Below, are five early steps in research:
Here they are again, in greater detail:
1. Choose a topic
Choosing a one's topic is a very important step. If you have a choice of topics, you want to pick one that interests you and to which you have at least some access. Many researchers try to study topics that are fascinating, but cannot really be researched due to a variety of concerns. Sometimes travel expenses are too high, or the researcher cannot gain access. Patricia Adler's (1993) study of upper level drug dealers and smugglers, for example, could not be completed by just any researcher. Adler was somehow able to gain access to the dealers and their world. Likewise, researchers who want to know more about serial killers might have problems finding people to interview. Even "everyday" topics like why kids join gangs means the researcher may have to find some gang members to study. In other words, don't bite off more than you can chew.
The second problem is the breadth of the topic. You want to pick a topic that is "narrow" enough that your research is focused, but not so narrow that you can't find any information on the topic. A researcher who is interested in African-Americans in criminal justice, for example, might easily find him/herself overwhelmed by the breadth of the topic. If the topic is narrowed to African-American judges, there will be fewer problems, but the topic is still rather broad. A better choice would factors that affect the sentencing of misdemeanants by African-American judges. An example of a "too narrow" topic might be child custody decisions by lesbian judges. No doubt it's an interesting topic, but it probably doesn't have enough information for a student to do a research study on it.
Recap Q1: Which of the following would be the best topic for an undergraduate student working on a one-term class project?
B. organized crime figure's beliefs about how to reduce poverty in inner city areas
C. the factors that students feel were important in their decisions to attend your university
D. how the Aha Kuka O na Kupuna courts of Hawai`i operate
This means reading other researchers' studies to learn how they did their research and what they found. It has been said that contemporary researchers are "great because they stand on the shoulders of those who have completed earlier research," that is, because they can utilize the knowledge learned by earlier researchers. Although it is very time consuming, reviewing the literature will help you decide which variables (i.e., factors) are important to study, how to measure (i.e., assess) them, and what findings to expect.
To illustrate the importance of "the literature," assume you have been assigned to do a study of the factors that influence the importance of K'e assumed by Naat'aniis during Peacemaking sessions. I'm sure that most people would want to first go to the library and find out what K'e, Naat'anii, and Peacemaking are. Even when I tell you that K'e can be considered to be "clan solidarity," that a Naat'anii is a respected elder or other person who is called upon to help resolve disputes, and that Peacemaking is a Navajo process during which disputants are brought together to work out their problems and restore themselves to "harmony," you will probably still be lost.
Reading about Navajo Peacemaking and studies on it will not only explain such confusing concepts, but will also point out to you variables that might be important in your study. After reading a number of studies, you might learn that "level of traditionality" is a major factor in the beliefs that a Naat'anii has about K'e, so that might be a good variable for you to include in your study. You might also learn how to measure "level of traditionality," for example, through use of a pre-developed scale like the XYZ Traditionality Test. Knowing about the XYZ Traditionality Test could save you a lot of time because you won't have to design your own questions. Finally, you might also learn that other researchers have found that those people who are classified as more traditional are more likely to believe that K'e is important. You would expect to find the same thing in your study if you ask the same types of questions as were used in the earlier research.
Remember, you can "borrow" anything you want from other studies as long as you give the authors proper credit. In fact, you are expected to use their work to make your study better. If you don't review the literature, you are missing out on a lot of good information and you will be considered "lazy" by other researchers. In short, the library is your friend!
Recap Q2: Which of the following is NOT one of the reasons we read studies by other researchers?
A. so we don't have to do any work ourselves
B. to help us gain background information on our topic
C. to point out important variables the we may have overlooked
D. to provide scales and measures that others have used
3. Determine the research question
The research question is the question you hope to answer with your study. The literature review will help you decide which questions are important, especially as you gain familiarity with the topic and begin to see its finer nuances. For example, you might discover while reading about college drop outs that students leave colleges they perceive as socially "distant" from them, and that minority students have higher attrition rates than academically comparable white students. Based on these two findings, you might decide to examine whether minority students are more likely to leave colleges they feel are unresponsive to their unique cultural needs.
Determining the research question is an important step because it will help guide the design of your research study. Assume, for example, that you are going to survey students who drop out of college. While you could selected from many research questions related to that topic, you have decided on: Are minority students more likely than whites to leave colleges that are unresponsive to cultural diversity issues? Now that you've determined what question you want to answer, you should make sure all your survey questions gather information related to the answers you seek. In other words, you may want to avoid asking questions related to the math requirements because that won't shed any light on your specific research question; you'll just be wasting your participants' time answering unrelated questions. All your questions must have a purpose, and that purpose is dictated by your research question.
