Research Methods

Ethics

Any research using 'human participants' needs to be approved by a tutor in advance

Any research using vulnerable people (children or people with certain disabilities) must be approved by the ethics sub-committee

Research involving human participants must be anonymous and you must obtain informed consent in advance

Empiricism vs. Rationalism

These are the two main approaches to 'knowledge'

Empiricism: something is only 'true' if it is experienced using senses (primary research, gathering information from the source)

Rationalism: truth can be grasped intellectually using logic and reason (how you deal with secondary, literature reading, how to make sense of it and apply it to the topic you are researching)

Empirical research:

Start with questions
Questions that have not already been answered
These questions will contain the clues to the potential methods by which you will find answers
I.E. are they about people's feelings, opinions, activities, circumstances, relationships, etc.

Qualitative/quantitate data

Empirical research is all about data collection and analysis... however, 'data' can take different forms

Quantitative: numerical forms

Data collection:

Focus group: A focus from is gathering of deliberately selected people who participate in a planned discussion about a particular topic

Survey: Interviews (qualitative)/ Questionnaires (quantitive)

Questionnaire: should be multiple choice, easy to complete, easy to read and understand without leading questions

Interviews: structured/ unstructured/ semi-structured

Data collection:

Ethnography: study of people and cultures, participant observation/direct observation

Content analysis (extracting quantitative data from qualitative sources): Measures the frequency of pre-specified items within a particular context

Creative explorations (Gauntlet, 2007): using creative techniques as a means of gathering subjective data: lego building, film making, collage, etc.

Data analysis/ organisation:

Quantitative (numerical data)
In order to analyse numerical data you must start with a hypothesis- what you expect to be able to prove using the data. The data should then prove or disprove your hypothesis

Cross referencing 
You may have basic personal information that you can cross reference with other trends (55% women prefer red, 45% prefer black)