Objectives
Topic 1: Epistemology -- what is it and why should you care? Epistemology, Theory & Research Look at this "cheat sheet" of mine as you watch the two videos linked below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSVuTlceBT8 There is a long ad at the beginning of this video (new this year). Click Skip Ads as soon as that option appears on the lower right of the video. As you watch this video, think about your own scientific thinking skills. Identify three strengths and three areas where you hope this course will improve your scientific thinking skills. Be prepared to share your observations in class. Huub Rutjes on critical realism My epistemological perspective is scientific realism. What implications do you think this has for this class -- what you will learn and how I will assess your work? Think about some courses you have taken before that deal with research design, methods of data collection, or data analysis. What do you think were the epistemological stances of the people who taught those courses? Topic 2: Theory and scientific research Have these available during class -- no need to look at them ahead of time. Theory -- what is it in science? Theories that Inform This Class Theories and Examples of Variables for Social Science (Dr. Kelly Moore). Look at the abstracts you reviewed. Can you associate any of them with the theories in Dr. Moore's list? Which ones are not on Dr. Moore's list? Topic 3: The Research Cycle Required Reading in Gorard Introducing designs in the cycle of research (pp. 13-22) The research cycle is complex, to say the least. This document shows 11 distinct processes in research, and I could have added many more. It does not go into detail about the steps involved in developing methods of data colleciton and analysis, for example -- and I teach an entire course on methods. It does include the major components in the research process. Look at this carefully and come to class prepared to ask questions or make comments about the processes involved in scientific research. Be prepared to share your thoughts about how this course will (or maybe will not) prepare you to conduct your own research. Topic 4: How can you contribute? There are four ways that you can contribute to the body of knowledge. Think about your own research interests and come to class prepared to participate in discussions about your goals in terms of the nature of the contributions you want to make through your research. Level 1: Descriptive research. The simplest and first step in scientific research is to produce a thorough, detailed description of the problem, issue or need that the researcher hopes to address through research. All research involves some description, but at the very earliest stages of research about an emerging phenomenon, the descriptive research is critical. We have to understand the nature of the problem. Otherwise, we will not be able to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant knowledge about the phenomenon. In the earliest stages with COVID19, for example, the scientific community had to describe the virus and its means of transmission.” Literally, what does it look like and how does it move from one person to another? There was a digital representation of the COVID 19 virus that made all the news media in 2019. This article gives a nice explanation of how that visual image was used and misused to some degree. But it shows the importance of descriptive research when we are on the trail of something new and unknown or very poorly known. The image did start to “tell a story” about the virus. For example, we learned that the spikes on the virus are the way it gets into our cells. You cannot formulate hypotheses at this point in research. It is an important step in research, but not one that helps us understand how and why a phenomenon exists. We can only report our results and compare our results to those of others. We cannot really reach many, if any, conclusions that apply beyond our specific study. Level 2: Exploratory research. Exploratory research goes one step further and starts to examine “how the thing works” – whatever the phenomenon may be. Exploratory research is both exciting and frustrating. It is exciting because you figure out new “pieces” of the puzzle before you on a regular basis. It is frustrating because you do not know yet what is important and what is not important, or what is even “right” about what you have discovered and what is not. Often, there is an overwhelmed feeling because you just do not know where to focus further research. This was true with COVID – a myriad of questions developed in the exploratory stage. Does it stick to elevator buttons and the counter where you sat your grocery bag down in the kitchen? Does a mask really keep it out of your nose and mouth? What about the eyes – can it enter my body through the eyes? Does Clorox really kill it? I remember pushing crosswalk signals with my elbow to avoid direct contact with the skin on my hands. Exploration is exciting – but kind of scary. This is the point where we use our descriptions to identify what is already known about the phenomenon or about similar phenomenon. We can use the existing body of knowledge to establish and test existing ideas about the processes at work – and we can add to the body of knowledge. We can test hypotheses and we can move beyond description to reach conclusions. Level 3: Explanatory research. This is where we get to the heart of research – how does this happen? Why does it happen? What outcomes can we expect if we do X to stop (or to stimulate) the processes at work? At this stage in the research process, the researcher is expected to produce