitative data is more often used than qualitative data. In our example, we might have “outcomes” data for thousands of students, and we might run various tests to determine if the better outcomes of those in the program are statistically significant so that we can generalize the findings and recommend similar programs elsewhere. Qualitative data in the form of focus groups or interviews can then be used for illustrative purposes, providing more depth to the quantitative analyses. In contrast, formative evaluation attempts to improve a program or policy (to help “form” or shape its effectiveness). Formative evaluations rely more heavily on qualitative data—case studies, interviews, focus groups. The findings are meant not to generalize beyond the particular but to improve this program. If you are a student seeking to improve your qualitative research skills and you do not care about generating basic research, formative evaluation studies might be an attractive option for you to pursue, as there are always local programs that need evaluation and suggestions for improvement. Again, be very clear about your purpose when talking through your research proposal with your committee.
Action research takes a further step beyond evaluation, even formative evaluation, to being part of the solution itself. This is about as far from basic research as one could get and definitely falls beyond the scope of “science,” as conventionally defined. The distinction between action and research is blurry, the research methods are often in constant flux, and the only “findings” are specific to the problem or case at hand and often are findings about the process of intervention itself. Rather than evaluate a program as a whole, action research often seeks to change and improve some particular aspect that may not be working—maybe there is not enough diversity in an organization or maybe women’s voices are muted during meetings and the organization wonders why and would like to change this. In a further step, participatory action research , those women would become part of the research team, attempting to amplify their voices in the organization through participation in the action research. As action research employs methods that involve people in the process, focus groups are quite common.
If you are working on a thesis or dissertation, chances are your committee will expect you to be contributing to fundamental knowledge and theory ( basic research ). If your interests lie more toward the action end of the continuum, however, it is helpful to talk to your committee about this before you get started. Knowing your purpose in advance will help avoid misunderstandings during the later stages of the research process!
The Research Question
Once you have written your paragraph and clarified your purpose and truly know that this study is the best study for you to be doing right now , you are ready to write and refine your actual research question. Know that research questions are often moving targets in qualitative research, that they can be refined up to the very end of data collection and analysis. But you do have to have a working research question at all stages. This is your “anchor” when you get lost in the data. What are you addressing? What are you looking at and why? Your research question guides you through the thicket. It is common to have a whole host of questions about a phenomenon or case, both at the outset and throughout the study, but you should be able to pare it down to no more than two or three sentences when asked. These sentences should both clarify the intent of the research and explain why this is an important question to answer. More on refining your research question can be found in chapter 4.
Chances are, you will have already done some prior reading before coming up with your interest and your questions, but you may not have conducted a systematic literature review. This is the next crucial stage to be completed before venturing further. You don’t want to start collecting data and then realize that someone has already beaten you to the punch. A review of the literature that is already out there will let you know (1) if others have already done the study you are envisioning; (2) if others have done similar studies, which can help you out; and (3) what ideas or concepts are out there that can help you frame your study and make sense of your findings. More on literature reviews can be found in chapter 9.
In addition to reviewing the literature for similar studies to what you are proposing, it can be extremely helpful to find a study that inspires you. This may have absolutely nothing to do with the topic you are interested in but is written so beautifully or organized so interestingly or otherwise speaks to you in such a way that you want to post it somewhere to remind you of what you want to be doing. You might not understand this in the early stages—why would you find a study that has nothing to do with the one you are doing helpful? But trust me, when you are deep into analysis and writing, having an inspirational model in view can help you push through. If you are motivated to do something that might change the world, you probably have read something somewhere that inspired you. Go back to that original inspiration and read it carefully and see how they managed to convey the passion that you so appreciate.
At this stage, you are still just getting started. There are a lot of things to do before setting forth to collect data! You’ll want to consider and choose a research tradition and a set of data-collection techniques that both help you answer your research question and match all your aims and goals. For example, if you really want to help migrant workers speak for themselves, you might draw on feminist theory and participatory action research models. Chapters 3 and 4 will provide you with more information on epistemologies and approaches.
Next, you have to clarify your “units of analysis.” What is the level at which you are focusing your study? Often, the unit in qualitative research methods is individual people, or “human subjects.” But your units of analysis could just as well be organizations (colleges, hospitals) or programs or even whole nations. Think about what it is you want to be saying at the end of your study—are the insights you are hoping to make about people or about organizations or about something else entirely? A unit of analysis can even be a historical period! Every unit of analysis will call for a different kind of data collection and analysis and will produce different kinds of “findings” at the conclusion of your study. [2]
Regardless of what unit of analysis you select, you will probably have to consider the “human subjects” involved in your research. [3] Who are they? What interactions will you have with them—that is, what kind of data will you be collecting? Before answering these questions, define your population of interest and your research setting. Use your research question to help guide you.
Let’s use an example from a real study. In Geographies of Campus Inequality , Benson and Lee ( 2020 ) list three related research questions: “(1) What are the different ways that first-generation students organize their social, extracurricular, and academic activities at selective and highly selective colleges? (2) how do first-generation students sort themselves and get sorted into these different types of campus lives; and (3) how do these different patterns of campus engagement prepare first-generation students for their post-college lives?” (3).
Note that we are jumping into this a bit late, after Benson and Lee have described previous studies (the literature review) and what is known about first-generation college students and what is not known. They want to know about differences within this group, and they are interested in ones attending certain kinds of colleges because those colleges will be sites where academic and extracurricular pressures compete. That is the context for their three related research questions. What is the population of interest here? First-generation college students . What is the research setting? Selective and highly selective colleges . But a host of questions remain. Which students in the real world, which colleges? What about gender, race, and other identity markers? Will the students be asked questions? Are the students still in college, or will they be asked about what college was like for them? Will they be observed? Will they be shadowed? Will they be surveyed? Will they be asked to keep diaries of their time in college? How many students? How many colleges? For how long will they be observed?
Recommendation
Take a moment and write down suggestions for Benson and Lee before continuing on to what they actually did.
Have you written down your own suggestions? Good. Now let’s compare those with what they actually did. Benson and Lee drew on two sources of data: in-depth interviews with sixty-four first-generation students and survey data from a preexisting national survey of students at twenty-eight selective colleges. Let’s ignore the survey for our purposes here and focus on those interviews. The interviews were conducted between 2014 and 2016 at a single selective college, “Hilltop” (a pseudonym ). They employed a “purposive” sampling strategy to ensure an equal number of male-identifying and female-identifying students as well as equal numbers of White, Black, and Latinx students. Each student was interviewed once. Hilltop is a selective liberal arts college in the northeast that enrolls about three thousand students.
How did your suggestions match up to those actually used by the researchers in this study? It is possible your suggestions were too ambitious? Beginning qualitative researchers can often make that mistake. You want a research design that is both effective (it matches your question and goals) and doable. You will never be able to collect data from your entire population of interest (unless your research question is really so narrow to be relevant to very few people!), so you will need to come up with a good sample. Define the criteria for this sample, as Benson and Lee did when deciding to interview an equal number of students by gender and race categories. Define the criteria for your sample setting too. Hilltop is typical for selective colleges. That was a research choice made by Benson and Lee. For more on sampling and sampling choices, see chapter 5.
Benson and Lee chose to employ interviews. If you also would like to include interviews, you have to think about what will be asked in them. Most interview-based research involves an interview guide, a set of questions or question areas that will be asked of each participant. The research question helps you create a relevant interview guide. You want to ask questions whose answers will provide insight into your research question. Again, your research question is the anchor you will continually come back to as you plan for and conduct your study. It may be that once you begin interviewing, you find that people are telling you something totally unexpected, and this makes you rethink your research question. That is fine. Then you have a new anchor. But you always have an anchor. More on interviewing can be found in chapter 11.
Let’s imagine Benson and Lee also observed college students as they went about doing the things college students do, both in the classroom and in the clubs and social activities in which they participate. They would have needed a plan for this. Would they sit in on classes? Which ones and how many? Would they attend club meetings and sports events? Which ones and how many? Would they participate themselves? How would they record their observations? More on observation techniques can be found in both chapters 13 and 14.
At this point, the design is almost complete. You know why you are doing this study, you have a clear research question to guide you, you have identified your population of interest and research setting, and you have a reasonable sample of each. You also have put together a plan for data collection, which might include drafting an interview guide or making plans for observations. And so you know exactly what you will be doing for the next several months (or years!). To put the project into action, there are a few more things necessary before actually going into the field.
First, you will need to make sure you have any necessary supplies, including recording technology. These days, many researchers use their phones to record interviews. Second, you will need to draft a few documents for your participants. These include informed consent forms and recruiting materials, such as posters or email texts, that explain what this study is in clear language. Third, you will draft a research protocol to submit to your institutional review board (IRB) ; this research protocol will include the interview guide (if you are using one), the consent form template, and all examples of recruiting material. Depending on your institution and the details of your study design, it may take weeks or even, in some unfortunate cases, months before you secure IRB approval. Make sure you plan on this time in your project timeline. While you wait, you can continue to review the literature and possibly begin drafting a section on the literature review for your eventual presentation/publication. More on IRB procedures can be found in chapter 8 and more general ethical considerations in chapter 7.
Once you have approval, you can begin!
Research Design Checklist
Before data collection begins, do the following:
Write a paragraph explaining your aims and goals (personal/political, practical/strategic, professional/academic).
Define your research question; write two to three sentences that clarify the intent of the research and why this is an important question to answer.
