Research

Identifying organizational research questions (JW)
"Do I know the field and its literature well? What are the important research questions in my field? What areas need further exploration? Could my study fill a gap? Lead to greater understanding? Has a great deal of research already been conducted in this topic area? Has this study been done before? If so, is there room for improvement? Is the timing right for this question to be answered? Is it a hot topic, or is it becoming obsolete? Would funding sources be interested? If you are proposing a service program, is the target community interested? Most importantly, will my study have a significant impact on the field? "

from Formulating a Research Question at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:29:58 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://www.theresearchassistant.com/tutorial/2-1.asp

Reading and using published academic research to understand existing knowledge (JL)
"**What is a Literature Review?**

A literature review is a summary of previous research on a topic. Literature reviews can be either a part of a larger report of a research project, a thesis or a bibliographic essay that is published separately in a scholarly journal. Some questions to think about as you develop your literature review:


 * What is known about the subject?
 * Are there any gaps in the knowledge of the subject?
 * Have areas of further study been identified by other researchers that you may want to consider?
 * Who are the significant research personalities in this area?
 * Is there consensus about the topic?
 * What aspects have generated significant debate on the topic?
 * What methods or problems were identified by others studying in the field and how might they impact your research?
 * What is the most productive methodology for your research based on the literature you have reviewed?
 * What is the current status of research in this area?
 * What sources of information or data were identified that might be useful to you?

If the literature review is part of a Ph.D. dissertation, this review will be comprehensive covering all research on the topic. As part of your research report, you need to cover the major work that has been done on the topic recently, but it is not necessary to try to identify all research on the subject.


 * What is the purpose of a Literature Review?**

The purpose of a literature review is to convey to the reader what knowledge and ideas have been established on a topic and what are the strengths and weaknesses. The literature review allows the reader to be brought up to date regarding the state of research in the field and familiarizes the reader with any contrasting perspectives and viewpoints on the topic. There are good reasons for beginning a literature review before starting a research paper. These reasons include:


 * To see what has and has not been investigated.
 * To develop general explanation for observed variations in a behavior or phenomenon.
 * To identify potential relationships between concepts and to identify researchable hypotheses.
 * To learn how others have defined and measured key concepts.
 * To identify data sources that other researches have used.
 * To develop alternative research projects.
 * To discover how a research project is related to the work of others.


 * How to do a literature search?**

1. Developing a search strategy


 * Defining the topic - In order to begin your literature review you must first define your research question. What is the purpose? What does it mean? What are the key words? Are there other words which could be used, such as synonyms, variations in spelling? What do you already know about the topic? What is the scope? Do you need everything ever written in English on this topic, or just the last ten years?
 * Compiling a list of keywords - Before beginning a search for information, it is important to develop a search strategy that will most effectively locate useful, relevant information. This will often involve breaking down an essay or research question into:

keywords or phrases; entering your search; and evaluating your results to determine whether you need to employ various strategies to broaden, narrow or otherwise modify your research.

Analyzing the topic of an essay question or research topic usually involves making a list of keywords or phrases. You will need to include all the key concepts or ideas contained within the essay or research question. It might be useful to include alternative ways of phrasing and expressing concepts and ideas. Think about both general terms and very specific terms for broadening and narrowing your search. The keyword or phrase is the basic unit of any search. You may find it helpful to consult subject dictionaries and encyclopedias, or a textbook glossary for the common terminology of the subject area. The use of an index and/or thesaurus is also advisable to establish the useful terms.

2. Identifying Resources - Information is available in a number of formats. It is important for you to understand the significance of various formats so that you know what will best suit your information requirements.


 * Books
 * Reference Materials
 * Journals
 * Conference Papers
 * Dissertations
 * Internet"

from How To Do A Literature Review at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:33:00 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://www.library.ncat.edu/ref/guides/literaturereview03.htm

Social research Strategies and Methods (both)
> Action research has the potential to generate genuine and sustained improvements in schools. It gives educators new opportunities to reflect on and assess their teaching; to explore and test new ideas, methods, and materials; to assess how effective the new approaches were; to share feedback with fellow team members; and to make decisions about which new approaches to include in the team's curriculum, instruction, and assessment plans." from Action Research at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:40:00 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/drugfree/sa3act.htm > A softer view of the philosophical assumptions behind experimental designs is that SOMETIMES and IN SOME WAYS, the world works according to causal laws. Such cause-and-effect relationships may not be a final view of reality, but demonstrating cause and effect is useful in some circumstances. > Both of these views agree that some (if not all) important psychological questions are questions about what causes what. Experimental research designs are the tools to use for these questions. > The GOAL OF EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH METHODS is to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables. > We hypothesize that the Independent Variable caused the changes in the Dependent Variable. However, these changes or effects may have been caused by many other factors or Alternative Hypotheses. > The PURPOSE, therefore, of experimental designs is to eliminate alterntive hypotheses. If we can successfully eliminate all alternative hypotheses, we can argue--by a process of elimination--that the Independent Variable is the cause. > Good experimental designs are those which eliminate more alternative hypotheses." from Experimental Research Methods pt 1 at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:46:47 GMT-0400 (EST) on http://clem.mscd.edu/~davisj/prm2/exper1.html#model
 * Case Study (JW)
 * **Action Research** (JL) "Action research is inquiry or research in the context of focused efforts to improve the quality of an organization and its performance. It typically is designed and conducted by practitioners who analyze the data to improve their own practice. Action research can be done by individuals or by teams of colleagues. The team approach is called collaborative inquiry.
 * Survey Research (JW)
 * Experimentation (JL) "Experimental research designs are founded on the assumption that the world works according to causal laws. These laws are essentially linear, though complicated and interactive. The goal of experimental research is to establish these cause-and-effect laws by isolating causal variables.
 * Phenomenology (JW)

