300 W2 Discussion

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Getting Started: How to Plan a Social Research Study

Chapter 2

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Picking a Study Topic

• A topic appropriate for social research is one that
• you generalize
• about social patterns
• that operate in aggregates and
• are empirically observable.

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Picking a Study Topic

• Generalize – the topic is beyond one isolated unique instance; it is likely to reappear and applies to a broad scope of people, places, times or events.
• Social pattern – the topic has regularity or structure/form describing interconnections among events, situations or relationships in a condensed way.

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Picking a Study Topic

• Aggregates – the topic applies to a collection of people or other units (e.g., families, businesses, schools, hospitals, or neighborhoods).
• Empirically observable – the topic appears in the observable world in a way that we can detect and observe it using our senses (sight, sound, touch, smell) directly or indirectly.

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Picking a Study Topic

• Research Proposal = a detailed plan for conducting a study on a specific research question, that includes a literature review and specific technique to be used.

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Conducting a Review Past Studies

• Literature Review = a summary of previously conducted studies on the same topic or research question.

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Conducting a Review Past Studies

• A Literature Review Search Plan:
• Evaluate resources
• Select and narrow the topic
• Learn to use literature search tools
• Plan to locate and scan read articles
• Allow time to extract the major findings
• Final Stage—synthesize

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Conducting a Review Past Studies

• Where do you find the research literature?
• A Special Type of Periodical: Scholarly Journals

Peer-reviewed = A scholarly publication that has been independently evaluated for its quality and merits by several knowledgeable professional researchers and found acceptable.

Article Search tool = an online service or publication that provides an index, abstract database with which you can quickly search for articles in numerous scholarly journals by topic, author or subject area.

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Conducting a Review Past Studies

• Where do you find the research literature?
• Periodicals
• Popularized social science magazines for general public
• Practitioner advice/opinion/news
• Opinion magazines
• “Mass market” or “trade” magazines for general public
• Scholarly Journals
• Peer-reviewed = A scholarly publication that has been independently evaluated for its quality and merits by several knowledgeable professional researchers and found acceptable.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Conducting a Review Past Studies

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Conducting a Review Past Studies

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

Conducting a Review Past Studies

• Where do you find the research literature?
• Books
• Monographs
• Readers
• Edited Collections
• Dissertations
• Government Documents
• Policy Reports
• Presented Papers

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How to Conduct a Literature Review: A Six Step Process

• STEP 1: Refine the Topic
• Go from research question to narrowed topic
• STEP 2: Design Your Search
• Decide on the review’s extensiveness
• Decide which article search tools to use
• Decide how to record bibliographic information and take notes
• STEP 3: Locate the Research Reports
• Articles in scholarly journals
• Books
• Other outlets

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How to Conduct a Literature Review: A Six Step Process

• STEP 4: Read & Take Notes on the Reports Found
• Create source and content files
• What to record in notes
• STEP 5: Organize Notes, Synthesize & Write the Review
• STEP 6: Create the Reference List

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Focusing On A Research Question

• Inductive = research in which you start many specific observations and move toward general ideas or theory to capture what they show.
• Deductive = research in which you start with a general idea or theory then move to test it by looking at specific observations.

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Focusing On A Research Question

IDEAS

Observed

data

IDEAS

Observed

data

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The Research Proposal

• Research Proposal = a detailed plan for conducting a study on a specific research question, that includes a literature review and specific techniques to be used.

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 1. When do you focus the research question?
• 2. To what universe can you generalize from a study’s findings?
• Universe = a broad category of cases or units to which the study findings apply.

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 3. Which type of research path do you follow?
• Linear path = a relatively fixed sequence of steps in one forward direction, with little repeating, moving directly to a conclusion.
• Nonlinear path = advancing without fixed order that often requires successive passes through previous steps and moves toward a conclusion indirectly.

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 4. What do you examine?
• Variable = a feature of a case or unit that represents multiple types, values or levels.
• Independent Variable = the variable of factors, forces, or conditions acting on another variable to produce an effect or change in it.
• Dependent Variable = the variable influenced by and changes as an outcome another variable.
• Intervening Variable = a variable that comes between the independent and dependent variable in a causal relationship.

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 4. What do you examine?
• Hypothesis = a statement about the relationship of two (or more) variables yet to be tested with empirical data.
• Null hypothesis = a hypothesis that there is no relationship between two variables, that they do not influence one another.

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 5. How to Look for Patterns in the Data
• Quantitative data: rearrange, examine, and discuss numbers by using charts, tables and statistics to see patterns.
• Qualitative data: rearrange, examine, discuss textual or visual data.

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The Research Proposal

Copyright © Allyn & Bacon 2009

The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 6. What type of explanation will you use?
• Causal explanation = a type of research explanation in which you identify one or more causes for an outcome, and place cause and effect in a larger framework.
• Has three elements:
• Time order
• Association
• Alternative causes ruled out

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 6. What type of explanation will you use?
• Grounded Theory = ideas and themes that are built up from data observation.
• 7. What are the Units of Analysis in your study?
• Unit of Analysis = the case or unit on which you measure variables or other characteristics.

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The Research Proposal

• A Proposal for Quantitative or Qualitative Research
• 8. What is the Level of Analysis of your study?
• Level of Analysis = The level of reality to which explanations refer, micro to macro.
• Micro-Level: small-scale (a few friends, a small group)
• Macro-Level: large-scale (entire civilizations or a major structure of a society).
• Warning: Avoid Spuriousness
• Spuriousness = when two variables appear to be causally connected but in reality, they are not because an unseen third factor is the true cause.

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The Research Proposal