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Research Methods
Overview of two day program
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Research methods: Overview
• Designing the study
• Developing the project
• Methodology: conceptual matters
• Collecting the data
• Ethics
• Analysing the data, reporting & final matters
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Research methods: Overview
• The nuts and bolts of the process
• BUT
• What are you bolting together?
• The framework rests very much on the questions you considered with Lyn
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Research methods: Overview
• Each session will consist of three components:
Recounting episodes from the PNG project An analysis of the issues Small group work for you to reflect on your project
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Research methods: Overview
• Big picture
• The fine detail will vary considerably between members of the group
• The following aspects will need to be dealt with and appear in your thesis, somewhere
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Research methods: Overview
• Four critical and sometimes crippling, problems for many students:
1. Slow start with problem formation & / or literature review
2. Perfectionism
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Research methods: Overview
3. Distractions from the main research focus: read all sorts of interesting material which at best is marginally related to main issue of project
4. Inadequate collection of data often due to poor planning: note taking, referencing of data, awareness of context of data, etc.
Research methods
Designing the study
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Research methods: Designing the study
PNG ?
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Research methods: Designing the study
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Research methods: Designing the study
• The issue
• This the crucial matter
• The one that prevents most students progressing at a reasonable speed
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Research methods: Designing the study
• What do you want to know?
• What do others know?
• What are you assuming
• What do you believe?
• The hegemony of the scientific paradigm and numbers?
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Research methods: Designing the study
• What do you want to find out?
• You can use a concise issue statement or a general question.
• What will be new to whom?
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Research methods: Designing the study
• New: creating new ideas
Absolutely new: ideas, results, methodology Investigating something in a new context Progression of a theory to a new stage
• Central component of your program
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Research methods: Designing the study
• Why will you spend 2-5 years of your life thinking about this?
• Why will anyone be interested in what you are doing, and where you get to?
• Often it is the former that is the crucial issue to ensure you complete.
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Research methods:Designing the study
• Review in a small group the issue that you plan to base your dissertation on
• Try to articulate it to each other in one sentence.
• Why do you want to write on this?
Research Methods
Developing the proposal
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
PNG ?
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• What have others said about the issue?
• Developing the literature review Sequencing and/or overlapping How much is enough? Stating your road map Linking paragraphs, sub sections, & sections Summary paragraphs: where have we come from & where
are we going
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• The research questions emerge from the literature review
• They speak to key issues that the relevant academic community think are relevant, or
• They identify gaps in the literature
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• Defining the central problem or issue prevents reading material of marginal relevance and taking extensive notes that purpose of which is not clear
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• Why am I reading this?
• How does this relate to the main issue?
• Is this note I am making directly relate to a research question, which in turn relates to the main issue?
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• You need to continually be asking yourself your supervisor your buddy group
am I still hitting the main issue with what I am doing here?
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• The central research problem does not spontaneously emerge from your copious reading.
• Your literature review is driven by the research issue (and bit by bit) the subsidiary problems you have set out to focus on
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• Pay close attention to the methodology, both instruments, procedures and stance, that authors use when reporting in journals
• These may well give you guidance on possible methodology approaches you may wish to adopt
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Research Methods: Developing the proposal
• What questions can you ask?
• What questions should you ask?
• What questions are useful to ask in the context of doing a doctoral program?
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Research methods:Developing the proposal
• Review in a small group possible research questions (3-4) that might emerge for you
• Are they linked to the main issue?
• Why these and not others?
Research methods
Methodology:
Conceptual issues
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
PNG ?
Nogat!
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• Are you looking for:
– a description,
– the truth,
– possibilities,
– an explanation, …
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• Are you looking for:– Differences over time?– Differences between groups?– Differences from some defined standard?– What will the differences tell you?– Why are they important?– How will you decide whether such differences are
important? – May be difference is irrelevant?
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• Is the data:– Reliable?
– Valid?
– Authentic?
– Generalisable?
– Robust?
• What do these terms mean in your context?
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• What will you do with the different data banks?
• Are you after triangulation?
• Are you wanting to layer the databanks?
