UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
Interdisciplinarity and Convergence: A
Required Research Design Class
The Future of iSchool Doctoral Education
May 29, 2009, University of Maryland
Lori Kendall
Course Components
A. Logic of inquiry
Epistemology, style of inquiry, inductive vs. deductive logics,
philosophy
Includes two hands-on exercises:
1. conducting a qualitative interview, transcribing it, and
doing initial coding; and
2. Creating a hypothesis, designing a questionnaire
(group).
B. Research Design Issues
Figuring out project boundaries, sampling, ethics, writing a
research proposal (the final project)
C. That Brief Survey of Methods (now confined to two weeks)
Includes interviewing a faculty member about their research
strategies and processes
Wallace’s Wheel of Science
Theories
Logical Deduction
Creative Leaps
Empirical Generalizations
Sensitizing
Concepts
Statistical or Verbal
Summarization
Hypothesis
Measurement
Observations
From Adler and Clark, How It’s Done, Wadsworth 2003, adapted from Walter Wallace The Logic of Science in Sociology, Aldine 1971.
Renear, Allen, et al. 2003. “An XML document corresponds to which FRBR Group 1
entity?” Extreme Markup
Witten, I. and Frank, E. 2005. “Chapter 1: What’s it all about?,” from Data Mining.
Smith, Linda. 1981. “Citation Analysis.” Library Trends
Hoppman, Talke Klara. 2009. “Examining the ‘point of frustration’. The think-aloud
method applied to online search tasks.” Quantity and Quality
White, Marilyn and Emily Marsh. 2006. “Content analysis: a flexible methodology,”
Library Trends
Haythornthwaite, Caroline. 1996. “Social Network Analysis” Library & Information
Science Research
Palmer, Carole, Melissa Cragin, and Timothy Hogan. 2004. “Information at the
intersections of discovery: Case studies in neuroscience,” ASIS&T Proceedings
Kendall, Lori. 2008. “James Bond, Peter Pan, and A Sticky Night of Love: Irony and
masculinities in amateur animated videos,” The Journal of Men’s Studies
McDowell, Kate. 2008. “Toward a History of Children as Readers, 1890-1930,” Book
History
Becker, Howard. 2001. “The epistemology of qualitative research,” from Contemporary
Field Research
K'Meyer, Tracy E. "'It's Not Just Common Sense': A Blueprint for Teaching Oral History."
The Oral History Review
What It Still Needs…
More and better readings about epistemology
and philosophy
I bit more decentering of social science
Better connections between the different
components of the class
(A student suggestion: each student starts
with a project idea and applies all exercises to
that project.)
Thanks!
I’d love to hear your thoughts
and questions.
And if you have readings to suggest,
please send them to me at:
loriken@illinois.edu
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