Research Questions to Research Design Week 5

1. DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
Research Questions to Research
Design (SY7034)
Edmund Chattoe-Brown
ecb18@le.ac.uk
Thursdays 1500-1700 (Brookfield 0.24)

2. WEEK 5

3. 1. Plan
• Administration.
• Catching up slides.
• Sample research design.
• Contrasting research example on GR.
• Break.
• Critical reading of research proposals.
• Formatives.

4. 2. Administration
• Registration.
• Reading Week.

5. 3. Example: Chattoe and Gilbert
• In some ways similar to Sullivan in
“confronting” theory with data.
• But here qualitative data to develop “middle
range” theory.

6. 4. Maximum contrast approach
• Recall last week the historical paper on GR.
• Intention this week was Allport and Postman (1945) but new
paper is in some ways better.
• Treadway, Molly and McCloskey, Michael (1987) ‘Cite
Unseen: Distortions of the Allport and Postman Rumor Study
in the Eyewitness Testimony Literature’, Law and Human
Behavior, 11(1), March, pp. 19-25.
• How reports of rumour have themselves become rumours
even in scientific publishing! Why this really matters.
• Picture on screen. 6-7 outside. Audience member describes
(can see screen, outsiders can’t) then outsiders pass it on.

7. 5. Allport and Postman image

8. 6. Implications
• Look at rumours “in situ” versus create rumours.
• Have to take rumours as they are versus ability to
change them to test theory.
• Not sure about relation between rumours and “truth”
versus absolutely sure.
• Can’t tell what has been “lost” (only written sources)
versus can be sure that nothing is.
• Research creativity: Can I “invent” a stressed or
uncertain organisation in the laboratory?

9. 7. Making it work
• Anticipation: Is my sample too small? Have I asked
the right questions?
• Try to see the problems before someone else does!
• The correct role of supervisors.
• Avoid pointless agonising or “fancy” claims and
concentrate on design (respondents telling the truth,
discourse analysis example).
• You can get a surprising distance with a clear
research question and some general knowledge of
research methods.

10. 8. Transcript: Jo and Carol
• Carol: Just write in the next letter. “Did you have a nice English lesson”.
• Jo: You’ve got to get it on there. Yes that’s you. Let’s just have a look at that. “Hi,
Alan did you have a nice English lesson. Yes thank you, Yeah. Yes thank you it was
fine.”
• Carol: You’ve got to let me get some in sometimes.
• Jo: You’re typing.
• Carol: Well you can do some, go on.
• Jo: “Yes thank you”.
• Carol: [unintelligible].
• Jo: You’re typing. “Yes thank you” “I did, yeah, yes, thank you I did.”
• Carol: You can spell that.
• Jo: Why don’t you do it?
• Carol: No, because you should.

11. 9. “Discourse analysis”
• “The talk in Transcript 1 has characteristics of
Disputational talk. Both participants take an active
part, but there is little evidence of joint, cooperative
engagement with the task. Much of the interactional
talk consists of commands and assertions. The
episode ends with a direct question and answer, but
even this exchange has an unproductive,
disputational quality.”
• Is this just a statement of the obvious?
• Surprisingly hard to find actual examples.

12. 10. Break
• 10 minute “comfort break”.

13. 11. Exercise 1 (40 minutes)
• Groups of about 3.
• Read the four “problem” research proposals
circulated.
• Discuss their problems in as much detail as possible.
(Some are obvious. Some much less so.)
• Choose one of the proposals to report back on.
• It is unlikely that any one group will spot all the
problems so we will do this collectively.

14. 12. Example 1
• Many researchers have put forward ideas about how religious beliefs can
change over time. In particular, immigrant populations may be expected to
assimilate (or at least modify) their religious beliefs the longer they live in a
country. Apart from this, secularisation may result from modernising
processes accelerated by the move to a developed country. The following
research aims to explain this kind of religious change. The sample will
involve 50 Sikh and 50 Muslim students from the University of Leicester.
They will be questioned about their level and kind of religious involvement.
The well-informed students (who report high levels of religious involvement)
will be asked (using a series of Likert scales) to say how much they think
religious beliefs have changed (and how) in their community over the last
40 years. Their responses will be compared statistically controlling for their
reported levels of religious involvement to avoid confounding factors.

15. 13. Example 2
• It has been shown that suicide is not an “objective fact” but the outcomes of a
process of social construction involving such things as coronaries and the
police farce. It is thus naïve to think that official statistics can really explain
suicide. Working for the Libyan government, I have access to all official
statistics on suicide. These can be used to establish the real causes of suicide
and to trace relatives of people committing suicide in different categories. I
can then interview the families to establish exactly how social construction
took place. The data will be analysed by Grounded Theory. Because I am
particularly interested in the role of age in suicide, from my sample of 100
suicides to be analysed in June, I will study 10 from each ‘decade’ of their age
(those in their teens, twenties, thirties and so on.) I expect to find that old
people are less likely to commit suicide because they are better integrated into
their social networks. To simplify my research, I won’t study male suicides. My
results will be important so that the government can change its policy to stop
suicides occurring. As a government worker, this research raises no ethical
issues for me.

16. 14. Example 3
• Quantitative research suggests that the children of single parents may face
educational and labour market disadvantage. However, these findings are
contested and conflict with my own experience of single parenthood. Since
it is well known that statistical research cannot capture the reality of lived
experience and takes a naïvely positivist view of social reality, I will use
qualitative research to discover how single parents really meet challenges
in raising and supporting their children. Given constraints on the time
available for my research, the sample will be recruited through Single
Mother magazine as an effective way of reaching the target population
without too much effort. The research method used will be semi-structured
interviews that will allow the respondents the greatest chance to show how
they meet the challenges imposed on them by society for the sake of their
children. This research is important because of the demonization of single
parents and to reject unjustified claims about them.

17. 15. Example 4
• Based on nationally representative sample, recent research has shown a
weak but consistent relationship between the number of Fixed Odds
Gambling Machines and areas of significant social deprivation. In my
research I plan to show that this relationship also exists in a detailed case
study of Leicester. Areas of deprivation will be identified using statistics. I
will then visit betting shops in areas identified as significantly deprived and
count the number of FOGMs in each. I will also interview the managers of
the betting shops to find out why these machines are located in deprived
areas, thus moving from mere description to explanation. These findings
will disprove the claim that the location of FOGMs are determined by
economic factors (such as lower rents in deprived areas or the greater
number of gamblers to be found among the poor.) It is likely that the
findings of this research will be very useful to the betting shops.

18. 16. Formatives
• Very short. Not marked. Feedback.
• What is your research question?
• What is the point/value of your research?
• On what research is it based?
• What is the distinctive contribution/added value of your
research?
• What are the pros and cons of two alternative research designs
for this question? [Explain.]
• What ethical or practical problems can you foresee with this
research? What kinds of solutions can you foresee?

19. 17. Advice
• Ideally, you should be able to “blow up” each section of the
formative into an effective section of the summative on the
same topic.
• Think more now so you can think less later. Don’t just chop
your notes up into bullet points. (Mark Twain: “I’m sorry I wrote
you a long letter. I didn’t have time to write you a short one.”)
• Don’t write a prospectus: “I will solve the sampling problem.” I
can’t feed back on that.
• Don’t pad, dodge or write boiler plate.
• The more you put in, the more you will get out.
• Questions?