• What’s common, what’s not? Does it matter?
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
PNG ?
• We didn’t pretend our findings would be objective and neutral.
• We attempted to find validation for our findings in that they seemed to be trustworthy in their own context and for people who should know.
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• We worked in the social world of dynamic change
• A world that was constructed in and through our and our colleagues discourse and actions, though our joint praxis
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• The validity arose from the cyclic layering of description, analysis and testing of possible explanations by reference again and again to the data and experience of members of the team
– Read for yourselves
• Ken Smith may well differ (e reserve material)
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Research methods:Methodology: Conceptual issues
• How will you interpret these terms?
• What is demanded by your issue?
• What will be the better way to think through your research questions?
• Listen carefully to what your colleagues suggest.
Research methods
Collecting the data
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Research methods:Collecting the data
PNG ?
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Research methods:Collecting the data
• Operationalising your research questions if needs be?– What data can be collected that will illuminate the
question?
• Setting up the data collecting process– From who or what and why these?– With what? – How?– When?– Will it cost too much?
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Research methods:Collecting the data
• Data collection techniques– surveys / questionnaires– focus groups– interviews (structured, semi structured, unstructured)– tests– document analysis– participant observation– journals
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Research methods:Collecting the data
• Are you there?
• Do you make a difference?
• May be you are part of the data set?
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Research methods:Collecting the data
• Do your research questions need tweaking?
• What type of data will help you to illuminate your questions?
• What data collection devices might give you data?
• What limitations do they have for your project?
Research methods
Ethics
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Research methods: Ethics
PNG ?
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Research methods: Ethics
• Ethics forms– available from http://www.acu.edu.au/forms.cfm#research
• At least two platforms to think about ethics;– the official one:
• read through the guidelines carefully
• do what they say
• you can submit the final form of interview questions, etc. later
– the personnel one:• do you feel comfortable with what you are doing?
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Research methods: Ethics and other administrative matters
• What ethical issues may confront you with your project?
Research methods
Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
PNG ?
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• The analysis will be structured by the research questions
• This is not a fishing trip for what might be there
• This is directive looking for what might be there
• When possible link back directly to studies referred to in the literature review
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Look at each set of data individually
• Is this set clean?
• Are there any provisos in reading this set of data?
• Are you interested in the middle ground, the edge, both of these?
• Repeat for other sets
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Bring the different sets together in a way that progresses your investigation
• What is demanded by the research questions?
• What techniques have others used who have worked in your area?
• What techniques have others used who have worked outside of your area, but they might be applicable?
• You must justify what you do!
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Narrative data:– Do you chose to impose a structure (we did in PNG)?– Do you wish to look for the emergent (but there are
limits)?– Can you do both?
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Items in …– Do they link to something in the literature reviewed?– If not, why is this item there?
– Do you request the gender of the respondent?– WHY?
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Case studies
– A case study is not, “just because you are working with a small number of …”
– The structure you give to reporting each study will allow generalities across the contexts to emerge
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Reporting
– Who is your audience?– A thesis is not an essay, a novel, a journal article, a
conference paper, an undergraduate paper– You are advised to either stick to the normal style, or
clearly justify departures (these can be exciting!)– Linkage, clarity, linkage, clarity, linkage, clarity
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• The above discussion on ‘analysing the data and reporting it’ is still in the methodology chapter
• You need to discuss in that chapter how you will do the analysis
• You do not collect the data and then start wondering what to do with it
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• What types of data are you likely to have?
• What options are open to you for an analysis of these data?
• How will you draw links between different data banks?
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
The other matters
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Changing involving the Office of Research: http://www.acu.edu.au/forms/mediastore/hdvariation.dot– thesis title
– status: ie. leave, sick & other types
• Changing involving the Faculty:– campus, specialisation, School
– supervisor and getting him / her
– monetary support
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Research methods: Analysing the data, reporting & other matters
• Working with your supervisor– Ask for 2 good theses to look at (Lyn’s & Andrea’s)– Ask for 2 good thesis proposals to look at
• Be part of a buddies’ group
• Feel free to call me up if you think I might help