Professor: Chris Jeschelnik
2015
Lab Instructor: Chris Jeschelnik
University
Teaching Assistants: Yuji Zhang & Dung Ha
Communication
Summer (intersession)
Simon Fraser
School of
CMS 260-3: Empirical Methods for Communications Research
Handout 3:
Assignment 1 –Reviewing the Scholarly Literature &
Planning a Study
Due date: Session 5 (Submit at or before Friday May 29th, 12 midnight).
This assignment is worth 10% of your final grade.
Section 1 – Reviewing the Scholarly Literature (5% of total 10%)
This assignment takes you through some of the early stages in the research process. You
are all asked to work on the same general research topic — attitudes and practices related
to the ethics and to etiquette in media use in communication. Within this general area you
need to narrow the topic and develop specific research questions, conduct bibliographic
research about scholarship related to your topic, design ways of collecting information and
present an analysis of information you collect.
Choosing a focus for your research
Try to develop a topic that interests you related to contemporary debates about ethical (or
moral) uses of media and/or polite (or impolite) ways of communicating using different
media. Some of the issues are related to the type of content and others to the contexts.
Maybe you encountered an interesting issue while making your media diary. If not, there
are many recent debates and controversies about media use that could inspire you in your
choice of topic.
For example, the issue of “sexting” (sending sexually explicit photos or texts in electronic
communications) has become a controversial topic in the news. Do men and women have
different attitudes towards sexting? Do men “sext” more than women?
Another recent debate in BC is related to posting images of people committing crimes (for
example, during the riot in Vancouver in 2011). Some people claim that it is their duty as
citizens to identify criminals. Others raise questions about whether posting pictures
violates people’s right to privacy. What attitudes do people have towards posting photos of
people committing crimes on the Internet? Do they feel differently about posting images of
strangers committing crimes than they do about posting images of friends involved in
illegal acts?
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Another direction might be to study ‘good manners’ in media use in social contexts. Do
people feel that texting or talking on the cellphone during a family dinner or a date is OK?
What media are appropriate for breaking up a romantic relationship? Are there variations
in attitudes related to age, gender or cultural background?
If you are interested in recent political events and social movements, you might want to
investigate the use of social networking sites by individuals and groups for mobilizing
others. Protesters in Syria, Tunisia and Egypt have made heavy use of them to mobilize
demonstrators.
Some of you might be interested in studying debates about how media professionals use
the media. For example, human rights workers have denounced the use of pictures of
starving children in media coverage of famine victims and developed guidelines for taking
pictures. How would you study that?
There are many more avenues to explore in studying attitudes and practices related to
ethics and etiquette in media use. You might develop other topics related to computer
gaming, marketing, surveillance and health. Try to think about issues that interest you
when you undertake these assignments and focus on a particular question you would like
to study.
Searching the scholarly literature and reviewing a publication
Conducting a literature search to see what has been published in your research area is an
important stage in most research strategies. Assignment 1 asks you to conduct a literature
search of published material related to your specific topic to find out what methods other
people have used to investigate this topic or ones related to it. (Be sure to try to find
examples of empirical research rather than theoretical articles.) The primary objective of
the assignment is to help you develop skills for gathering information about published
scholarly research findings.
Chapter 4 of your textbook gives a general presentation of some of the ways of
investigating how other scholars have conducted research and how you can build on their
research in your own work.
Looking for scholarly literature on topics that interest you
You should learn to use the library resources at SFU to find out how other scholars have
studied questions related to the topic you plan to study. Sylvia Roberts, the area librarian in
Communication will be conducting workshops to introduce you to some of the library
resources.
Prepare for this workshop by identifying a (general) idea of the topic that interests you
related to the general theme of ethics and etiquette of media use. This will be an
opportunity to discover how others have studied the topic before you. Here are the steps
recommended for the first part of this assignment:
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1. Use the SFU library resources to find five articles published in scholarly journals
that are related to your topic using one of the article databases. (Do not use Google
for this). The articles should involve empirical research, not just theory. Now do a
search on Google Scholar on your topic and look at the results. Which, if any,
might be appropriate for you to study given the information in the search results?
2. Make a list of the citations of the five publications you selected using one of the
citation formats listed in Chapter 4.
3. Read the abstracts of the articles or book chapters and write a short annotation for
each based on the abstracts describing why this might or might not be relevant to
your topic on the basis of this partial knowledge of the article contents.
4. Prepare a written report on your search (1 page). This report should include a
discussion of your search followed by a list of citations in one of the styles
illustrated in your textbook. Your discussion should present:
a. The topic you choose to research (one paragraph);
b. A description of your search of the scholarly literature including
information about which databases and which search terms you used;
c. What you learned about scholarly research related to your topic from
reading the abstracts and what methods others have used in their research.
Section 2 – Research questions and empirical measures (5% of total
10%)
This part of the assignment requires that you refine the specific topic you wish to study
(which should have something to do with ethics and/or etiquette of media use). Reflect on
the material you’ve collected for section 1 and look at some of the ways researchers have
presented research questions and empirical measures in their work.
Prepare a 2 page written statement of research interests that includes the following:
Presentation of topic, purpose, and intended use of the study
What phenomenon are you studying? Who is involved? Why is the topic worth studying?
(For example, from the point of view of theories, social policy or possible applications?)
Be specific.
(Tip: Use your search results to think about what other researchers have published related
to the topic and about how they have done their research (especially related to key
concepts or issues you might also use). Make sure that you try to use scholarly
publications. Other types of sources like news media can provide you with ideas about
issues and ways of investigating topics but don’t confuse journalistic sources with
scholarly publications in this part of your project.)
How is your study going to add to a research tradition? Is there something new your
project will contribute? If you are planning to replicate a study, provide references to the
study you are replicating and discuss how your study might further knowledge.
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Statement of research question(s) or hypothesis
Prepare a short, clear statement for your research question. This could be in the form of a
statement about a relationship between two or more variables or could present a hypothesis
you are planning to test about attitudes or behaviors. Are you replicating another
researcher’s work? (If so, be sure to credit the source.)
Preliminary research design proposal to investigate your research question or test
your hypothesis
In this section:
• Present the principal concepts and how you plan to operationalize them. (How
will you develop operational measures of these concepts in the “real world”?)
• Discuss a method you could use to collect information (such as interviews, selfadministered questionnaires, content analysis of media, etc.) What are some of the
strengths and weaknesses of this method in terms of gathering information about
your topic?
• Identify a “population” of people or documents or other textual or visual or
aural sources for a proposed study that you might use to gather information about
your research question or hypothesis. Explain briefly why this selection is
appropriate for studying your research question. How does it relate to the scope and
objectives of your study? (Again, be as specific as possible.)
• Discuss how you would sample the population or select cases for your study.
Discuss some of the strengths or limitations of the sampling technique you propose.
• Conclude with a description of your plans for analyzing the information you
gather and how you will share it with others.