Conducting interviews and surveys (JL)
"Surveys represent one of the most common types of quantitative, social science research. In survey research, the researcher selects a sample of respondents from a population and administers a standardized questionnaire to them. The questionnaire, or survey, can be a written document that is completed by the person being surveyed, an online questionnaire, a face-to-face interview, or a telephone interview. Using surveys, it is possible to collect data from large or small populations (sometimes referred to as the universe of a study). " from Overview: Survey Research at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:52:07 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/research/survey/

"Initial planning of the survey design and survey questions is extremely important in conducting survey research. Once surveying has begun, it is difficult or impossible to adjust the basic research questions under consideration or the tool used to address them since the instrument must remain stable in order to standardize the data set. This section provides information needed to construct an instrument that will satisfy basic validity and reliability issues. It also offers information about the important decisions you need to make concerning the types of questions you are going to use, as well as the content, wording, order and format of your survey questionnaire. " from Designing Surveys at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:54:57 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/research/survey/pop4a.cfm

"Interviewing is a great way to learn detailed information from a single individual or small number of individuals. It is very useful when you want to gain expert opinions on the subject or talk to someone knowledgeable about a topic. " from Conducting Primary Research: Interviewing - The OWL at Purdue at Sat Oct 10 2009 14:58:56 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/559/04/

"When creating questions you want to avoid: Biased questions are questions that encourage your participants to respond to the question in a certain way. They may contain biased terminology or are worded in a biased way. Questions that assume what they ask are a type of biased question and lead your participants to agree or respond in a certain way. Double-barreled questions that has more than one question embedded within it. Participants may answer one but not both, or may disagree with part or all of the question. Confusing questions will only lead to confused participants, which leads to unreliable answers. Be sure that your questions directly relate to what it is you are studying. A good way to do this is to ask someone else to read your questions or even test your survey out on a few people and see if the responses fit what you are looking for. " from Conducting Primary Research: Creating Good Interview and Survey Questions - The OWL at Purdue at Sat Oct 10 2009 15:00:45 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/559/06/

Basic Data Analysis (both)
>> >> Subtract the mean from each score and square them and sum: 5.1321. Then divide by 15 and take the square root and you have the standard deviation for our example: .5849.... One standard deviation above the mean is at about 3.5; one standard deviation below is at about 2.3." from Descriptive Statistics at Sat Oct 10 2009 15:08:05 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/descstats.html
 * Coding interviews and creating categories (JW)
 * descriptive statistics (JL)
 * Grouping "The Distribution. The distribution is a summary of the frequency of individual values or ranges of values for a variable. The simplest distribution would list every value of a variable and the number of persons who had each value. For instance, a typical way to describe the distribution of college students is by year in college, listing the number or percent of students at each of the four years. Or, we describe gender by listing the number or percent of males and females. In these cases, the variable has few enough values that we can list each one and summarize how many sample cases had the value. But what do we do for a variable like income or GPA? With these variables there can be a large number of possible values, with relatively few people having each one. In this case, we group the raw scores into categories according to ranges of values. For instance, we might look at GPA according to the letter grade ranges. Or, we might group income into four or five ranges of income values." from Descriptive Statistics at Sat Oct 10 2009 15:11:27 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/statdesc.php
 * Mean "The mean is just the average. It is the sum of all your measurements, divided by the number of measurements. This is the most used measure of central tendency, because of its mathematical qualities. It works best if the data is distributed very evenly across the range, or is distributed in the form of a normal or bell-shaped curve (see below). One interesting thing about the mean is that it represents the expected value if the distribution of measurements were random! Here is what the formula looks like: 3.0 + 2.8 + 2.8 + 2.4 + 3.2 + 2.8 + 1.8 + 3.8 + 2.6 + 3.4 + 2.4 + 4.0 + 3.4 + 3.2 + 3.2 is 43.8. Divide that by 15 and that is the mean or average for our example: 2.92." from Descriptive Statistics at Sat Oct 10 2009 15:08:35 GMT-0400 (EST) on @http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/descstats.html
 * "The standard deviation. The standard deviation is the "average" degree to which scores deviate from the mean. More precisely, you measure how far all your measurements are from the mean, square each one, and add them all up. The result is called the variance. Take the square root of the variance, and you have the standard deviation. Like the mean, it is the "expected value" of how far the scores deviate from the mean. Here is what the formula looks like: