Research Methodology Overview

Research Methodology

• Research follows a logical, explicit, and inspectable procedure (scientific method).
• A loose consensus of assumptions and procedures is essential.
• Popper's hypothetico-deductive scheme is a logical model for research.

Types of Research

• Primary research: Researcher's firsthand observation and study (e.g., interviews, observations).
• Secondary research: Research conducted by others used to support an argument or conclude on a topic.
• Conversation analysis: Studies taken-for-granted rules structuring social interaction, originating from ethnomethodology.
• Discourse analysis: Examines language (and images) as a way language constructs and affects social reality.
• Critical discourse analysis: Interdisciplinary study of discourse as social practice, focusing on how power and social/political domination are reproduced through text and talk.

Ethical Research Practices

• Voluntary participation: Participants must not be coerced.
• Informed consent: Participants must understand procedures and risks.
• No harm: Researchers cannot put participants at physical or psychological risk.
• Confidentiality: Data is kept private and not shared with unauthorized individuals.
• Anonymity: Participants' identities remain unknown even to researchers.
• Privacy: Participants control information about themselves.

Interview Types

• Structured interviews: Use a standardized interview schedule with pre-determined questions, reducing bias and increasing objectivity.
  • Advantages: Reduced bias, increased reliability and validity, simple, cost-effective, efficient.
  • Disadvantages: Formal, limited flexibility and scope.
• Semi-structured interviews: Use a written list of questions, aiming for both structure and flexibility.
  • Advantages: Combines the best aspects of structured and unstructured interviews.
  • Disadvantages: Often lower validity, susceptibility to researcher bias/leading questions, and the Hawthorne effect.
• Unstructured interviews: Focused on gaining information; researchers have limited control over the informant's responses.
  • Advantages: Flexible, valid, less bias, more detail, nuanced, participant-driven.
  • Disadvantages: limited generalizability, lower reliability, time-consuming.

Focus Groups

• Focus groups: Small groups (up to 7 people) discussing specific topics. Led by a moderator.
  • Advantages: Rich data, insight into personal stories, flexible, faster results, lower cost.
  • Disadvantages: Unnatural setting, less control, difficult analysis, moderate required skills.

Other Research Methods

• Historical research: Understands past behavior and how practices developed.
• Policy and case analysis: Studies specific individuals, groups, or processes in the present.
• Ethnography: Intensive investigation of a group over an extended period, involving participant observation, interviews, and immersion in a community.
• Ethnomethodology: Focuses on how people use language and actions to create and understand social codes and meanings.
• Content analysis: Systematically examines material (texts, images, etc.) to identify patterns, themes, and meanings.
• Historical/Policy/Case Study Analysis: Examination of documents to draw conclusions regarding political situations, policies and individuals.
• Criteria for assessing documents: authenticity, credibility/sincerity/accuracy, meaning and significance.

Surveys

• Survey: Uses large samples, close-ended questions, breadth over depth.
  • Types: Cross-sectional (one point in time), Longitudinal (patterns over time), Trend study (changes in same population), Panel study (changes in same people over time).
  • Considerations: Response rate, interviewer effects, respondent errors/bias, issues with the survey instrument, sampling methods.

Operationalization and Variables

• Operationalization: Converting concepts into measurable variables.
• Variables: Qualities on which units of analysis differ.
  • Independent variables: Controlled and manipulated; potential causes.
  • Dependent variables: Measured or registered; potential effects.
  • Nominal variables (categorical): Distinct categories with no inherent order.
  • Ordinal variables: Categorical variables that can be ranked, but distances are unknown/unequal.
  • Interval/ratio variables: Categories with equal distances and a true zero point.

Statistical Analysis

• Descriptive statistics: Describe basic features of data (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, range).
• Inferential statistics: Draw conclusions extending beyond immediate data.
• Correlation: When variables vary together; a relationship between variables.
• Causation: When one variable directly causes changes in another.
• Spurious relationships: When relationships between variables appear to exist but are actually caused by a third variable.

Sampling

• Population: Entire group of interest.
• Sample: Subset selected for study.
• Probability samples: Each member has a known probability of selection.
  • Simple random sampling: Equal chance for every member.
  • Systematic sampling: Select every nth member.
  • Stratified sampling: Divide population into subgroups (strata); SRS or SS from each.
  • Multi-stage cluster sampling: Sample clusters, then individual units within clusters.
• Non-probability samples: Members' probabilities of selection are unknown.
  • Convenience sampling: Subjects are readily available.
  • Purposive sampling: Subjects are selected for specific characteristics.
  • Snowball sampling: Initial contact with small group; referrals to more.

Experiments

• Experiments: Designed to demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships.
• Groups: Experimental (receives treatment), control (no treatment).
• Control: Factors other than the treatment are kept constant.
• Random assignment: Ensures groups are similar prior to the experiment.
• Pretest: Measures dependent variable before treatment.
• Post-test: Measures dependent variable after treatment.