Review the literature for similar studies that address your research question or similar research questions; think laterally about some literature that might be helpful or illuminating but is not exactly about the same topic.
Find a written study that inspires you—it may or may not be on the research question you have chosen.
Consider and choose a research tradition and set of data-collection techniques that (1) help answer your research question and (2) match your aims and goals.
Define your population of interest and your research setting.
Define the criteria for your sample (How many? Why these? How will you find them, gain access, and acquire consent?).
If you are conducting interviews, draft an interview guide.
If you are making observations, create a plan for observations (sites, times, recording, access).
Acquire any necessary technology (recording devices/software).
Draft consent forms that clearly identify the research focus and selection process.
Apply for IRB approval (proposal plus consent form plus recruiting materials).
Block out time for collecting data.
At the end of the chapter, you will find a " Research Design Checklist " that summarizes the main recommendations made here ↵
For example, if your focus is society and culture , you might collect data through observation or a case study. If your focus is individual lived experience , you are probably going to be interviewing some people. And if your focus is language and communication , you will probably be analyzing text (written or visual). ( Marshall and Rossman 2016:16 ). ↵
You may not have any "live" human subjects. There are qualitative research methods that do not require interactions with live human beings - see chapter 16 , "Archival and Historical Sources." But for the most part, you are probably reading this textbook because you are interested in doing research with people. The rest of the chapter will assume this is the case. ↵
One of the primary methodological traditions of inquiry in qualitative research, ethnography is the study of a group or group culture, largely through observational fieldwork supplemented by interviews. It is a form of fieldwork that may include participant-observation data collection. See chapter 14 for a discussion of deep ethnography.
A methodological tradition of inquiry and research design that focuses on an individual case (e.g., setting, institution, or sometimes an individual) in order to explore its complexity, history, and interactive parts. As an approach, it is particularly useful for obtaining a deep appreciation of an issue, event, or phenomenon of interest in its particular context.
The controlling force in research; can be understood as lying on a continuum from basic research (knowledge production) to action research (effecting change).
In its most basic sense, a theory is a story we tell about how the world works that can be tested with empirical evidence. In qualitative research, we use the term in a variety of ways, many of which are different from how they are used by quantitative researchers. Although some qualitative research can be described as “testing theory,” it is more common to “build theory” from the data using inductive reasoning , as done in Grounded Theory . There are so-called “grand theories” that seek to integrate a whole series of findings and stories into an overarching paradigm about how the world works, and much smaller theories or concepts about particular processes and relationships. Theory can even be used to explain particular methodological perspectives or approaches, as in Institutional Ethnography , which is both a way of doing research and a theory about how the world works.
Research that is interested in generating and testing hypotheses about how the world works.
A methodological tradition of inquiry and approach to analyzing qualitative data in which theories emerge from a rigorous and systematic process of induction. This approach was pioneered by the sociologists Glaser and Strauss (1967). The elements of theory generated from comparative analysis of data are, first, conceptual categories and their properties and, second, hypotheses or generalized relations among the categories and their properties – “The constant comparing of many groups draws the [researcher’s] attention to their many similarities and differences. Considering these leads [the researcher] to generate abstract categories and their properties, which, since they emerge from the data, will clearly be important to a theory explaining the kind of behavior under observation.” (36).
An approach to research that is “multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials – case study, personal experience, introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts – that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives." ( Denzin and Lincoln 2005:2 ). Contrast with quantitative research .
Research that contributes knowledge that will help people to understand the nature of a problem in order to intervene, thereby allowing human beings to more effectively control their environment.
Research that is designed to evaluate or test the effectiveness of specific solutions and programs addressing specific social problems. There are two kinds: summative and formative .
Research in which an overall judgment about the effectiveness of a program or policy is made, often for the purpose of generalizing to other cases or programs. Generally uses qualitative research as a supplement to primary quantitative data analyses. Contrast formative evaluation research .
Research designed to improve a program or policy (to help “form” or shape its effectiveness); relies heavily on qualitative research methods. Contrast summative evaluation research
Research carried out at a particular organizational or community site with the intention of affecting change; often involves research subjects as participants of the study. See also participatory action research .
Research in which both researchers and participants work together to understand a problematic situation and change it for the better.
The level of the focus of analysis (e.g., individual people, organizations, programs, neighborhoods).
The large group of interest to the researcher. Although it will likely be impossible to design a study that incorporates or reaches all members of the population of interest, this should be clearly defined at the outset of a study so that a reasonable sample of the population can be taken. For example, if one is studying working-class college students, the sample may include twenty such students attending a particular college, while the population is “working-class college students.” In quantitative research, clearly defining the general population of interest is a necessary step in generalizing results from a sample. In qualitative research, defining the population is conceptually important for clarity.
A fictional name assigned to give anonymity to a person, group, or place. Pseudonyms are important ways of protecting the identity of research participants while still providing a “human element” in the presentation of qualitative data. There are ethical considerations to be made in selecting pseudonyms; some researchers allow research participants to choose their own.
A requirement for research involving human participants; the documentation of informed consent. In some cases, oral consent or assent may be sufficient, but the default standard is a single-page easy-to-understand form that both the researcher and the participant sign and date. Under federal guidelines, all researchers "shall seek such consent only under circumstances that provide the prospective subject or the representative sufficient opportunity to consider whether or not to participate and that minimize the possibility of coercion or undue influence. The information that is given to the subject or the representative shall be in language understandable to the subject or the representative. No informed consent, whether oral or written, may include any exculpatory language through which the subject or the representative is made to waive or appear to waive any of the subject's rights or releases or appears to release the investigator, the sponsor, the institution, or its agents from liability for negligence" (21 CFR 50.20). Your IRB office will be able to provide a template for use in your study .
An administrative body established to protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects recruited to participate in research activities conducted under the auspices of the institution with which it is affiliated. The IRB is charged with the responsibility of reviewing all research involving human participants. The IRB is concerned with protecting the welfare, rights, and privacy of human subjects. The IRB has the authority to approve, disapprove, monitor, and require modifications in all research activities that fall within its jurisdiction as specified by both the federal regulations and institutional policy.
Here is the abstract of a 2014 article in the journal Psychological Science.
Taking notes on laptops rather than in longhand is increasingly common. Many researchers have suggested that laptop note taking is less effective than longhand note taking for learning. Prior studies have primarily focused on students’ capacity for multitasking and distraction when using laptops. The present research suggests that even when laptops are used solely to take notes, they may still be impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing. In three studies, we found that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental to learning. (Mueler & Oppenheimer, 2014, p. 1159) [1]
In this abstract, the researcher has identified a research question—about the effect of taking notes on a laptop on learning—and identified why it is worthy of investigation—because the practice is ubiquitous and may be harmful to learning. In this chapter, we give you a broad overview of the various stages of the research process. These include finding a topic of investigation, reviewing the literature, refining your research question and generating a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, analyzing the data, coming to conclusions, and reporting the results.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25 (6), 1159-1168. ↵
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Chapter 2: Research Methods in Psychology
Chapter 2 learning objectives:.
Explain the steps of the scientific method
Differentiate between theories and hypotheses
Differentiate between descriptive, experimental, and correlational research
Explain the strengths and weaknesses of case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys
Explain what a correlation coefficient tells us about the relationship between variables
Describe why correlation does not mean causation
Describe the experimental process, including ways to control for bias
Identify and differentiate between independent and dependent variables
Differentiate between random sampling and random assignment
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CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
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Performance Specifications for Rapid Highway Renewal (2014)
Chapter: chapter 2 - research methodology.
Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
12 C h a p t e r 2 Performance specifications emphasize desired outcomes and results, challenging owners and their industry partners to think in terms of user needs and to recognize that more than one solution may achieve the project objectives. Incorporating such concepts into a specification represents a distinct depar- ture from todayâs build-to-print culture and demands a new approach to specification writing, contract administration, and construction execution. To help advance this new approach, the R07 research team developed guide specifications and associated implementation guidelines to support the application of performance speci- fications across a wide range of work and projects. In prepar- ing these documents, the team focused its research efforts on addressing the following fundamental questions: ⢠What are performance specifications? ⢠How are effective performance specifications developed and drafted? ⢠Why use performance specifications? ⢠What are the risks associated with using performance specifications? ⢠When should performance specifications be used instead of method specifications? ⢠Who is affected by the implementation of performance specifications and how are they affected? What are performance Specifications? Context drives how performance specifications are defined within the construction industry. For example, the U.S. Depart- ment of Defense (DoD) describes a performance specification as one that states requirements in terms of the required results and the criteria for verifying compliance, without specifically stating how the results are to be achieved. A performance specification describes the functional requirements for an item, its capa- bilities, the environment in which it must operate, and any interface, interoperability, or compatibility requirements. It does not present a preconceived solution to a requirement. (DoD 2009) In addition to addressing end-product performance, as contemplated by the DoD definition, requirements for a high- way construction project could conceivably extend to project- related performance in terms of work zone management, safety, and timely completion. Postconstruction and operational per- formance, as found in warranties and maintenance agreements, also could be included. The first task for the research team was therefore to con- duct a comprehensive literature review to establish what the term performance specifications encompasses when applied to the highway construction industry. Literature Review To provide focus to the literature review, the team first deter- mined which elements of a rapid renewal project would benefit from the development and implementation of performance specifications. Bearing in mind the objectives of rapid renewal (i.e., accelerated construction, minimal disruption, and long- life facilities), the team identified both physical products of con- struction (bridges, earthwork and geotechnical systems, and asphalt and concrete pavements) and project-level require- ments (work zone management, public relations, quality index- ing, and time incentives) as areas for possible application of performance specifications. To provide additional structure to the literature review, the team also established baseline definitions (presented in Appen- dix B) of specification types and contracting methods that would fall under the umbrella term performance specifications. As described in Chapter 1, performance specifications may be viewed in terms of a continuum. Categorizing specifications (e.g., as end-result specifications or PRS) helps identify the Research Methodology
13 advancement of performance specifications in a particular topic area. The literature review effort itself entailed collecting and reviewing reports, specifications, contract documents, and similar information to determine the status of performance specifying in each of the topic areas considered. The primary resources consulted included relevant FHWA, AASHTO, and NCHRP reports, as well as additional reports, contracts, and specifications from departments of transportation, industry, and international sources. Particular emphasis was placed on obtaining documents that addressed product performance measures, incentives, measurement and verification strategies, risk allocation techniques, legal and administrative issues, and other information relevant to the development and imple- mentation of performance specifications. Content Analysis The collected literature was classified according to specification type (e.g., end-result, PRS, warranty, and so on), topic area (e.g., pavement, bridge, work zone management, and so on), and project delivery approach (e.g., design-bid-build, design-build, design-build-operate-maintain). Then it was screened for per- ceived applicability to subsequent specification development efforts on the basis of containing or suggesting the following: ⢠Progressive or creative performance parameters, measure- ment strategies, test methods (NDT or otherwise), or acceptance criteria appropriate to the rapid renewal environment; ⢠Techniques to transfer performance responsibility from the owner to the contractor; ⢠Actual or potential value of performance specifications; and ⢠Conditions appropriate for the use of performance specifications. An annotated bibliography of documents is included in Appendix D. In addition, an index of existing performance specifications, collected as part of the literature review, is avail- able at the R07 report web page (http://www.trb.org/main/ blurbs/169107.aspx). how are effective performance Specifications Developed and Drafted? Historically, efforts at performance specifying (particularly in the pavement area) focused on the development and use of complex predictive models to establish specification require- ments. The research study undertaken for the R07 project adopted a more pragmatic approach that is amenable to, but not reliant on, the use of such models to define perfor- mance needs. The step-by-step process balances user needs and project goals against available technology and industryâs appetite for assuming performance risk, recognizing that such factors are often closely tied to the selected project delivery method. As illustrated by the suite of guide performance specifications prepared under this research study, the inherent flexibility of this approach makes it readily adaptable to different project elements and delivery methods. The complete performance specification development pro- cess is presented in the specification writers guide, Chapter 2. Agencies are encouraged to use the implementation guide- lines in conjunction with the guide specifications to tailor per formance requirements to project-specific conditions. Alter natively, agencies may develop additional performance specifications for needs not addressed by the current set of guide specifications. Specification Development Framework The primary function of a specification, whether prescriptive or performance oriented, is to communicate a projectâs require- ments and the criteria by which the owner will verify confor- mance with the requirements. In this respect, performance specifications are similar to conventional method specifica- tions. Where they differ is the level at which performance must be defined. Figure 2.1âwhich was adapted from a model devel- oped by the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Public Works, and Water Managementâillustrates the possible requirement levels for a hypothetical pavement project (van der Zwan 2003). Taken as a whole, the pyramid depicted in the figure is intended to represent the entirety of knowledge and expe rience related to pavement design and construction. Taking and evaluating each level individually, the specifier can create a specification that is entirely prescriptive (if based solely on the material and workmanship properties defined on the lowest levels) or one that is more performance oriented (if based on the user needs and functional requirements described on the higher levels). For a particular project, the appropriate mix of perfor- mance requirements is driven by the projectâs scope and objectives as well as the chosen project delivery approach and risk allo cation strategy. In practice, specifications typically include elements from several of the levels shown in Figure 2.1. Determining the appropriate balance between prescriptive and performance-oriented requirements is one of the main objectives of the eight-step specification development pro- cess illustrated Figure 2.2. Chapter 2 of the specification writ- ers guide describes this specification development framework in detail, systematically leading a specifier through each step in the process. However, as suggested by a review of the guide
14 specifications themselves, some steps are more critical to certain topic areas than to others. For example, although project deliv- ery approach (Step 3) plays a large role in shaping the develop- ment of a performance specification for pavements and bridges, it has less influence on establishing performance requirements for work zone management and geotechnical features. Application of the Performance Specification Framework To apply this framework to the main research areas of pave- ment, bridges, geotechnical systems, and work zone man- agement, the team first reviewed a cross section of existing performance specifications obtained through the literature review effort. Coordination with other SHRP and FHWA research projects provided additional information on topic areas that complemented the R07 effort to develop perfor- mance specifications for rapid renewal. The relevant projects addressed the following topics: ⢠Advances in nondestructive testing techniques {e.g., SHRP 2 R06; FHWA Transportation Pooled Fund study [Project No. TPF-5(128)] on intelligent compaction}; ⢠Innovative materials (e.g., SHRP 2 R19A); and ⢠Mechanistic-based performance prediction (e.g., FHWA research study DTFH61-08-H-00005). The team carefully reviewed the collected literature, filter- ing existing performance specifications through the criteria established in the specification development framework to identify viable performance parameters and measurement strategies. Existing performance measures that met the frame- work criteria formed the basis for initial brainstorming ses- sions conducted among the teamâs internal experts. Those existing measures, coupled with the teamâs own project expe- rience, led to the development of draft performance require- ments which were then discussed and reviewed with external representatives from agencies and industry in formal work- shop settings. The input from external experts was used to refine and finalize the guide specifications and asso ciated commentary. Chapter 3 provides a more detailed summary of the findings from the literature review and outreach efforts in the context of the development of the guide specifications. To develop specifications that would be suitable for adop- tion by AASHTO, to the extent possible, the team adhered to the principles set forth in the National Highway Institute (NHI) Course No. 134001, Principles of Writing Highway Construction Specifications, and the FHWA Technical Advi- sory, Development and Review of Specifications (FHWA 2010). Even so, the team recognized that the typical AASHTO five- part format (Description, Materials, Construction, Measure- ment, Payment) may not be appropriate for every project delivery approach. For example, the lump-sum nature of a design-build contract may make measurement and payment sections unnecessary, whereas a warranty provision would require additional requirements related to bonding, distress evaluations, and required remedial action during the war- ranty period. Source: van der Zwan 2003 Figure 2.1. Pyramid of performance.
15 Figure 2.2. Performance specification development process.
16 Why Use performance Specifications? Successful implementation of performance specifications will likely require a departure from traditional project development and delivery processes. To gain support for necessary changes, best practice suggests first establishing a compelling business case as to why performance specifica- tions represent a desired addition to an agencyâs contracting toolbox. Literature Review To establish the rationale for using performance specifica- tions, the team first performed a literature review to docu- ment any prior efforts to identify the actual or potential value received through the use of performance-based, incentive- based, and performance warranty contracts and specifica- tions in the highway construction industry. Recognizing that performance specifications have not been widely applied to transportation projects in the United States, the team expanded its literature search to include research and practice from outside the highway industry. For example, the use of performance-based service contracts has become a standard business practice for some federal agencies, such as the Department of Defense (DoD), and the benefits of these contracts have been validated by research studies and best practice guides (OFPP 1998a; OFPP 1998b; DoD 2000). Although the benefits may not directly translate to the value added or lost by applying performance specifications to a highway construction project, they do provide general insight into the advantages of using performance contracting strategies. Value Assessment Research and practice, particularly from outside the highway industry, suggest that implementing performance specifica- tions has the potential to provide several advantages, includ- ing decreased life-cycle costs, reduced inspection, and improved quality and customer satisfaction. However, the literature contains little data quantifying the actual value added or lost by implementing performance specifications. Despite the lack of quantitative data, the literature does reflect the perception that using performance specifications or a performance contracting system will result in enhanced value (or performance) for highway agencies and road users. The literature also makes evident that these enhancements can be attributed, at least in part, to alternative project delivery systems that provide more flexibility and shift more responsibility to the private sector to achieve perfor- mance goals. Comparative Framework The team felt it was necessary to develop a comparative struc- ture to assess performance specifications against a benchmark. That comparison would allow consideration of how project delivery approaches could affect the actual or potential value received from implementing performance specifications. On the basis of the literature review and consultation with subject matter experts, the team generated a list of viable delivery schemes for performance specifications. The results of that effort led the team to use the following delivery meth- ods as the basis for assessing the perceived value of perfor- mance specifications: ⢠Prescriptive (method) specifications (benchmark); ⢠Design-bid-build, with some performance requirements, but no warranty (DBB+P); ⢠Design-bid-build, with short-term warranty (DBB+STW); ⢠Design-build, with no warranty (DB); ⢠Design-build, with short-term warranty (DB+STW); and ⢠Design-build-maintain (DBM). Recognizing that project conditions could also affect the value received from performance specifications, the compar- ative framework considered the impact of different project characteristics such as the following: ⢠Road class (local, state highway, interstate, toll); ⢠Type of construction (preservation, reconstruction, new construction); ⢠Traffic [low, moderate, or high annual average daily traffic (AADT)]; ⢠Location (urban, rural); ⢠Complexity (depending on project phasing, right-of-way requirements, utilities, environmental issues, etc.); and ⢠Climate (depending on moisture and temperature, by region). In the context of these delivery approaches and project char- acteristics, the team turned to expert participation in surveys and workshops to assess the perceived value of using perfor- mance specifications. Such nonexperimental research tech- niques were found to be applicable given the nature of the study. Factors such as delivery methods and project character- istics can be shown to affect the perceived value placed on the implementation of performance specifications on highway construction projects. However, the effect or extent of the rela- tionship cannot be determined with precision, as any one of the other factors can lead to the same or a similar effect. There- fore, the team relied on nonexperimental techniques, includ- ing surveys and documentation of expertsâ comments elicited in a workshop setting, as means for data collection.
17 Delphi Analysis Although the survey method is a detailed and systematic method of data collection, response rates can be poor and the participating experts can leave out vital information. To bol- ster this technique, the team applied the Delphi method. The Delphi method is an adaptation of the survey method and is used to obtain the judgment of a panel of experts on a complex issue or topic. It is a systematic method of data col- lection and structured discussion that aims to minimize the effects of bias given the characteristic lack of anonymity in interviews and general surveys. The method is particularly useful in situations in which empirical means are not suitable and research results rely heavily on the subjective opinions of experts. In brief, a Delphi analysis entails an iterative process in which expertsâ opinions are processed and used as feedback for further refinement of opinions generated in earlier sur- vey rounds. The iterative nature of the process is expected to yield more reliable results than a single survey round. The Delphi analysis required the team to (1) assemble the Delphi expert group; (2) develop and administer survey questions; (3) receive and process the survey responses; (4) conduct a structured workshop to present, discuss, and clarify the sur- vey results; (5) conduct a second survey round assessment; (6) summarize the outcomes of the Round 2 assessment, and (7) conduct a Round 3 assessment and summarize results. Appendix E provides a detailed summary of the design and results of this data collection effort. The Delphi survey results are provided in Appendix G. Demonstration Projects Perhaps the most powerful way to identify and communicate the potential benefits of performance specifications is through demonstration projects. The SHRP 2 R07 project therefore included an implementation phase designed to validate the guidelines and performance specifications developed during the research effort. The first step toward this end was to identify candidate agen- cies that would be willing to participate in a demonstration project. A survey questionnaire was developed to gauge the interest and experience of a representative sample of highway agencies in the United States, particularly those known to have experience or interest in performance specifications or alter- native project delivery methods. The survey included a brief description of the R07 project, including the project objectives and scope of the demonstration program. The survey document further explained that the team was seeking to work with two or more transportation agencies in implementing performance specifications on demonstra- tion projects to test and validate the use of performance specifications for rapid highway renewal projects. The R07 team offered to provide resources to work with agency per- sonnel to select an appropriate project or projects, develop the necessary performance specifications and contracting pro- visions, and assist with the administration of the project dur- ing design and construction, and, if applicable, during the maintenance and operation phase. Most important, the survey sought information as to (1) the likelihood that the agency would have projects suit- able for a demonstration of performance specifications in the 2010â2011 construction seasons and (2) the areas for which the agency would be most interested in performance specifying. Ten agencies returned questionnaires or sent e-mail responses indicating interest in participating in a SHRP 2 R07 demonstra- tion project. From those responses, the team identified the following projects as viable candidates for demonstrations: ⢠Virginia DOT Route 208 Lake Anna Bridge Deck Rehabilita- tion Projectâa shadow demonstration of the use of perfor- mance parameters that related more to long-term durability and performance; ⢠Missouri DOT Route 141 Roadway Improvement Projectâ a demonstration of the use of nondestructive roller-integrated compaction monitoring (RICM), or intelligent compaction, to provide real-time and improved quality control of soil compaction operations; and ⢠Louisiana DOTD U.S. Frontage Roadsâa demonstration of the use of RICM and mechanistic-based in situ point measurements on a new pavement section. A more detailed discussion of these demonstrations is pro- vided in Chapter 3. What are the risks associated with Implementing performance Specifications? Risk in the context of performance specifications relates to the existence of any uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on the objectives of the specification. The FHWAâs Guide to Risk Assessment and Allocation for Highway Construction Management presents a continuous, cyclical approach to risk assessment, involving the following steps: identify, assess and analyze, mitigate and plan, allocate, and monitor and update (Ashley et al. 2006). A similar approach was used to address the risks associated with performance specifications. As a key component of the specification development frame- work, the discussion of risk related to performance specifica- tions (i.e., identification and evaluation of risks) is addressed in the specification writers guide. The entire process of developing
18 a performance specification is in a sense a risk management exercise designed to identify, allocate, and mitigate the risks associated with implementing a performance specification. The generally accepted approach to project-level risk managementâas described in FHWAâs Guide to Risk Assess- ment (Ashley et al. 2006) or the SHRP 2 R09 Guide for the Process of Managing Risk on Rapid Renewal Projects (Golder Associates et al. 2013)âis useful in developing a general frame- work for identifying risks; it is less useful in terms of analysis (e.g., quantifying the frequency and impacts of specification- related risks). In some cases the specification risks, such as gaps in performance measurement, are difficult to quantify given the current state of the practice (or level of understanding). For example, given the interest in the use of NDT and mechanistic properties for performance measurement, further research is needed to quantify the effects of risk related to variability or reliability of NDT versus traditional tests, or opportunities related to the use of mechanistic versus traditional perfor- mance measures. Additional long-term data collection will be needed to make valid quantitative risk assessments. The risk process described in the specification writers guide is geared to identifying risks and gaps and qualitatively deciding whether performance specifications are appropri- ate. Further, the guide assists in determining how to develop a performance specification to allocate risk among the proj- ect participants considering the current state of the practice. Further assessment of performance specification risks are needed to quantify the impacts or opportunities related to their use. When Should performance Specifications Be Used? Performance specifications are not ideal for every construc- tion contract or project circumstance. However, they may hold significant advantages over traditional method specifi- cations when certain criteria or conditions are met. To inte- grate performance specifications into an agencyâs contracting toolbox, a process is needed to evaluate when to use or not to use performance specifications. The decision to use method or performance specifications is often a matter of degree (how much and at what level). Both approaches may be appropriate for specific elements within a project. In choosing the appropriate level of perfor- mance specifications, an organizationâs culture, statutory restrictions, project objectives and characteristics, project delivery approach, and risk appetite all may play important parts in defining specifications. The interaction among these key factors will likely determine the preference for one type of specification over the other. The decision to use performance specifications versus method specifications can involve a relatively straightforward screening test, followed by a more in-depth analysis of the level and type of performance specifying appropriate for the project characteristics and contracting type. Thus, the imple- mentation guidelines (see the executive guide, Chapter 5) present a two-part decision process for evaluating when to use or not to use performance specifications. Part 1 of this decision process considers a projectâs scope and goals. Part 2 addresses the project delivery considerations that could also affect the decision. Who Is affected by performance Specifications and how are they affected? For agency personnel, developing and implementing a scope of work in terms of user needs and end-result performance is often much more challenging and resource intensive than simply adhering to the agencyâs standard specifications. For contractors, an initial investment may be needed to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and equipment to assume more responsibility for performance. While critical to a projectâs success, a well-drafted perfor- mance specification will not in and of itself ensure that an agencyâs performance goals will be met. Cultural, organiza- tional, and legal issues can also affect the successful imple- mentation of performance specifications. For this reason, the team prepared a set of implementation guidelines to accom- pany the guide specifications. In doing so, the team reviewed the existing literature, had discussions with practitioners from agencies and industry, and identified lessons learned from the demonstration projects. The goal was to address the following considerations: ⢠The effect the decision to use performance specifications could have on an agencyâs traditional project delivery phases, from project planning and preliminary engineering through to construction completion and possibly beyond to mainte- nance and asset management; ⢠Any natural progression or transition from more traditional contracts and specifications that should precede the deci- sion to use performance specifications (i.e., a learning curve to attune both the agency and industry to a new business model); and the ⢠General mechanics of administering performance con- tracts (e.g., procurement process, document and database management, and so on). This information, along with the key takeaways drawn from the other research tasks, was incorporated into both the imple- mentation guidelines and the guide specifications, as applica- ble, to provide agencies with the tools needed to develop and successfully implement performance specifications.
TRB’s second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R07-RR-1: Performance Specifications for Rapid Highway Renewal describes suggested performance specifications for different application areas and delivery methods that users may tailor to address rapid highway renewal project-specific goals and conditions.
SHRP 2 Renewal Project R07 also produced:
Implementation Guidelines: Volume I: Strategies for Implementing Performance Specifications: A Guide for Executives and Project Managers , which is designed to provide a broad overview of the benefits and challenges associated with implementing performance specifications.
Implementation Guidelines: Volume II: Developing and Drafting Effective Performance Specifications: A Guide for Specification Writers , which presents a flexible framework that specifiers may use to assess whether performance specifying represents a viable option for a particular project or project element. If it is indeed a viable option, the guide discusses how performance specifications may then be developed and used to achieve project-specific goals and satisfy user needs.
A pilot study , in partnership with the Missouri Department of Transportation, to investigate the effectiveness of selected quality assurance/quality control testing technologies.
A separate document, Guide Performance Specifications , includes model specifications and commentary to address implementation and performance targets (for acceptance) for 13 routine highway items. Agencies may adapt guide specifications to specific standards or project conditions. The commentary addresses gaps, risks, and options.
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Part 2: Conceptualizing your research project
9. Writing your research question
Chapter outline.
