How to research

Some Observations on Variables, Relationships, and Hypotheses

The empirical approach

•“Empirical” means grounded in experience or observation
•As distinguished from deductive theory
•Requires a RW referent of some sort
•Observation interacts with theory
•Good empirical research has implications for both theory and practice

Characteristics of successful research

•Activity and personal interest of the researcher
•Convergence of interests
•Rigor
•Intuition
•Important theory
•Real world focus

Characteristics of not-so-successful research

•Expedience
•Method
•Motivation
•Lack of theory

Defining problems for research

•Why are we interested?
•What are the relationships between our concepts that we hope to find?
•What are the possibilities for finding out about it?
•How are we sure we’ve found anything meaningful?

Why are we interested?

•The phenomena are definable
•The phenomena might be changed
•The consequences of the phenomena are real
•Settings are available where we might look at the phenomena
•Resources are available for the inquiry

What are the expected relationships?

•What does general theory say?
•What do other researchers claim to have found?
–Do we believe them?
•What do we personally expect to be happening?

Forming good questions

•Who needs the information?
•What decisions will be based on it?
•What affects the decisions?
•Who are you asking?
•What are the consequences of wrong answers?

The “efficiency principles”

•Bound the problem carefully
•Pick the simplest design you can given your tradeoffs
•Use labor intensive methods only when really necessary
•If it’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well

Research process tradeoffs

Combining methods

•In Research Writing, most common approach
•Different forms
•Simultaneous triangulation
•Sequential triangulation
•Usually varying emphasis

Research questions

•Define the domain of a study
•May vary in specificity
•Should be limited in number
•Are open-ended
•Should enable the formulation of hypotheses

Levels of analysis

Variables

•Measurable properties of things that we choose to notice
•Selected from a potentially infinite list
•Come in several “flavors”
•May be:
–Expressed in numbers (“quantitative”)
–Expressed in words (“qualitative”)

Hypotheses

•Are statements of expected relationships
•Uses operational measures
•Include 2 or 3 variables
•May be defined over large or small groups
•May be multiple
•Should be directional
•Implicitly includes its “null”

Mapping a relationship

•Dependent variable right, independent left
•One ways arrows indicate hypothesized causality
•Valence signs indicate direction of relationships
•Two-headed arrows indicate unanalyzed correlations