Understanding and Doing Successful Research

Data Collection and Analysis for the Social Sciences

Shaun Best

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317862185
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Research Methods is an essential guide to carrying out a research project. Each of the focused chapters introduces and explains an aspect of social research to readers who may have no experience or knowledge of this subject. The emphasis is on how to do various different methods, how to decide which is the most appropriate, and how to analyse the data. The book also includes examples of good practice from a range of social science disciplines.

1

Getting started

By the end of this chapter you should have an understanding of:

• what researchers understand by data collection and data analysis

• three different styles of research: policy-oriented research, action research and theoretically-oriented research

• the difference between conducting research deductively and conducting research inductively

• where research questions come from

• the role of values and beliefs in the formation of research questions and in the conduct of the research process

• why it is important to have a clear rationale for your research project

• what the ‘conventional’ stages in the design and execution of a research project are.

Introduction

What can this book offer you? It takes it for granted that you are new to research and that you have no previous knowledge of data collection or data analysis. This book also imagines that you have been asked to complete a research project and that you do not know what to do. In addition, it guesses that some of you are starting to panic because you do not really know what you are doing! Many social science textbooks, especially those written for 16–19-year-old students contain a chapter on research methods, but usually this is little more than lists of the advantages and disadvantages of different methods of data collection and nothing about data analysis. In addition, because those who write textbooks for 16–19-year-olds are probably not active researchers themselves, these books tend not to give practical advice on how do a research project.

This book will help you to think about doing research projects of your own but perhaps, more importantly, it will help you to develop a range of skills and abilities that will allow you to evaluate more fully other people’s research projects in relation to data collection, data analysis and inference (i.e. what you can deduce or conclude from their results).

Thinkpiece

You might want to ask yourself these questions before you read on: whose research do you admire? And why do you admire it?

If you cannot answer these questions because you have only read summaries of research findings in textbooks then you need to change your reading habits. The following chapter on how to conduct a literature review will explain how to search for relevant research in academic journals and other relevant sources and why you need to do so.

Note on assessment

The chapters in this book will outline the central concepts, techniques and perspectives that underpin the process of doing research. However, if you are a student doing a research project there will be a set of assignment criteria that should clearly explain what you have to do in order to complete the assignment successfully. Always read the assessment criteria! You need to understand fully these criteria and ask the member of staff responsible for setting the assessment if you are unsure of any aspect. What type of data is the assignment looking for: statistical data, an understanding of the respondent’s motives and intentions, is a large sample of people to be surveyed or is a case study all that is required?

This book will provide you with an evaluation of the most popular methods of data collection and data analysis that are used within the social sciences. It will help you to write a justification for your choice of data collection methods and your choice of data analysis techniques. The book will also give you practical advice on each step of the research process from having your initial idea for a question to investigate to writing the concluding paragraph of your research report.

In addition, most research methods textbooks do not explain to their readers how much fun you can have doing a research project, how imaginative you can be in choosing your methods of data collection and in explaining to your reader how you made sense of the data you have collected, and how innovative you can be in the way in which you build your explanations about how and why people behave in the way that they do.

What is research? Where and how do you start?

Research allows us to answer questions about the world, about things we do not understand or that we find interesting or disturbing. We conduct our research in a systematic manner that allows us to make a connection between the observations we make or the data we collect and theories about the world. Broadly speaking, within the social sciences there are three forms of research:

1. policy-oriented research that has a focus on investigating problems that are of social concern and have the attention of policy makers;
2. action research that has a focus on investigating problems from the point of view of a practitioner;
3. theoretically-oriented research that has a focus on understanding or explaining some aspect of why people behave in the way that they do.

Much research in the social sciences builds explanations deductively; this means that we have an existing theory in mind, develop a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis by collecting data. However, research can also be conducted inductively whereby we make an observation, collect data that allows us to make a generalisation and then produce a theory to explain the observations we have made.

If we believe that there is a link between two or more variables (such as educational under-achievement and social class) or that one variable has an influence over another variable (that educational under-achievement is caused by social class), we can produce a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a statement about what we believe to be the link or connection between two or more variables that is both systematic and in a form that can be tested by collecting data.

Coming up with a researchable research question

What is research? We conduct research projects because we feel that some aspect of social life needs explaining. The decision about what to research and why we should do so are not made within a vacuum but will be influenced by a range of factors. Where do research questions come from? The researcher has an intuitive idea about some aspect of the world. This may have come about by a chance observation or from reading other people’s research. Hans Reichenbach (1938) made the important distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The ideas or questions of what we research and the hypotheses we invent are often very personal and the processes of inventing research questions or hypotheses are usually not very systematic or logical in nature: this is the context of discovery. However, once we have the research idea or hypothesis in mind we can then proceed in a logical and systematic manner: this is the context of justification. In other words, how we test a theory by looking at the empirical evidence is independent from how the theory was invented in the first instance.

