Research Methodology Overview

Research Methodology

• Research Process Overview: Epistemology (study of knowledge), literature review, theorization, hypothesis/questions, research design/ethics, data collection/analysis, findings and theorization are key stages.

• Scientific Method: Logical, explicit, and inspectable research with a consensus on assumptions and procedures. Popper's hypothetico-deductive scheme is a relevant approach.

Data Collection & Analysis Methods

• Primary Research: Researcher's firsthand observation and study, creating original data.

• Secondary Research: Research conducted by others which leads to conclusions about the topic or making an argument.

• Conversation Analysis: Study of the taken-for-granted rules that shape social interaction, rooted in ethnomethodology.

• Discourse Analysis: Analysis of language and, potentially images, regarding how language creates and affects social reality.

• Critical Discourse Analysis: Interdisciplinary study of language as social practice, focusing on how social and political power is reproduced in texts and conversations. Power and language are interconnected.

Producing Ethical Research

• Voluntary Participation: Participants must not be coerced.

• Informed Consent: Participants must fully understand procedures and potential risks.

• Risk of Harm: Researchers cannot put participants in situations that could cause harm, which could include physical & psychological harm.

• Confidentiality: Information acquired must not be revealed to anyone outside the study.

• Anonymity: Participants remain anonymous even to researchers.

• Privacy: Individuals have control over personal information and can consent to or withhold consent for collection, use, and disclosure. Risks relate to identifiability and potential harm to participants.

Types of Interviews

• Structured Interviews: Researcher uses a set schedule with specific questions, maximizing reliability and validity. Disadvantages include formality, limited flexibility, and possible response bias (e.g., social desirability bias).

• Semi-Structured Interviews: Researcher has a list of questions but aims for flexibility, combining structure and casual conversation. This format balances reliability and detailed insights. It includes a high risk of researcher bias as well and can be more difficult to conduct.

• Unstructured Interviews: Researcher has less control over responses to guide the conversation and collect detailed, rich information, typically driven by the participant. This form is flexible and detailed but lower in reliability and generalizability.

Focus Groups

• Overview: Small groups (up to 7 people) discuss topics, allowing for qualitative data and insights. Conversations can be guided or unguided.

• Characteristics: Involves a moderator to facilitate discussions, and encourage open interaction, a key feature is that of the “synergistic group effect”.

• Advantages: Rich insights, flexible, quicker and low cost.

• Disadvantages: Simulated conversational, less control than interviews, and analysis can be challenging. Differences and moderator skills can affect reliability and results.

Historical/Policy/Case Study Analysis

• Historical Research: Understanding past individual behaviour and how practices and realities emerged.

• Policy and Case Analysis: Describing and interpreting contemporary individuals, social groups, or processes.

Ethnography

• Overview: Extended immersion in a group to document behaviour, gather information and details relevant to interactions, observe and question.

• Key aspects: Focuses on a community and uses multiple techniques, including close observation of socio-cultural phenomena. Ethnography is highly reflexive and requires multiple forms of qualitative analysis are essential.

Ethnomethodology

• Overview: Exploring the codes and unconscious belief systems behind everyday actions and utterances. This method applies to language, dialogue in films/TV and, for example, TikTok. It facilitates the study of intercultural communication and understanding how people use language and communication in different cultural contexts.

Content Analysis

• Overview: A detailed and systematic examination of communication to find patterns, themes, biases, and meanings. Applied to various forms of communication (written documents, pictures, videos).

Access to Information & Privacy in Canada

• Access to Information Act: Provides access to federal government records.

• Privacy Act: Protects personal information held by the government from unauthorized use and disclosure.

Criteria for Assessing Documents

• Authenticity: Document's genuineness; is it what it claims to be?

• Credibility: How distorted is the document's content?

• Sincerity: Accuracy of the document and its content.

• Meaning: Importance of documents in context and understanding literal/interpretive meanings.

Problems with Validating Readings

• Representativeness: Documents must represent overall pool of documents.

• Survival: Relevant documents might be lost or unavailable.

• Availability: Access to and availability of documents for examination.

Surveys

• Survey Overview: Gathering data from a larger sample, using closed-ended questions, seeking breadth over depth. (cross-sectional=one point, longitudinal=over time). Trend studies track changes in a population, while panel studies follow the same individuals over time.

• Key Considerations: Response rate (percentage participating), interviewer effects, respondent error, and questionnaire/instrumentation problems.

Operationalization

• Converting concepts to measurable variables.

Variables

• Qualities that vary among research subjects: Independent variables (manipulated/controlled) and dependent variables (measured/registered). Variables can be categorized as nominal, ordinal, interval/ratio. Correlation vs causation

Descriptive Statistics

• Describing data: Mean, median, mode, as well as range, standard deviation which helps to understand variation around the mean.

Sampling

• Types: Probability (simple random, systematic, stratified, multi-stage cluster) and non-probability (convenience, purposive, snowball, quota, maximum variation).

Experiments

• Goal: Demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships.

• Structure: Experimental and control groups, random assignment, pretests, experimental manipulation, and post-tests.

Explore the key stages and approaches in research methodology, including the research process, data collection, and analysis methods. The quiz covers essential concepts such as epistemology, primary and secondary research, and different analytical frameworks. Test your understanding of how these elements come together in scientific inquiry.