Empirical vs. ethical questions (4 minute read)
Characteristics of a good research question (4 minute read)
Quantitative research questions (7 minute read)
Qualitative research questions (3 minute read)
Evaluating and updating your research questions (4 minute read)
Content warning: examples in this chapter include references to sexual violence, sexism, substance use disorders, homelessness, domestic violence, the child welfare system, cissexism and heterosexism, and truancy and school discipline.
9.1 Empirical vs. ethical questions
Learning objectives.
Learners will be able to…
Define empirical questions and provide an example
Define ethical questions and provide an example
Writing a good research question is an art and a science. It is a science because you have to make sure it is clear, concise, and well-developed. It is an art because often your language needs “wordsmithing” to perfect and clarify the meaning. This is an exciting part of the research process; however, it can also be one of the most stressful.
Creating a good research question begins by identifying a topic you are interested in studying. At this point, you already have a working question. You’ve been applying it to the exercises in each chapter, and after reading more about your topic in the scholarly literature, you’ve probably gone back and revised your working question a few times. We’re going to continue that process in more detail in this chapter. Keep in mind that writing research questions is an iterative process, with revisions happening week after week until you are ready to start your project.
Empirical vs. ethical questions
When it comes to research questions, social science is best equipped to answer empirical questions —those that can be answered by real experience in the real world—as opposed to ethical questions —questions about which people have moral opinions and that may not be answerable in reference to the real world. While social workers have explicit ethical obligations (e.g., service, social justice), research projects ask empirical questions to help actualize and support the work of upholding those ethical principles.
In order to help you better understand the difference between ethical and empirical questions, let’s consider a topic about which people have moral opinions. How about SpongeBob SquarePants? [1] In early 2005, members of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family (2005) [2] denounced this seemingly innocuous cartoon character as “morally offensive” because they perceived his character to be one that promotes a “pro-gay agenda.” Focus on the Family supported their claim that SpongeBob is immoral by citing his appearance in a children’s video designed to promote tolerance of all family forms (BBC News, 2005). [3] They also cited SpongeBob’s regular hand-holding with his male sidekick Patrick as further evidence of his immorality.
So, can we now conclude that SpongeBob SquarePants is immoral? Not so fast. While your mother or a newspaper or television reporter may provide an answer, a social science researcher cannot. Questions of morality are ethical, not empirical. Of course, this doesn’t mean that social science researchers cannot study opinions about or social meanings surrounding SpongeBob SquarePants (Carter, 2010). [4] We study humans after all, and as you will discover in the following chapters of this textbook, we are trained to utilize a variety of scientific data-collection techniques to understand patterns of human beliefs and behaviors. Using these techniques, we could find out how many people in the United States find SpongeBob morally reprehensible, but we could never learn, empirically, whether SpongeBob is in fact morally reprehensible.
Let’s consider an example from a recent MSW research class I taught. A student group wanted to research the penalties for sexual assault. Their original research question was: “How can prison sentences for sexual assault be so much lower than the penalty for drug possession?” Outside of the research context, that is a darn good question! It speaks to how the War on Drugs and the patriarchy have distorted the criminal justice system towards policing of drug crimes over gender-based violence.
Unfortunately, it is an ethical question, not an empirical one. To answer that question, you would have to draw on philosophy and morality, answering what it is about human nature and society that allows such unjust outcomes. However, you could not answer that question by gathering data about people in the real world. If I asked people that question, they would likely give me their opinions about drugs, gender-based violence, and the criminal justice system. But I wouldn’t get the real answer about why our society tolerates such an imbalance in punishment.
As the students worked on the project through the semester, they continued to focus on the topic of sexual assault in the criminal justice system. Their research question became more empirical because they read more empirical articles about their topic. One option that they considered was to evaluate intervention programs for perpetrators of sexual assault to see if they reduced the likelihood of committing sexual assault again. Another option they considered was seeing if counties or states with higher than average jail sentences for sexual assault perpetrators had lower rates of re-offense for sexual assault. These projects addressed the ethical question of punishing perpetrators of sexual violence but did so in a way that gathered and analyzed empirical real-world data. Our job as social work researchers is to gather social facts about social work issues, not to judge or determine morality.
Key Takeaways
Empirical questions are distinct from ethical questions.
There are usually a number of ethical questions and a number of empirical questions that could be asked about any single topic.
While social workers may research topics about which people have moral opinions, a researcher’s job is to gather and analyze empirical data.
Take a look at your working question. Make sure you have an empirical question, not an ethical one. To perform this check, describe how you could find an answer to your question by conducting a study, like a survey or focus group, with real people.
9.2 Characteristics of a good research question
Identify and explain the key features of a good research question
Explain why it is important for social workers to be focused and clear with the language they use in their research questions
Now that you’ve made sure your working question is empirical, you need to revise that working question into a formal research question. So, what makes a good research question? First, it is generally written in the form of a question. To say that your research question is “the opioid epidemic” or “animal assisted therapy” or “oppression” would not be correct. You need to frame your topic as a question, not a statement. A good research question is also one that is well-focused. A well-focused question helps you tune out irrelevant information and not try to answer everything about the world all at once. You could be the most eloquent writer in your class, or even in the world, but if the research question about which you are writing is unclear, your work will ultimately lack direction.
In addition to being written in the form of a question and being well-focused, a good research question is one that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no. For example, if your interest is in gender norms, you could ask, “Does gender affect a person’s performance of household tasks?” but you will have nothing left to say once you discover your yes or no answer. Instead, why not ask, about the relationship between gender and household tasks. Alternatively, maybe we are interested in how or to what extent gender affects a person’s contributions to housework in a marriage? By tweaking your question in this small way, you suddenly have a much more fascinating question and more to say as you attempt to answer it.
A good research question should also have more than one plausible answer. In the example above, the student who studied the relationship between gender and household tasks had a specific interest in the impact of gender, but she also knew that preferences might be impacted by other factors. For example, she knew from her own experience that her more traditional and socially conservative friends were more likely to see household tasks as part of the female domain, and were less likely to expect their male partners to contribute to those tasks. Thinking through the possible relationships between gender, culture, and household tasks led that student to realize that there were many plausible answers to her questions about how gender affects a person’s contribution to household tasks. Because gender doesn’t exist in a vacuum, she wisely felt that she needed to consider other characteristics that work together with gender to shape people’s behaviors, likes, and dislikes. By doing this, the student considered the third feature of a good research question–she thought about relationships between several concepts. While she began with an interest in a single concept—household tasks—by asking herself what other concepts (such as gender or political orientation) might be related to her original interest, she was able to form a question that considered the relationships among those concepts.
This student had one final component to consider. Social work research questions must contain a target population. Her study would be very different if she were to conduct it on older adults or immigrants who just arrived in a new country. The target population is the group of people whose needs your study addresses. Maybe the student noticed issues with household tasks as part of her social work practice with first-generation immigrants, and so she made it her target population. Maybe she wants to address the needs of another community. Whatever the case, the target population should be chosen while keeping in mind social work’s responsibility to work on behalf of marginalized and oppressed groups.
In sum, a good research question generally has the following features:
It is written in the form of a question
It is clearly written
It cannot be answered with “yes” or “no”
It has more than one plausible answer
It considers relationships among multiple variables
It is specific and clear about the concepts it addresses
It includes a target population
A poorly focused research question can lead to the demise of an otherwise well-executed study.
Research questions should be clearly worded, consider relationships between multiple variables, have more than one plausible answer, and address the needs of a target population.
Okay, it’s time to write out your first draft of a research question.
Once you’ve done so, take a look at the checklist in this chapter and see if your research question meets the criteria to be a good one.
Brainstorm whether your research question might be better suited to quantitative or qualitative methods.
Describe why your question fits better with quantitative or qualitative methods.
Provide an alternative research question that fits with the other type of research method.
9.3 Quantitative research questions
Describe how research questions for exploratory, descriptive, and explanatory quantitative questions differ and how to phrase them
Identify the differences between and provide examples of strong and weak explanatory research questions
Quantitative descriptive questions
The type of research you are conducting will impact the research question that you ask. Probably the easiest questions to think of are quantitative descriptive questions. For example, “What is the average student debt load of MSW students?” is a descriptive question—and an important one. We aren’t trying to build a causal relationship here. We’re simply trying to describe how much debt MSW students carry. Quantitative descriptive questions like this one are helpful in social work practice as part of community scans, in which human service agencies survey the various needs of the community they serve. If the scan reveals that the community requires more services related to housing, child care, or day treatment for people with disabilities, a nonprofit office can use the community scan to create new programs that meet a defined community need.
Quantitative descriptive questions will often ask for percentage, count the number of instances of a phenomenon, or determine an average. Descriptive questions may only include one variable, such as ours about student debt load, or they may include multiple variables. Because these are descriptive questions, our purpose is not to investigate causal relationships between variables. To do that, we need to use a quantitative explanatory question.
Quantitative explanatory questions
Most studies you read in the academic literature will be quantitative and explanatory. Why is that? If you recall from Chapter 2 , explanatory research tries to build nomothetic causal relationships. They are generalizable across space and time, so they are applicable to a wide audience. The editorial board of a journal wants to make sure their content will be useful to as many people as possible, so it’s not surprising that quantitative research dominates the academic literature.
Structurally, quantitative explanatory questions must contain an independent variable and dependent variable. Questions should ask about the relationship between these variables. The standard format I was taught in graduate school for an explanatory quantitative research question is: “What is the relationship between [independent variable] and [dependent variable] for [target population]?” You should play with the wording for your research question, revising that standard format to match what you really want to know about your topic.
