#SOCRMx Week 4: ‘half-way’ tasks and reflections

jennymackness

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This post should have been made at the end of last week. We are now at the end of Week 5 and I am attempting to catch up.

We are now half-way through this 8-week Introduction to Social Research Methods course. I continue to be impressed by the content, but the course doesn’t really lend itself to much discussion. I am grateful that it is open and that I have access to the excellent resources, but the course has been designed for Edinburgh University Masters and PhD students – the rest of us must fit in where we can.

There are two tasks for Week 4. I have completed one – rather hurriedly – but will report on both.

The first task for Week 4 was to consider one of the research methods we explored in Weeks 2 and 3 and answer the following questions in a reflective blog post.

  • What three (good) research questions could be answered using this approach?
  • What assumptions about the nature of knowledge (epistemology) seem to be associated with this approach?
  • What kinds of ethical issues arise?
  • What would “validity” imply in a project that used this approach?
  • What are some of the practical or ethical issues that would need to be considered?
  • And finally, find and reference at least two published articles that have used this approach (aside from the examples given in this course). Make some notes about how the approach is described and used in each paper, linking to your reflections above.

So far, I have explored the resources related to Surveys, Working with Images, Discourse Analysis and Ethnography. All have been extremely useful and I have written posts about the first three. I will move on to Interviews next and hope to explore the remaining methods (Focus groups, Experimental interventions, Social network analysis and Learning Analytics) before the end of the course.

I have decided not to do this week’s reflection task which requires answering the questions above. For me these questions will be useful when I am working on an authentic research project, but I don’t want to spend time working through them for a hypothetical project. As I mentioned in a previous post I tend to work backwards on research, or at least backwards and forwards, i.e. I get immersed and see what happens rather than plan it all out ahead of time. That doesn’t mean that the questions above are not important and useful, they are, but for me they are ongoing questions rather than up-front questions. This approach to research doesn’t really fit with traditional Masters or PhD research.  I did do a traditional Masters but felt I was ‘playing the game’ in my choice of dissertation topic.  My PhD by publication was a much better fit with the way I work, but even that was playing the game a bit! My independent research has never felt like ‘playing the game’. It has always stemmed from a deep personal interest in the research question.

The second task for Week 4 was to review a “published academic journal article, and answer a set of questions about the methods employed in the study”. I have completed this task, but not submitted it for assessment, since I am not doing this course for assessment. The assessment is a set of multi-choice questions.

At this point it’s worth mentioning that there are a lot of multi-choice quizzes in this course and that I am hopeless at them! I rarely ever get a full score, although I think I have answered these Week 4 task questions correctly. Most of the quizzes in this course allow you to have multiple attempts and sometimes I have needed multiple attempts. Thank goodness for a second computer monitor, where I can display the text being tested at the same time as trying to answer the multi-choice quizzes. Having two monitors is essential to the way I work and even more essential for my research work.  I’m not sure that multiple choice quizzes do anything for my learning, other than to confirm that I have completed a section. I would prefer an open controversial question for discussion, but in this course there is so much content to cover that there would be no time for this.

But again, some excellent resources have been provided for this week. Particularly useful is reference to this open textbook : Principles of Sociological Inquiry – Qualitative and Quantitative Methods with specific reference to Chapters 14.1 and 14.2.

I am copying this helpful Table (from the open textbook) here for future reference: Table 14.2 Questions Worth Asking While Reading Research Reports

Report section Questions worth asking
Abstract What are the key findings? How were those findings reached? What framework does the researcher employ?
Acknowledgments Who are this study’s major stakeholders? Who provided feedback? Who provided support in the form of funding or other resources?
Introduction How does the author frame his or her research focus? What other possible ways of framing the problem exist? Why might the author have chosen this particular way of framing the problem?
Literature review How selective does the researcher appear to have been in identifying relevant literature to discuss? Does the review of literature appear appropriately extensive? Does the researcher provide a critical review?
Sample Was probability sampling or nonprobability sampling employed? What is the researcher’s sample? What is the researcher’s population? What claims will the researcher be able to make based on the sample? What are the sample’s major strengths and major weaknesses?
Data collection How were the data collected? What do you know about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the method employed? What other methods of data collection might have been employed, and why was this particular method employed? What do you know about the data collection strategy and instruments (e.g., questions asked, locations observed)? What don’t you know about the data collection strategy and instruments?
Data analysis How were the data analyzed? Is there enough information provided that you feel confident that the proper analytic procedures were employed accurately?
Results What are the study’s major findings? Are findings linked back to previously described research questions, objectives, hypotheses, and literature? Are sufficient amounts of data (e.g., quotes and observations in qualitative work, statistics in quantitative work) provided in order to support conclusions drawn? Are tables readable?
Discussion/conclusion Does the author generalize to some population beyond her or his sample? How are these claims presented? Are claims made supported by data provided in the results section (e.g., supporting quotes, statistical significance)? Have limitations of the study been fully disclosed and adequately addressed? Are implications sufficiently explored?

Finally – some of the course participants have completed the first task and posted their reflections on their blogs. See

Now to see if I can make a start on Week 5 which finished today!

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