You also want your question to have some level of interest. Try to avoid overly simple inquiries such as: Do students drop out of college? We already know the answer to that question (unfortunately, they do drop out). Just because a question has been asked and answered in the past doesn't prevent you from doing more research on it, however. You can ask new questions or otherwise extend the usefulness of earlier research.
Or, you can do a replication of an existing research study. Usually, replications are done to see if the findings from the first study generalize or apply to another time, place, or population. An example of a replication was done by an undergraduate student here at Rutgers University. She wanted to replicate Kenneth Clark's famous "doll" study. Back in the 1950's, Clark found that black children preferred to play with white dolls more than black dolls, and that they felt black dolls looked "bad" while white dolls were perceived as "nice." Clark argued that this was due to the black children's acceptance of negative stereotypes about their race. His findings played an important role in the eventual desegregation of public schools by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. Topeka Kansas Board of Education. More than 40 years later, a Rutgers-Camden student used Clark's approach and found that 4-7 year old black girls now prefer black dolls, except on one index item; they still feel the white dolls are "smarter" than the black ones. We could spend hours discussing what this replication shows us, but let us confine ourselves to acknowledging that replications can be interesting and valuable.
Recap Q3: Which of the following questions would be least appropriate for a study that seeks to answer the research question: Are minority students more likely than whites to leave colleges that are unresponsive to cultural diversity issues?
A. Does XYZ University offer extramural sports programs?
B. Does XYZ University offer ethnic studies courses?
C. How satisfied are the white students with the cultural activities at XYZ University?
D. Do minority students at XYZ University feel the faculty don't respect their views?
http://sociology.camden.rutgers.edu/jfm/graphics/dublblu.gif
4. Develop a hypothesis
According to Vogt's Dictionary of Research Methods and Statistics (1993, Sage Publications), a hypothesis is: "A statement of the relationships among the variables that a researcher intends to study." This definition brings out two important ideas. First, hypotheses are assertions about how two or more variables are related to or associated with each another. Assume that we're again interested in studying why students leave college. One possible hypothesis is: Students drop out of college because they cannot afford to pay the high costs. This hypothesis posits that dropping out and finances are related, and suggests that those who can't afford the costs will leave. It is testable, because we could see if students leave because they can't afford the cost (versus leaving for other reasons). Hypotheses should both say what we expect to find in our research and be testable.
The second concept the definition illustrates is the idea that hypotheses are formulated for variables that we intend to study. In other words, the hypotheses are formulated before we do our research. It's not considered proper to do the research, poke around in the data, and then write up a hypothesis that "fits" what we found. Hypotheses should be based on theory and what previous researchers have found; they are not just made up "off the cuff." Hypotheses are scientifically reasonable predictions.
Remember, all good hypotheses are testable, and make specific predictions about what the researcher expects to find in his/her research. The development and testing of hypotheses is one of the important things that makes research scientific.
Recap Q4: Which of the following is NOT a good hypothesis?
A. Children from broken homes are more likely to join gangs.
B. Studying for exams using the SQ3R method will improve your grades
C. Reduced morals causes crime
D. Teenagers are more likely than older women to have low birth-weight babies
Operationalization is how we measure our concepts. Concepts are seldom easy to measure. Let's say I want to study how satisfaction with life affects school performance in college seniors. How would I recognize high "satisfaction with life" when I saw it? How could I make sure that other people would agree with me when I said that a certain person was or was not satisfied with his/her life? One way would be to read the literature and see what other people did. Chances are that someone else out there has studied satisfaction with life and might have written up how to measure it. I could use their measures or make my own based on their ideas. In fact, the items below were taken from one such scale, and you're welcome to use them as long as you provide a citation to the original creator of the scale (Karl Schuessler, Measuring Social Life Feelings, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1982):
1. I couldn't be much happier. 2. I get a lot of fun out of life. 3. There is much purpose to what I am doing at present.The next question is how to measure "school performance." Do I use grades, teacher recommendations, level of extra-curricular activities, or something else? You can see that operationalization requires a lot of thinking. We'll have a whole section on this later.
Let's pick something easier: What's a college drop out? Think about it for a minute or two. Drop outs are students who don't re-enroll in school, right? What if they leave for only one semester, then come back? Are they still drop outs? Is a student who leaves a college to go to Yale University still considered a drop out at the first college? Is someone a drop out who leaves for employment reasons, like those who leave because their recent promotion to vice president of their company leaves them little time this semester? What about women who leave school to have a baby, then return? You see that even "easy" ideas can be difficult to measure.
Recap Q5: Which of the following best describes operationalization?
A .low-grade surgeries at late night clinics
B. deciding which concepts are important
C. deciding how to measure the concepts in our study
D. reading books and articles to find what other researchers learned about our topic
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Page last updated: April 15, 2008