Let’s take a look at a few more examples of possible research questions and consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. Table 9.1 does just that. While reading the table, keep in mind that I have only noted what I view to be the most relevant strengths and weaknesses of each question. Certainly each question may have additional strengths and weaknesses not noted in the table. Each of these questions is drawn from student projects in my research methods classes and reflects the work of many students on their research question over many weeks.
Table 9.1 Sample research questions: Strengths and weaknesses
What are the internal and external effects/problems associated with children witnessing domestic violence?
Written as a question
Not clearly focused
How does witnessing domestic violence impact a child’s romantic relationships in adulthood?
Considers relationships among multiple concepts
Not specific and clear about the concepts it addresses
Contains a population
What causes foster children who are transitioning to adulthood to become homeless, jobless, pregnant, unhealthy, etc.?
Considers relationships among multiple concepts
Concepts are not specific and clear
What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care?
Contains a population
Not written as a yes/no question
How does income inequality predict ambivalence in the Stereo Content Model using major U.S. cities as target populations?
Written as a question
Unclear wording
How does income inequality affect ambivalence in high-density urban areas?
Considers relationships among multiple concepts
Population is unclear
Why are mental health rates higher in white foster children than African Americans and other races?
Written as a question
Concepts are not clear
How does race impact rates of mental health diagnosis for children in foster care?
Not written as a yes/no question
Does not contain a target population
Making it more specific
A good research question should also be specific and clear about the concepts it addresses. A student investigating gender and household tasks knows what they mean by “household tasks.” You likely also have an impression of what “household tasks” means. But are your definition and the student’s definition the same? A participant in their study may think that managing finances and performing home maintenance are household tasks, but the researcher may be interested in other tasks like childcare or cleaning. The only way to ensure your study stays focused and clear is to be specific about what you mean by a concept. The student in our example could pick a specific household task that was interesting to them or that the literature indicated was important—for example, childcare. Or, the student could have a broader view of household tasks, one that encompasses childcare, food preparation, financial management, home repair, and care for relatives. Any option is probably okay, as long as the researcher is clear on what they mean by “household tasks.” Clarifying these distinctions is important as we look ahead to specifying how your variables will be measured in Chapter 11 .
Table 9.2 contains some “watch words” that indicate you may need to be more specific about the concepts in your research question.
Table 9.2 “Watch words” in explanatory research questions
Factors, Causes, Effects, Outcomes
What causes or effects are you interested in? What causes and effects are important, based on the literature in your topic area? Try to choose one or a handful you consider to be the most important.
Effective, Effectiveness, Useful, Efficient
Effective at doing what? Effectiveness is meaningless on its own. What outcome should the program or intervention have? Reduced symptoms of a mental health issue? Better socialization?
Etc., and so forth
Don’t assume that your reader understands what you mean by “and so forth.” Remember that focusing on two or a small handful concepts is necessary. Your study cannot address everything about a social problem, though the results will likely have implications on other aspects of the social world.
It can be challenging to be this specific in social work research, particularly when you are just starting out your project and still reading the literature. If you’ve only read one or two articles on your topic, it can be hard to know what you are interested in studying. Broad questions like “What are the causes of chronic homelessness, and what can be done to prevent it?” are common at the beginning stages of a research project as working questions. However, moving from working questions to research questions in your research proposal requires that you examine the literature on the topic and refine your question over time to be more specific and clear. Perhaps you want to study the effect of a specific anti-homelessness program that you found in the literature. Maybe there is a particular model to fighting homelessness, like Housing First or transitional housing, that you want to investigate further. You may want to focus on a potential cause of homelessness such as LGBTQ+ discrimination that you find interesting or relevant to your practice. As you can see, the possibilities for making your question more specific are almost infinite.
Quantitative exploratory questions
In exploratory research, the researcher doesn’t quite know the lay of the land yet. If someone is proposing to conduct an exploratory quantitative project, the watch words highlighted in Table 9.2 are not problematic at all. In fact, questions such as “What factors influence the removal of children in child welfare cases?” are good because they will explore a variety of factors or causes. In this question, the independent variable is less clearly written, but the dependent variable, family preservation outcomes, is quite clearly written. The inverse can also be true. If we were to ask, “What outcomes are associated with family preservation services in child welfare?”, we would have a clear independent variable, family preservation services, but an unclear dependent variable, outcomes. Because we are only conducting exploratory research on a topic, we may not have an idea of what concepts may comprise our “outcomes” or “factors.” Only after interacting with our participants will we be able to understand which concepts are important.
Remember that exploratory research is appropriate only when the researcher does not know much about topic because there is very little scholarly research. In our examples above, there is extensive literature on the outcomes in family reunification programs and risk factors for child removal in child welfare. Make sure you’ve done a thorough literature review to ensure there is little relevant research to guide you towards a more explanatory question.
Descriptive quantitative research questions are helpful for community scans but cannot investigate causal relationships between variables.
Explanatory quantitative research questions must include an independent and dependent variable.
Exploratory quantitative research questions should only be considered when there is very little previous research on your topic.
Identify the type of research you are engaged in (descriptive, explanatory, or exploratory).
Create a quantitative research question for your project that matches with the type of research you are engaged in.
Preferably, you should be creating an explanatory research question for quantitative research.
9.4 Qualitative research questions
List the key terms associated with qualitative research questions
Distinguish between qualitative and quantitative research questions
Qualitative research questions differ from quantitative research questions. Because qualitative research questions seek to explore or describe phenomena, not provide a neat nomothetic explanation, they are often more general and openly worded. They may include only one concept, though many include more than one. Instead of asking how one variable causes changes in another, we are instead trying to understand the experiences , understandings , and meanings that people have about the concepts in our research question. These keywords often make an appearance in qualitative research questions.
Let’s work through an example from our last section. In Table 9.1, a student asked, “What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care?” In this question, it is pretty clear that the student believes that adolescents in foster care who identify as LGBTQ+ may be at greater risk for homelessness. This is a nomothetic causal relationship—LGBTQ+ status causes changes in homelessness.
However, what if the student were less interested in predicting homelessness based on LGBTQ+ status and more interested in understanding the stories of foster care youth who identify as LGBTQ+ and may be at risk for homelessness? In that case, the researcher would be building an idiographic causal explanation . The youths whom the researcher interviews may share stories of how their foster families, caseworkers, and others treated them. They may share stories about how they thought of their own sexuality or gender identity and how it changed over time. They may have different ideas about what it means to transition out of foster care.
Because qualitative questions usually center on idiographic causal relationships, they look different than quantitative questions. Table 9.3 below takes the final research questions from Table 9.1 and adapts them for qualitative research. The guidelines for research questions previously described in this chapter still apply, but there are some new elements to qualitative research questions that are not present in quantitative questions.
Qualitative research questions often ask about lived experience, personal experience, understanding, meaning, and stories.
Qualitative research questions may be more general and less specific.
Qualitative research questions may also contain only one variable, rather than asking about relationships between multiple variables.
Table 9.3 Quantitative vs. qualitative research questions
How does witnessing domestic violence impact a child’s romantic relationships in adulthood?
How do people who witness domestic violence understand its effects on their current relationships?
What is the relationship between sexual orientation or gender identity and homelessness for late adolescents in foster care?
What is the experience of identifying as LGBTQ+ in the foster care system?
How does income inequality affect ambivalence in high-density urban areas?
What does racial ambivalence mean to residents of an urban neighborhood with high income inequality?
How does race impact rates of mental health diagnosis for children in foster care?
How do African-Americans experience seeking help for mental health concerns?
Qualitative research questions have one final feature that distinguishes them from quantitative research questions: they can change over the course of a study. Qualitative research is a reflexive process, one in which the researcher adapts their approach based on what participants say and do. The researcher must constantly evaluate whether their question is important and relevant to the participants. As the researcher gains information from participants, it is normal for the focus of the inquiry to shift.
For example, a qualitative researcher may want to study how a new truancy rule impacts youth at risk of expulsion. However, after interviewing some of the youth in their community, a researcher might find that the rule is actually irrelevant to their behavior and thoughts. Instead, their participants will direct the discussion to their frustration with the school administrators or the lack of job opportunities in the area. This is a natural part of qualitative research, and it is normal for research questions and hypothesis to evolve based on information gleaned from participants.
However, this reflexivity and openness unacceptable in quantitative research for good reasons. Researchers using quantitative methods are testing a hypothesis, and if they could revise that hypothesis to match what they found, they could never be wrong! Indeed, an important component of open science and reproducability is the preregistration of a researcher’s hypotheses and data analysis plan in a central repository that can be verified and replicated by reviewers and other researchers. This interactive graphic from 538 shows how an unscrupulous research could come up with a hypothesis and theoretical explanation after collecting data by hunting for a combination of factors that results in a statistically significant relationship. This is an excellent example of how the positivist assumptions behind quantitative research and intepretivist assumptions behind qualitative research result in different approaches to social science.
Qualitative research questions often contain words or phrases like “lived experience,” “personal experience,” “understanding,” “meaning,” and “stories.”
Qualitative research questions can change and evolve over the course of the study.
Using the guidance in this chapter, write a qualitative research question. You may want to use some of the keywords mentioned above.