This chapter will discuss where ideas for research projects come from and give some advice on common approaches adopted by students and others on how to think about potential research projects. Sources such as your own perceptions of the world around you, news stories, personal problems that may also be public issues, local issues or issues that emerge from your own reading etc. are all potential sources of ideas for research projects. In addition, research ideas can come from personal observation, personal ideas, opinions, events or incidents you have seen on television, or that you have had reported to you by friends. When you read it is important to read critically. Ask yourself if the current research is adequate and if it is not, why is it lacking? Is there a need for more research in this area? Also whilst reading, try to identify conflicting or ambiguous research findings; again there may be an opportunity to conduct research in the area.

Often such readings or observations make you want to reflect upon their meaning, placing the issue or incident into the wider context of research to get a fuller or more valid view of the meaning and significance of the events. As humans we find it difficult to divorce ourselves from the moral aspects of our research projects. Clare Graydon (2006) for example has looked at the issue of a person’s consent to a sexual relationship and whether that can be uninformed if that person has an intellectual disability: she opens her paper with the example below that she then goes on to put into a legal and conceptual framework.

Thinkpiece

Read the passage below and speculate on the reasons why Clare Graydon wanted to conduct research in this area.

‘In 1981, a 23 year old woman with a mental age of 10 years 8 months went to a country fair. She had no sexual experience and had received no sex education. At the fair, she spent a considerable amount of time and money at the hoopla stall trying to win a large green frog. The attendant struck up a conversation with her, and after a time asked if she wanted to ‘make love’. She agreed and accompanied him to a caravan where intercourse took place. He gave her the toy frog and she returned to the fair, where she chatted happily with friends, showed no distress, and spoke to the man again. Later a second fair attendant approached and offered her a toy panda in exchange for sex. She accompanied him to a truck and intercourse took place a second time. Again she was not distressed after the incident, but when a third man attempted to have sex with her she resisted and ran off. By the time her mother arrived to collect her she was visibly upset. This narrative raises a number of questions concerning the sexual expression of persons with intellectual impairment. Was this woman capable of consent? What are, or what should be, the markers of capacity to consent? In particular, what facts should a person know if they are to be deemed capable of giving consent to a sexual act?’ (Graydon 2006: 1).

Reports of critical incidents in people’s lives, or even personal events, can also be used as the starting point for a research project. Best (2007) made use of an injury sustained in a road traffic accident to develop a critique of the postmoden conception of pain:

‘This paper is an evaluation of the literature on pain in the light of an incident that left me temporarily hospitalized and in pain. Purely by chance the incident gave me the opportunity to discuss issues from the body of writing on pain with other individuals in pain at the time of contact. However, because no notes were taken at the time of meeting these people and no permission was sought to use their accounts of pain, their views are not directly quoted. The paper is not simply a personal account of the experience of pain, but draws upon a ‘critical incident’ approach that is well established in the fields of nursing, midwifery and education but is not used in the field of disability studies’ (Best 2007: 162).

People feel they have to do research for a variety of reasons. In your working life you might be expected to conduct staff appraisals, evaluate the day-to-day activities of your organisation, review, update and monitor processes and performance of policies, programmes and procedures within organisations, and even assess the performance of organisations themselves. As a student, you may have to complete an assignment successfully to progress on your chosen degree programme. However we choose to define research, at an abstract level it involves a process of well-organised data collection and data analysis that contributes to knowledge.

Why do people involve themselves in data collection? In our everyday lives we make judgements about the situations in which we find ourselves. We have to make judgements about the validity of our perceptions: how do we know what we know and why do we perceive things in a certain way? Truthful research is an attempt to find evidence to support arguments and provide a more convincing account that is more substantial than our unsupported personal opinion. In other words, research allows an individual to make the short intellectual journey from ‘I know’ to ‘it is known’.

There is a rich variety of data collection methods and data analysis that we can draw upon to make that short intellectual journey. At the outset of the research process you need to be aware of your own skills and abilities as a researcher, the type of data you wish to collect and the way in which you want the findings to be presented. In many cases how we choose to collect and make sense of our data is up to us. However, for students who have to complete a research project for an assignment there may be a very limited choice.

The rationale

A good starting point for any research project is for the researcher to write a rationale. The rationale is an explanation or statement that explains the reasons why you as the researcher are conducting the research project. Your rationale should include the personal reasons for choosing the project. The rationale will help to inform you about the type of research you want to conduct and about the type and quality of data you are looking for. For example, if you want a small amount of not very sensitive data from a large group of people, you migh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Getting started
• 2. The ethics of social research
• 3. Searching and reviewing the literature
• 4. Secondary analysis – research using other people’s data
• 5. Interviews
• 6. The case study
• 7. Ethnographic approaches
• 8. Observation, participant observation and observational inference
• 9. Biographical and autobiographical approaches
• 10. Documentary and narrative analysis
• 11. Measurement and statistical inference
• 12. What is a sample survey?
• 13. Mixed methods research
• 14. Evaluation research and experiments
• 15. Successfully completing the research project
• Index