KNR 295 Honors Seminar Introduction Slide 1 Introduction to research Part one: Foundations

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 2 Today General goals of the course  Objectives (what do I want to achieve?)  Research and its place within undergraduate education  Assessment methods (what sort of practice of required skills will I provide, and what sort of skills will be expected of you?)  Understanding and mastering course content  Bloom’s taxonomy 2. Introductory lecture/discussion/questions  Following Trochim’s chapter 1 - Foundations 3. For next week:  Reading assignment & Questions

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 3 A couple of examples 1. Card trick Card trick 2. Guess my rule

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 4 Foundations of research  Trochim’s Yin/Yang map TheoryPractice

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 5 Foundations of research  Types of studies  Three basic types:  Descriptive  Relational  Causal  Time in research  Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal designs  Repeated measures vs. time series designs

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 6 Foundations of research  Types of relationships  Their nature  Correlation and Causality  Mediation/Moderation  Patterns of relationships  None/positive/negative/curvilinear

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 7 Foundations of research  Variables  Value or attribute = a property of something (may or may not be numeric) examples:  Your age  My age  Your gender  My gender  Variable  How about all our ages?  We all have an age, but they are all different  Age is something we vary by  Age is a variable that describes a property of our group

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 8 Foundations of research  Variables  Independent variable  What you or nature manipulates in some way  E.g. 1: What happens when you get older?  Age is the independent variable (nature is the manipulator)  E.g. 2: What happens when you drink?  Blood alcohol level is the IV (you are the manipulator)  Critiquing IVs: Exhaustive? Mutually exclusive attributes? See also construct validity (later)

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 9 Foundations of research  Variables  Dependent variable  The thing that is influenced (changed) by your independent variable  E.g. 1 (IV = Age): Skin sag, baldness, frequency of urine expulsion, memory strength  E.g. 2 (IV = Alcohol consumption): Balance, inhibition, frequency of urine expulsion  Critiquing DV’s: see operationalization, reliability, measurement validity (all later)

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 10 Foundations of research  Hypotheses  A specific statement of prediction  Inductive vs. deductive research  Deductive has ‘em, inductive often doesn’t  Types  Alternative vs. null  One-tailed vs. two-tailed  Hypothetical-deductive model  2 mutually exclusive statements (null, alternative)  Tests designed to specify which can be rejected and which cannot

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 11 Foundations of research  Types of data  Qualitative vs. quantitative  More a case of philosophical difference than numerical difference (in the better debates, at least)  The unit of analysis  Group vs. Individual vs. Artifact vs. Geographical unit vs. Social interaction  Hierarchical modeling

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 12 Foundations of research  Fallacies  A variety of errors of either logic or premise strength that can result in weak arguments being formed.  Beyond the remit of this course, but very important nonetheless for good research papers

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 13 Foundations of research  Philosophy of research  Structure of research

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 14 Foundations of research  Structure of research  Components of a study  Research Problem  Research Question  The treatment (or program/event – the purported cause)  The sample (the unit)  The outcome (purported effect of treatment)  The design

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 15 Foundations of research  Deduction vs. induction Deduction Induction

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 16 Foundations of research  Positivism vs. post-positivism  Positivism  Science can only address that which is directly observable  Observation and measurement is the only means to the truth  Post-positivism & critical realism  Simply put…  all measurements are potentially faulty  Truth, though it exists, is unlikely to ever be known with certainty  The point of science is to maintain the search for the truth despite knowing that one may never reach it  Hence seek reality, while being critical of one’s current estimation of it

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 17 Foundations of research  Post-positivism & critical realism  Because we are critical of our grasp on reality, we  Take multiple measures  Critique the measures we have  Engage in hearty arguments about our perspectives and their influence on our thought processes (that we might not be aware of)  It is only through such critique that objectivity can be approximated – an individual cannot be objective, but if a viewpoint is generalizable across many perspectives and cultures it may possess some objectivity

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 18 Foundations of research  Post-positivism & critical realism  The “natural selection theory of knowledge”  That which survives can claim a degree of objectivity or approximation to the truth  Here lies the value of research that we do, and the criticism to which we subject it  It’s pretty much the only way that our (eventual) understanding can claim a degree of objectivity  (according to critical realism, that is…now, if you’re a relativist…)

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 19 Foundations of research  Validity  the best available approximation to the truth* of a given proposition, inference, or conclusion (*allows for criticism –this is where we come in)  What you wish to say within a study (& therefore the kinds of validity you are going to claim) depends on the type of study you are conducting (see slide 5)

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 20 Foundations of research  Validity  Operationalization

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 21 Foundations of research  Validity

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 22 Foundations of research  Validity  For each validity type there are typical threats, and ways to reduce them (we deal with these in later weeks)  This gives us a framework within which to critique the overall validity of our (or any other) study

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 23 Foundations of research  Ethics  Protect participants vs. Deprive others of knowledge  A tricky balance  One problem is that we are notoriously untrustworthy as a species (see Milgram, Tuskagee, Stanford prison experiments on web), suggesting the need for strong ethical procedures  Another is that strong ethical procedures can deprive individuals of free will

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 24 Foundations of research  Ethics  Institutional Review Boards  Informed Consent  these are the ways we currently constrain our practices to keep them “ethical”

KNR 295 Honors Seminar: Introduction Slide 25 Foundations of research  Conceptualizing research  How do you get started/develop and idea/formulate a research plan/conceptualize and area of research?  All this is really for those who wish to conduct research  For now, I’d rather focus on a framework for understanding and critiquing the research that already exists – we’ll get to the doing stage if time allows (for now, assume that the tried and tested method of asking a faculty member for a question is the best method)