Transcript powerpoint on the Method - University of Western Sydney

Communication Research
Week 5
What is research method and how
do I write about it?
Methods – Initial Questions
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What methods exist?
What methods are appropriate for my
Research Question?
Will I be able to get the access I need?
What skills do I need to develop to carry out
my choice?
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Choice of Methods – Some
Examples
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Experiments
Cross-sectional surveys
Observation
Secondary analysis (e.g. official statistics)
Secondary analysis of documents
Interviews
Focus Groups
Case studies
Longitudinal research (e.g. time series or qualitative)
Content analysis
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Learning the language of your
Method
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In quantitative research:
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Never “Prove” something
“Reject or accept the null hypothesis”
Data supports the hypothesis
In qualitative research:
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Don’t apologise that your case can’t be
generalised to a population
You’re generalising to theory
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Doing your chosen method “right”
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Guidance from research methods texts
Guidance from journal articles
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Within your subject area
Outside your subject area
Specialist methodology journals
Guidance from academic networks
Guidance from those whose work you’re citing
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The Method Section of the
Proposal & Report
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Outlines specifically how research was
undertaken and may include the following
elements, depending on the type of research
Uses sub headings (unlike the introduction)
Is vital to enable readers to both understand how
you conducted (or will conduct) your research
and to enable them to judge the validity of your
results or findings
This section uses direct and descriptive writing
style
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Overview/Preamble
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Overview (also called Preamble) of the
research methods and rationale behind the
research
Can include information on the type of study,
nature of study, time horizon, and units of
analysis eg
Two sets of groups were established from Communication
students at the University of Western Sydney. Students
discussed the same two questions on a real-time chat system
and a bulletin board system.
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Sample
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Sample includes a description of the sample
demographics/characteristics, sample size and
any problems experienced/anticipated eg
A total of 772 students participated in the study. Female to
male ratios were 3:1 in the BA (Communication) subjects
involved. Modal age range was 17-19 years. The participants
who used the first set of discussions (using bulletin boards)
were not involved in the second set (using real-time chat).
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Materials/Instrument
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Materials or Instrument describes any particular
materials used eg test instrument such as a
survey, observation schedule etc.
Also notes any other materials that may have
been used such as a tape recorder eg
The test instrument employed in this study was the Bales
Interaction Process Analysis (IPA)
Table 1 Bales IPA areas & categories
CATEGORIES (paired)
SOCIO-EMOTIONAL AREA
1. Seems friendly
12. Seems unfriendly
2. Shows tension release
11. Shows tension
3. Agrees
10. Disagrees
4. Gives Suggestion
9. Requests suggestion
5. Gives Opinion
8. Requests opinion
6. Gives Orientation
7. Requests orientation
TASK AREA
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Procedure
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Procedure identifies the steps or strategies used
and any problems which arose eg
Participants were randomly assigned to online groups, which varied in size (5, 7, 9 or 11
members). Sixty-four groups used the first in-house bulletin board system to discuss both
topics; 29 real-time groups later used the real-time chat program, Internet Relay Chat (or
IRC) with both topics. Asynchronous group duration was three weeks, real-time groups
duration varied but was usually finalised within an hour. All participants needed to access
the special computer facilities, which were only accessible through university computer
labs. All of the groupsﾕ transcripts were electronically recorded and stored. The origin of
the raw data for this study was the indexed transcripts for each computer-mediated group.
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This section can be written in paragraph form or
you could use numbers or bullet points to make it
easier to read
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Statistics
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Statistics refers to the statistical analyis
methods of analysis that you will use to
analyse the data eg
An ANOVA study was performed on the 12 Bales IPA
categories with modality, size and topic as predictor variables.
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In your proposal you might leave this out
unless you know what they are. We will cover
this later in the course. You should include
this in your final report Method section
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