 Make
better decisions
• Usually business decisions
 Build
theory
• Understand the world better
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
Carefully construct a means to gather data on the question
Carry out the data collection method and organize the data
Evaluate the data that have been collected
Make a provisional statement about the original question
Evaluate the process and the new knowledge to determine
whether additional research is necessary
Determine
what the question is
 This
seems pretty straightforward at first.
• You might need to make a business decision
• You might need to choose one or another medical
treatment
• You might want to decide which movie to go see
 However,
many times we are fairly uncertain
about the nature of the problem at hand.
• You are not understanding your math homework—
what’s the problem?
We
may have only a vague notion what it
is we want to study.
• Why do people choose one TV show over another?
• Why do some teens take to the Internet while others
don’t?
• What are the effects of exposure to hip-hop?
 Some
questions have many different
dimensions.
• What is the impact of gender on video game use?
 Choice of games
 Gameplay
 Likelihood of buying
 Console preference
 Gratifications received
 Just
about any question can be approached
many different ways
• Cognitive
• Attitudinal
• Social
• Economic
• Political
• Aesthetic
 The
most common and most significant
mistake in social science is to skimp on the
development of the question. Once a researcher
gets to the point where she is choosing
measures and methods, there is no saving a
poorly-developed question.
 Determine
 Find
what the question is
out what has been learned in the past
 Efficiency
• Don’t reinvent the wheel.
 Gain
insights from those who have studied the
topic in the past
Appropriate theory
Research method effectiveness
How?
• Complete a literature review
What
literature should I review?
• It depends partly upon the question
• However, some literature is better than other
literature
 Refereed journals
 Edited books
 Government publications
 There
may be data already available that can
answer your question but has not yet been used
for that purpose—Save time and money
• Omnibus surveys
 The
main problem is that these studies rarely
have exactly the data you want
• There’s a tradeoff between money savings and quality
of the data for your purpose
 Determine
what the question is
 Find out what has been learned in the past
 Identify
areas of insufficient knowledge
 If
the information available in the literature is
not adequate to meet your needs, you will need
to generate new information that can be
brought to bear on your question
• May need to ‘localize’ the information
 Local ratings
• May need to apply knowledge about one medium to
another
• May need to choose between competing theories
 Nature v. nurture
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
 Choose
a method to fill in the gaps in our
knowledge
 Methods
are more or less appropriate
depending on the question asked and the
conditions the research is carried out under
• Studying children’s learning from Sesame Street
• Finding out what kinds of content will be most
effective in getting people to vote for Rand Paul
• Figuring out what types of online video content
generates the most sales
 Experiment
• Laboratory or natural
 Survey
• Distribution methods
 Observation
 Text
analysis
• Content analysis or qualitative textual analysis
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
 Carefully
construct a means to gather data on
the question
 The
development of an actual, real-world study
takes careful planning and attention to detail
• Many decisions have to be made, some of which seem
rather trivial but can have an important impact on the
final outcome.
 Should I use a four-point or five-point scale?
 Should I show the film in the subjects’ homes or in a lab?
 How large a sample should I take? Does it need to be
random?
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
Carefully construct a means to gather data on the question
 Carry
out the data collection method and
organize the data
 A lot
of things can go wrong with even a wellplanned study when it enters the field.
• Your clips may have a screwed-up soundtrack.
• There may be someone in the house who is disruptive
during a survey interview.
• Some spectacular event in the news may heavily color
questions on a related topic.
• Weather could cause delay or cancellation of focus groups.
 You
may plan poorly and introduce error into your
own study
• You could fail to treat all subjects equally
 You
have to be careful in handling the data not
to either lose or fail to record important
information
• It’s easier to do than you think
 Especially in field studies
• Always, always, always back your data and codebook
up
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
Carefully construct a means to gather data on the question
Carry out the data collection method and organize the data
 Evaluate
the data that have been collected
This
is the ‘analysis’ portion of your study
Hypothesis testing
• Statistical analysis
In
some cases you will engage in more
inductive and/or subjective analyses
While
many researchers spend a great
amount of time applying advanced and
complicated statistical analyses to their
data, fairly simple and straightforward
analysis procedures can be just as
effective
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
Carefully construct a means to gather data on the question
Carry out the data collection method and organize the data
Evaluate the data that have been collected
 Make
a provisional statement about the
original question
 Did
the data support your hypotheses?
• It’s not always entirely clear. If the hypotheses are
stated statistically, you can usually say ‘yes’ or ‘no’
(though people try to cheat). If they are not, then
there’s quite a bit of interpretation to do in evaluating
the fit of the data to a particular theory or set of
concerns.
• If you’re partly right and partly wrong, what do you
do?
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Determine what the question is
Find out what has been learned in the past
Identify areas of insufficient knowledge
Choose a method to fill in the gaps
Carefully construct a means to gather data on the question
Carry out the data collection method and organize the data
Evaluate the data that have been collected
Make a provisional statement about the original question
 Evaluate
the process and the new knowledge to
determine whether additional research is
necessary
 Here’s
where you go back and with the benefit
of hindsight determine for yourself whether the
study you did ended up providing you with
new that is sufficient or whether you need to
engage in further study (keeping in mind the
additional cost of additional research)
You
also speculate as to how what you
have learned fits into the ‘larger picture’
• What does it all mean, anyway?
Your
write-up should include your
conclusions and recommendations for
further research
 Having
identified the further needs for research
in the area of study you have set up a base for
the next round of explication
 The process continues