hypotheses (or propositions as they are sometimes called when qualitative data analyses are used). We can compare our conclusions to those of those and build a case for any additions or changes we feel would improve the body of knowledge. We can make broader, more inclusive conclusions that other researchers can then test. This research typically takes longer than either descriptive or exploratory research. Researchers typically go through a series of studies that build upon each other to create a coherent, internally consistent and logical set of conclusions that will be put to many tests by other researchers and perhaps survive all that testing to become generally accepted as valid and reliable explanations. Level 4: Theory-Building research. Theory-building is the ultimate goal of scientific research. Most of us will not attempt to build theory and for those of us who do, our contributions will not typically be of the scale of “a brand new theory of X.” Rather our contributions will consist largely of three types. (1) We may add ideas (constructs or concepts) to existing theories. This allows us to develop more robust theoretical explanations that incorporate more of the many components that produce a given phenomenon. (2) Often we will compare two or more theories to see which provides the best explanation of a given phenomenon. This is a very valuable contribution to the body of knowledge because it allows us to focus on the most viable and best validated theories in our disciplines. It helps us “throw out the bad ideas.” (3) We may extend the “domain” of the theory. Domain does not mean a geographic area or even a specific phenomenon. It refers to the range phenomena that a theory can explain in part or in full (rarely). For example, many social scientific theories focus exclusively on the individual response. Some emerging theories focus more on explaining how the interaction between group effects (like group identity) and individual effects (like personality type) interact to produce given outcomes. This permits us to provide a more robust explanation of both individual and group behaviors – makes our theories more powerful predictors of overall societal patterns of behavior. |
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Additional Materials Published Academic Literature about the Role of Theory & Espistemology in Research. These are examples of the kinds of materials that you can consult, use and cite to meet the requirement for "using, citing and referencing" the research design literature in this class.These are dated in terms of findings. I have not updated for a long time. But the point is for you to have some examples of the use of theory in research design and they are still useful for that. Caputo, R.K. (2007). Social theory and its relation to social problems: An essay about theory and research with social justice in mind. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 34(1), 43-61. Dustin, D. & Montgomery, M.R. (2010). The use of social theory in reflecting on anti-oppressive practice with final year BSc social work students. Social Work Education 29(4), 386-401. Evans, J. & Davies, B. (2011). New directions, new questions? Social theory, education and embodiment. Sport, Education & Society 16(3), 263-278. Fisher, A.T., Sonn, C.C. & Evans, S.D. (2007) The place and function of power in community psychology: Philosophical and practical issues. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 17(4), 258-267. Haig, B.D. (2008) An abductive perspective on theory construction. Journal of Theory Construction & Testing 12(1), 7-10. Haslum, M.N. (2007) What kind of evidence do we need for evaluating therapeutic interventions? Dyslexia 13(4), 234-239. Heritage, J. (2011). A Galilean moment in social theory? Language, culture and their emergent properties. Qualitative Sociology 34(1), 263-270. Jacobson, N., Gewurtz, R. & Haydon, E. (2007) Ethical reviews of itnerpretive research: Problems and solutions. IRB: Ethics & Human Research 29(5), 1-8. Johnson, C.W. (2008) "Don't call him a cowboy": Masculinity, cowboy drag and a costume change. Journal of Leisure Research 40(3), 385-403. Lu, L. (2008) The individual-oriented and social-oriented Chinese bicultural self: testing the theory. The Journal of Social Psychology 148(3), 347-373. Ma, A. & Norwich, B. (2007) Triangulation and theoretical understanding. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 10 (3), 211-226. Mahootian, F. & Eastman, T.E. (2009). Complementary frameworks of scientific inquiry: Hypothetico-deductive, hypothetico-inductive and observational-inductive. World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution 65(1), 61-75. Michaelian, K. (2008) Privileged Standpoints/Reliable Processes. Hypatia 23(1), 65-98. Mills, J., Chapman, Y., Bonner, A. & Francis, K. (2007) Grounded theory: a methodological spiral from positivism to postmodernism. Journal of Advanced Nursing 58(1), 72-79. Patterson, D.A. & Keefe, R.H. (2008) Using social construction theory as a foundation for macro-level interventions in communities impacted by HIV and addictions. Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare 35(2), 111-126. Thagard, P. (2006) How to collaborate: Procedural knowledge in the cooperative development of science. Southern Journal of Philosophy 44(S), 177-196. Tullberg, J. (2011). Comparatism -- a constructive approach in the philosophy of science. Journal of Socio-Economics40(4), 444-453. Wray, K.B. (2007). Who has scientific knowledge? Social Epistemology 21(3), 337-347. York, R. & Clark, B. (2010). Critical materialism: Science, technology and environmental sustainability. Sociological Inquiry 80(3), 475-499. |