WRT 205: Critical research Dr. Rusty Bartels Monday, February 11th, 2019 Week 5, Day 1

Overview Intro Methods Exercise Freewrite? Wrap-up

Intro Driscoll gives us -- three different approaches to primary research, their ethical considerations, and their write-ups: Observations Surveys Interviews The Belmont Report – ethical research on human subjects Voluntary participation Confidentiality and anonymity Researcher bias

Methods Research Methodology Quantitative Qualitative Mixed-Methods

Methods - Observations This is where we observe people, places, and things around us For human subjects, this can be via: Participant observation Unobtrusive observation For both issues there’s questions of consent, anonymity, and bias. What might those things look like?

Methods - Surveys Distributed to a large population to identify trends and patterns Questions can be: Closed- or open-ended Qualitative or quantitative Number & length shaped by distribution method “Response rate” and “sample size” How generalizable findings can be

Methods - Interviews In-depth, one-on-one or small group Insight into experience of a population Often used in combination with other methods Open-ended questions, ability to be flexible in questions asked Ask questions whose answers you can’t get from a survey

Methods – Beyond Driscoll There are more than these three methods Observations Survey Interview These three methods focus on human-subject research What happens if you don’t want to research people? What other subjects/objects can you study? And how?

Exercise In groups of 1, 2, or 3… Identify a potential research topic Create a research question or two from that topic Identify what types of methodologies would be needed to answer the question Brainstorm potential methods that can do that work How Will you ensure ethical practices?

Freewrite Figure 1 on page 157 of the reading Column on the left: Invention Stage Background (library) research Narrowing Topic & Creating Research Questions Creating a Research Timeline Creating Materials Task: brainstorm a timeline to execute this steps on the left Start identifying potential topics Think about what kind of background research you need to do and where to access it

Wrap-up Today we: Primary research methods Questions of ethics in research Next time: Scholarly & Secondary Research - the Literature Reading: McClure Short Response Prompt 2: What do you do when you want to answer a question? What does your casual, everyday research look like? How is it similar to, or different from, more scholarly research? Do you see this as part of your participation in civic discourse?