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

2. Overview
Intro
Methods
Exercise
Freewrite?
Wrap-up

3. 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

4. Methods
Research Methodology
Quantitative
Qualitative
Mixed-Methods

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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?

9. 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?

10. 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

11. 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?