9.5 Evaluating and updating your research questions
Evaluate the feasibility and importance of your research questions
Begin to match your research questions to specific designs that determine what the participants in your study will do
Feasibility and importance
As you are getting ready to finalize your research question and move into designing your research study, it is important to check whether your research question is feasible for you to answer and what importance your results will have in the community, among your participants, and in the scientific literature
Key questions to consider when evaluating your question’s feasibility include:
Do you have access to the data you need?
Will you be able to get consent from stakeholders, gatekeepers, and others?
Does your project pose risk to individuals through direct harm, dual relationships, or breaches in confidentiality? (see Chapter 6 for more ethical considerations)
Are you competent enough to complete the study?
Do you have the resources and time needed to carry out the project?
Key questions to consider when evaluating the importance of your question include:
Can we answer your research question simply by looking at the literature on your topic?
How does your question add something new to the scholarly literature? (raises a new issue, addresses a controversy, studies a new population, etc.)
How will your target population benefit, once you answer your research question?
How will the community, social work practice, and the broader social world benefit, once you answer your research question?
Using the questions above, check whether you think your project is feasible for you to complete, given the constrains that student projects face.
Realistically, explore the potential impact of your project on the community and in the scientific literature. Make sure your question cannot be answered by simply reading more about your topic.
Matching your research question and study design
This chapter described how to create a good quantitative and qualitative research question. In Parts 3 and 4 of this textbook, we will detail some of the basic designs like surveys and interviews that social scientists use to answer their research questions. But which design should you choose?
As with most things, it all depends on your research question. If your research question involves, for example, testing a new intervention, you will likely want to use an experimental design. On the other hand, if you want to know the lived experience of people in a public housing building, you probably want to use an interview or focus group design.
We will learn more about each one of these designs in the remainder of this textbook. We will also learn about using data that already exists, studying an individual client inside clinical practice, and evaluating programs, which are other examples of designs. Below is a list of designs we will cover in this textbook:
Interviews: in-person or via phone or videoconference
Focus groups: in-person or via videoconference
Content analysis of existing data
Secondary data analysis of another researcher’s data
Program evaluation
The design of your research study determines what you and your participants will do. In an experiment, for example, the researcher will introduce a stimulus or treatment to participants and measure their responses. In contrast, a content analysis may not have participants at all, and the researcher may simply read the marketing materials for a corporation or look at a politician’s speeches to conduct the data analysis for the study.
I imagine that a content analysis probably seems easier to accomplish than an experiment. However, as a researcher, you have to choose a research design that makes sense for your question and that is feasible to complete with the resources you have. All research projects require some resources to accomplish. Make sure your design is one you can carry out with the resources (time, money, staff, etc.) that you have.
There are so many different designs that exist in the social science literature that it would be impossible to include them all in this textbook. The purpose of the subsequent chapters is to help you understand the basic designs upon which these more advanced designs are built. As you learn more about research design, you will likely find yourself revising your research question to make sure it fits with the design. At the same time, your research question as it exists now should influence the design you end up choosing. There is no set order in which these should happen. Instead, your research project should be guided by whether you can feasibly carry it out and contribute new and important knowledge to the world.
Research questions must be feasible and important.
Research questions must match study design.
Based on what you know about designs like surveys, experiments, and interviews, describe how you might use one of them to answer your research question.
You may want to refer back to Chapter 2 which discusses how to get raw data about your topic and the common designs used in student research projects.
Not familiar with SpongeBob SquarePants? You can learn more about him on Nickelodeon’s site dedicated to all things SpongeBob: http://www.nick.com/spongebob-squarepants/ ↵
Focus on the Family. (2005, January 26). Focus on SpongeBob. Christianity Today . Retrieved from http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/januaryweb-only/34.0c.html ↵
BBC News. (2005, January 20). US right attacks SpongeBob video. Retrieved from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4190699.stm ↵
In fact, an MA thesis examines representations of gender and relationships in the cartoon: Carter, A. C. (2010). Constructing gender and relationships in “SpongeBob SquarePants”: Who lives in a pineapple under the sea . MA thesis, Department of Communication, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL. ↵
research questions that can be answered by systematically observing the real world
unsuitable research questions which are not answerable by systematic observation of the real world but instead rely on moral or philosophical opinions
the group of people whose needs your study addresses
attempts to explain or describe your phenomenon exhaustively, based on the subjective understandings of your participants
"Assuming that the null hypothesis is true and the study is repeated an infinite number times by drawing random samples from the same populations(s), less than 5% of these results will be more extreme than the current result" (Cassidy et al., 2019, p. 233).
whether you can practically and ethically complete the research project you propose
the impact your study will have on participants, communities, scientific knowledge, and social justice
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Chapter 13 Objectives
Barry Mauer and John Venecek
In this final chapter we help you steer clear of plagiarism, which is the use of others’ words and ideas without proper attribution, find resources to help you with your research, and provide an assignment that puts in place the components necessary for finishing your research project.
Plagiarism is a violation of scholarly integrity and hurts not just the plagiarist (who gets caught) and the source of the information (who is uncredited), but also the knowledge profession itself, which depends on an unbroken chain of attribution so that other researchers can follow the scholarly conversation back to its sources. In our page on plagiarism, we provide advice for how to credit your sources and avoid plagiarism.
Researchers need lots of resources, including training, sources, time, funding, and publishing venues, to do their work. In our page on additional resources, we provide information about many valuable resources, such as UCF’s University Writing Center, Information Literacy Modules, Research Tips Thursdays, Undergraduate Research Opportunities, Showcase of Undergraduate Research, The Pegasus Review, UCF Funding Opportunities, and Publishing and Conferences.
Finally, we provide a Foundational Materials assignment in which you put in place the components necessary to complete your research project. These components include a title, research question, thesis statement, abstract, and annotated list of sources.
Now that we’ve done the bulk of our writing, our primary task is to make sure we have not plagiarized.
Learning Objectives
In this final chapter you will learn to:
steer clear of plagiarism.
find resources to help you with your research.
put in place the components necessary for finishing your research project.
🏆 Example of research procedure in thesis. webapi.bu.edu. 2022-10-19
Example Of Methodology
Chapter 2 Sociology Notes
Chapter 2- Research methods
Research process flowchart showing chapters and interim work products
COMMENTS
Chapter 2 Research Procedures
Chapter 2 Research Procedures. In Chapter 1, we covered the basic concepts of research in economics first by reviewingkey terms in research and the roles of theory and data in the study of economics. We notedthat the study of economics proceeds within the framework of scientific methods and weengaged in a general discussion of scientific method ...
Chapter 2 Introduction
Chapter 2 Introduction. Chapter 2. Introduction. Maybe you have already gained some experience in doing research, for example in your bachelor studies, or as part of your work. The challenge in conducting academic research at masters level, is that it is multi-faceted. The types of activities are: Writing up and presenting your findings.
Chapter 2: Principles of Research
2.1 Basic Concepts. Before we address where research questions in psychology come from—and what makes them more or less interesting—it is important to understand the kinds of questions that researchers in psychology typically ask. This requires a quick introduction to several basic concepts, many of which we will return to in more detail ...
Chapter 2. Research Design
Qualitative research methods are a huge opportunity to increase access, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Qualitative research allows us to engage and examine the uniquenesses/nuances within minoritized and dominant identities and our experiences with these identities. Qualitative research allows us to explore a specific topic, and through ...
2.2 Research Methods
Differentiate between six kinds of research methods: surveys, interviews, field research, participant observations, ethnographies, and secondary data analysis. Explain the appropriateness of specific research approaches for specific topics. Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it.
2.1 Research Process
2.1 Research Process As shown in Figure 2.1 below, the research process involves eight essential steps of conducting research that is required to achieve the desired goals/aims. The research process is cyclical and starts with some questions or observations and existing scientific knowledge (i.e. literature review), wherein knowledge gaps are identified and used to guide the development of a ...
Chapter 2: Overview of the Scientific Method
In this chapter, we give you a broad overview of the various stages of the research process. These include finding a topic of investigation, reviewing the literature, refining your research question and generating a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, analyzing the data, coming to conclusions, and reporting the results.
PDF Instructor's Manual Chapter 2: Research Methods
Activities : Locate a short social science journal article through your school library. Work alone or with a partner to identify the research question being explored, the research method(s) used, the approach to research being used (critical, experimental, etc.), and the key findings of the researcher(s).
Chapter 2: Research Methods in Psychology
Chapter 2 Learning Objectives: Explain the steps of the scientific method. Differentiate between theories and hypotheses. Differentiate between descriptive, experimental, and correlational research. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys. Explain what a correlation coefficient tells us about ...
(PDF) Research Procedures
This chapter offers a guide on how to implement good research practices in research procedures, following the logical steps in research planning from idea development to the planning of analysis ...
PDF CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The research methodology provides an orientation that influences the research results and influ-ences the results' standing in the different research communities. It is therefore the responsibility of the researcher to provide evidence of the research methods applied (Walsham, 1995) and justi-fication for the choice of these methods. This reflects their understanding of the philosophy and ...
PDF Microsoft Word
Chapter 2: Research Procedures Definition This chapter describes the processes involved in identifying and developing a topic for research investigation. It was suggested that researchers consider several sources for potential ideas, including a critical analysis of everyday situations.
CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Chapter 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The methodology describes and explains about the different procedures including research design, respondents of the study, research instrument, validity and reliability of the instrument, data gathering procedure, as well as the statistical treatment and analysis. Research Method The descriptive method was used in ...
