APPLIED CURIOSITY: RESEARCH METHODS AND COMMUNICATION
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Presentation and workshop on how to design research studies in LIS.
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APPLIED CURIOSITY: RESEARCH METHODS AND COMMUNICATION
- 1. APPLIED CURIOSITY ILG Research Day, June 2017
- 2. Think about what you’ll need to tell: • your funder • the wider community of practice about how you did your research and what you found out. When planning your research, it can help to think about how you’ll communicate it after you’ve finished doing it.
- 3. • An original contribution to understanding of IL • Research-informed and evidence-based • Designed around an arguable research question • Methodologically robust with a demonstrable research design What are we looking for?
- 4. First you make an observation (“why is my car making a funny noise?”), then you form a hypothesis (“it sounds like my tire is flat”), make a testable prediction (“if my tire is flat, then it should be deflated when I pull my car over and look at it”), and finally obtain data by performing your test (“Yes, it’s flat! I’m a Science God!...Oh, shit.”). 7 crazy realities of scientific publishing , PNIS Scientific method
- 5. Observation data “I could publish on this!” hypothesis research question How scientific method doesn’t work
- 6. Observation ?!? “I want to find out about this!” hypothesis read, test revise hypothesis research question research design Designing research
- 7. Scholarly communication: the ‘Thing Explainer’ version UpGoerFivebyRandallMonroe.CCBY-NC2.5
- 8. When you write your literature review, don’t forget to highlight what other people haven’t said about your topic, as well as what they have. This helps show your potential funder why your work is going to matter.
- 9. For the “Here’s how I did it” section, a good methods guidebook is invaluable.
- 10. “Examiners look … to see that you understand what this design can and can’t do.” https://patthomson.net/2017/06/26/three-things-examiners-look-for-in-methods-chapters/ Every research method has its limitations. We need to know that you’re aware of them and that you designed your research to minimise their impact.
- 11. What/why/how
- 12. • What is your research? • Why are you doing it? • How are you doing it?
- 13. • What is your research? What questions does it address (or ask)? • Why are you doing it? Why does it matter? What will it change? What interests/frustrates/niggles you about the topic? • How are you doing it? What’s your approach or method? How does it frame your findings? How does it help you mitigate bias?
- 15. Evolving your research question
- 16. • Arguable “The tomato – fruit or vegetable?”
- 17. • Arguable • Focused “Ebooks in schools”
- 18. • Arguable • Focused • Relevant/responsive “[someone else’s thesis topic]”
- 19. • Arguable • Focused • Relevant/responsive • Detached – as much as possible
- 20. “Our eyes twitch, but it is the world which seems to spin” I.A. Richards, The Philosophy of Rhetoric
- 21. • Arguable • Focused • Relevant/responsive • Detached – as much as possible “I want to prove that higher library use means students get better marks”
- 22. The way you frame your question already limits the answers available
- 24. Pickard & Dixon, 2004
- 25. Ask yourself: “What’s the best way to find out what I want to know?” Image: Claude Wolff, flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 The language and concepts of research methods can scare people.
- 26. This article gives a really clear explanation of research paradigms and methods.
- 27. Really think about what will be the most appropriate choice of method and data collection tool for your research. What is the best way to find out what I want to know? (not ‘the cheapest’, or ‘the one that’ll take least time’, or ‘the one I’ve used before’, or ‘the one my manager likes’ …)
- 30. Publish anyway! A well-designed piece of research will yield interesting food for thought even if the results aren’t what you expected. (They may even be more interesting.)
Editor's Notes
- These are JIL’s guidelines – but you can apply the same principles for designing a research study. I’m mostly going to be focusing on the last two : ) In particular: your study needs to be driven by a research question!
- We need it to happen in this order!
- Just …. please don’t! I see this quite often as an editor. If you work REALLY hard you might be able to convince me as JIL editor that you had an RQ when you started; but you have no chance of convincing Geoff :D So you need to set out a demonstrable research design from the start
- And this is kind of how that feels, and in what order
- ** images >> to handout
- Here’s what other people said about this … and what they left out, i.e. what’s unique about your vision. This is the bit you want to bring out in a bid application.
- Here’s how I did it: Get yourself a really reliable AND accessible ‘guide book’ to LIS methods. Here’s someone else doing it this way because that helped me see why it would work for my thing: ‘worked examples’ of real-life methods usage.
- Here’s how it might not have worked fully, all the same Examiners look not only for fit but to see that you understand what this design can and can’t do.
- Time to think broadly about YOUR area of interest – or to sense-check your research bid.
- Take some time (5 mins each) to talk with your group/partner.
- Why is this picture here? How do pearls form? That moment of ?!? in the research design process that I talked about earlier.
- * Taylor – might sound obvious, but let’s think about all the ways a badly-framed RQ can impact on the research. So what does a meaningful RQ look like??
- * Cordelia’s science fair topic: doesn’t leave us with much room for expert inference or speculation.
- * Cordelia’s science fair topic: doesn’t leave us with much room for expert inference or speculation.
- Situating your own explorations with regard to what others have said also helps you demonstrate the originality of your research – crucial for a bid! c/f handout
- I haven’t put “objective” or “neutral” or “impartial” here because there are massive problems with believing that as researchers we can be any of those things. But we can strive to protect our research design as much as possible from the imposition of our own blind spots – by which I mean not just our biases, but our values.
- In particular I’d like you to think about this. Need for bracketing in qualitative research – that is, to identify and temporarily set aside the researcher's assumptions. “For example, I identified a personal assumption that academic libraries are critically valuable to academic work, and then set out to read my data set as if academic libraries were utterly useless to academic work, and then as though I were an extra-terrestrial examining a totally unfamiliar phenomenon.“ (Alicia Salaz Ed.D., 2015)
- How would you re-work this research question so that it actually does research – rather than finding evidence to back up someone’s cherished world-view? And now - what would that do to the research design more generally? Would it change the method, the data collection technique, the analysis??
- In particular I’d like you to think about this – and about how it impacts on the rest of your research design, including your choice of how to go about finding out what you want to find out/inquiring into what you want to explore. (If you want to prod a wasp’s nest, it’s probably not a good idea to use a teaspoon.)
- ** A word that brings some people out in hives.
- http://www.informationr.net/ir/9-3/paper175.html ‘the applicability of constructivist user studies’
- * What you’re really asking is this – all along: Examiners look not only for fit but to see that you understand what this design can and can’t do.
- Highly recommended! ‘Plain English’ approach to paradigms and methods.
- Particularly when it comes to designing your research bid, really think about what will be the MOST APPROPRIATE choice of tool, inquiry mode – however you want to call it. What is the best way to find out what I want to know? – not the cheapest, or the one that’ll take least time, or the one I’ve used before so I’m comfortable with it. e.g. if you have an RQ that demands a phenomenological approach, it’s usual to employ semi- or unstructured interviewing (not a survey). They are NOT parallel implementations of the same method – they will yield different results!
- Particularly when it comes to designing your research bid, really think about what will be the MOST APPROPRIATE choice of tool, inquiry mode – however you want to call it. What is the best way to find out what I want to know? – not the cheapest, or the one that’ll take least time, or the one I’ve used before so I’m comfortable with it. e.g. if you have an RQ that demands a phenomenological approach, it’s usual to employ semi- or unstructured interviewing (not a survey). They are NOT parallel implementations of the same method – they will yield different results!
- What to do with unexpected or negative results? Well, what do you think?