Research Goals
Chapter 2: Identifying a Problem and Considering Audience. ... Chapter 4: Research Goals, Theory, Methodologies, Methods, and Evidence. ... we discuss different types of theories, the methodologies those theories entail, and the methods and skills necessary to do research using your chosen theory. Previous/next navigation. Previous: Chapter 4 ...
Chapter 2
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Scientific Method, Empirical Investigation, Theory and more.
Chapter 2
Read chapter Chapter 2 - Research Methodology: TRB's second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R07-RR-1: Performance Specifications f...
Chapter 2: The Research process; getting started
theory. Formal....building involves 6 basic steps. 1. the researcher describes an event or observation that needs understanding. 2. the researcher creates an explanation for the event. 3. the researcher moves from the specific event or observation to a more generalized form. 4.Derive predictions from explanations.
References for Chapter 2
References for Chapter 2 Busetto L, Wick W, Gumbinger C. How to use and assess qualitative research methods. Neurological Research and Practice. 2020;2;14. doi: 10.1186/s42466-020-00059-z Wintersberger D, Saunders M. Formulating and clarifying the research topic: Insights and a guide for the production management research community.
Chapter 2: Research Methods Flashcards
Start studying Chapter 2: Research Methods. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.
9. Writing your research question
Graduate research methods in social work quiz bank (Day et al., 2020) Scaffolded assignments for a research proposal (DeCarlo, 2020) ... If you recall from Chapter 2, explanatory research tries to build nomothetic causal relationships. They are generalizable across space and time, so they are applicable to a wide audience. ...
Chapter 2
This summary was taken from the Psychology textbook and covers chapter 2 - research methodologies. august 23, 2017 psych 1101 chapter research methodology how
Chapter 2 Research Methods
Descriptive, or qualitative, methods include the case study, naturalistic observation, surveys, archival research, longitudinal research, and cross-sectional research.
Chapter 12 Objectives
Chapter 12 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. Once you have synthesized your research materials and are ready to address your audience with a clear purpose in mind, you should start the process of putting your research in a presentable form. We start this chapter with a page on "Writer's Block," a common affliction to ...
Chapter 2: Research Methodology Flashcards
A systematic procedure of observing and measuring phenomena (observable things) to answer questions about what happens, when it happens, what causes it, and why: involves a dynamic interaction between theories, hypotheses, and research.
Ch. 2 Personality Research Methods (ppt)
The Personality Puzzle Fifth Edition by David C. Funder Chapter 2: Personality Research Methods: Clues In Personality Objectives • Discuss four ways to "look at" personality (BLIS—behavior, life, informants, self) • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type of data • Discuss why it is important to collect as many types of ...
Chapter 10 Objectives
Chapter 10 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. Much of this chapter deals with constructing cohesive arguments. In "Research as an Inferential and Critical Process," we discuss how inferences allow us to move from one thought to another; they are the pathways by which thinking occurs.
Title 101 Chapter 2 Regulation 086
(2) Provides documentation verifying his or her successful completion of an internship coordinated by the Personnel Cabinet. Section 2. Procedures. (1) Applicants entitled to internship interview preference as set forth in Section 1 of this administrative regulation shall be clearly identified. (2)
Psychology: Chapter 2, Research Methods Flashcards
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Core concept 1, scientific method, empirical investigation and more.
Chapter 13 Objectives
Chapter 13 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. In this final chapter we help you steer clear of plagiarism, which is the use of others' words and ideas without proper attribution, find resources to help you with your research, and provide an assignment that puts in place the components necessary for finishing your research project.
IMAGES
COMMENTS
Chapter 2 Research Procedures. In Chapter 1, we covered the basic concepts of research in economics first by reviewingkey terms in research and the roles of theory and data in the study of economics. We notedthat the study of economics proceeds within the framework of scientific methods and weengaged in a general discussion of scientific method ...
Chapter 2 Introduction. Chapter 2. Introduction. Maybe you have already gained some experience in doing research, for example in your bachelor studies, or as part of your work. The challenge in conducting academic research at masters level, is that it is multi-faceted. The types of activities are: Writing up and presenting your findings.
2.1 Basic Concepts. Before we address where research questions in psychology come from—and what makes them more or less interesting—it is important to understand the kinds of questions that researchers in psychology typically ask. This requires a quick introduction to several basic concepts, many of which we will return to in more detail ...
Qualitative research methods are a huge opportunity to increase access, equity, inclusion, and social justice. Qualitative research allows us to engage and examine the uniquenesses/nuances within minoritized and dominant identities and our experiences with these identities. Qualitative research allows us to explore a specific topic, and through ...
Differentiate between six kinds of research methods: surveys, interviews, field research, participant observations, ethnographies, and secondary data analysis. Explain the appropriateness of specific research approaches for specific topics. Sociologists examine the social world, see a problem or interesting pattern, and set out to study it.
2.1 Research Process As shown in Figure 2.1 below, the research process involves eight essential steps of conducting research that is required to achieve the desired goals/aims. The research process is cyclical and starts with some questions or observations and existing scientific knowledge (i.e. literature review), wherein knowledge gaps are identified and used to guide the development of a ...
In this chapter, we give you a broad overview of the various stages of the research process. These include finding a topic of investigation, reviewing the literature, refining your research question and generating a hypothesis, designing and conducting a study, analyzing the data, coming to conclusions, and reporting the results.
Activities : Locate a short social science journal article through your school library. Work alone or with a partner to identify the research question being explored, the research method(s) used, the approach to research being used (critical, experimental, etc.), and the key findings of the researcher(s).
Chapter 2 Learning Objectives: Explain the steps of the scientific method. Differentiate between theories and hypotheses. Differentiate between descriptive, experimental, and correlational research. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of case studies, naturalistic observation, and surveys. Explain what a correlation coefficient tells us about ...
This chapter offers a guide on how to implement good research practices in research procedures, following the logical steps in research planning from idea development to the planning of analysis ...
The research methodology provides an orientation that influences the research results and influ-ences the results' standing in the different research communities. It is therefore the responsibility of the researcher to provide evidence of the research methods applied (Walsham, 1995) and justi-fication for the choice of these methods. This reflects their understanding of the philosophy and ...
Chapter 2: Research Procedures Definition This chapter describes the processes involved in identifying and developing a topic for research investigation. It was suggested that researchers consider several sources for potential ideas, including a critical analysis of everyday situations.
Chapter 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The methodology describes and explains about the different procedures including research design, respondents of the study, research instrument, validity and reliability of the instrument, data gathering procedure, as well as the statistical treatment and analysis. Research Method The descriptive method was used in ...
Chapter 2: Identifying a Problem and Considering Audience. ... Chapter 4: Research Goals, Theory, Methodologies, Methods, and Evidence. ... we discuss different types of theories, the methodologies those theories entail, and the methods and skills necessary to do research using your chosen theory. Previous/next navigation. Previous: Chapter 4 ...
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Scientific Method, Empirical Investigation, Theory and more.
Read chapter Chapter 2 - Research Methodology: TRB's second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) Report S2-R07-RR-1: Performance Specifications f...
theory. Formal....building involves 6 basic steps. 1. the researcher describes an event or observation that needs understanding. 2. the researcher creates an explanation for the event. 3. the researcher moves from the specific event or observation to a more generalized form. 4.Derive predictions from explanations.
References for Chapter 2 Busetto L, Wick W, Gumbinger C. How to use and assess qualitative research methods. Neurological Research and Practice. 2020;2;14. doi: 10.1186/s42466-020-00059-z Wintersberger D, Saunders M. Formulating and clarifying the research topic: Insights and a guide for the production management research community.
Start studying Chapter 2: Research Methods. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools.
Graduate research methods in social work quiz bank (Day et al., 2020) Scaffolded assignments for a research proposal (DeCarlo, 2020) ... If you recall from Chapter 2, explanatory research tries to build nomothetic causal relationships. They are generalizable across space and time, so they are applicable to a wide audience. ...
This summary was taken from the Psychology textbook and covers chapter 2 - research methodologies. august 23, 2017 psych 1101 chapter research methodology how
Descriptive, or qualitative, methods include the case study, naturalistic observation, surveys, archival research, longitudinal research, and cross-sectional research.
Chapter 12 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. Once you have synthesized your research materials and are ready to address your audience with a clear purpose in mind, you should start the process of putting your research in a presentable form. We start this chapter with a page on "Writer's Block," a common affliction to ...
A systematic procedure of observing and measuring phenomena (observable things) to answer questions about what happens, when it happens, what causes it, and why: involves a dynamic interaction between theories, hypotheses, and research.
The Personality Puzzle Fifth Edition by David C. Funder Chapter 2: Personality Research Methods: Clues In Personality Objectives • Discuss four ways to "look at" personality (BLIS—behavior, life, informants, self) • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type of data • Discuss why it is important to collect as many types of ...
Chapter 10 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. Much of this chapter deals with constructing cohesive arguments. In "Research as an Inferential and Critical Process," we discuss how inferences allow us to move from one thought to another; they are the pathways by which thinking occurs.
(2) Provides documentation verifying his or her successful completion of an internship coordinated by the Personnel Cabinet. Section 2. Procedures. (1) Applicants entitled to internship interview preference as set forth in Section 1 of this administrative regulation shall be clearly identified. (2)
Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Core concept 1, scientific method, empirical investigation and more.
Chapter 13 Objectives Barry Mauer and John Venecek. Objectives. In this final chapter we help you steer clear of plagiarism, which is the use of others' words and ideas without proper attribution, find resources to help you with your research, and provide an assignment that puts in place the components necessary for finishing your research project.