1. Communication Research
Week 5
What is research method and how do I write about it?

2. Methods – Initial Questions
What methods exist?
What methods are appropriate for my Research Question?
Will I be able to get the access I need?
What skills do I need to develop to carry out my choice?
Communication Research

3. Choice of Methods – Some Examples
Experiments
Cross-sectional surveys
Observation
Secondary analysis (e.g. official statistics)
Secondary analysis of documents
Interviews
Focus Groups
Case studies
Longitudinal research (e.g. time series or qualitative)
Content analysis
Communication Research

4. Learning the language of your Method
In quantitative research:
Never “Prove” something
“Reject or accept the null hypothesis”
Data supports the hypothesis
In qualitative research:
Don’t apologise that your case can’t be generalised to a population
You’re generalising to theory
Communication Research

5. Doing your chosen method “right”
Guidance from research methods texts
Guidance from journal articles
Within your subject area
Outside your subject area
Specialist methodology journals
Guidance from academic networks
Guidance from those whose work you’re citing
Communication Research

6. The Method Section of the Proposal & Report
Outlines specifically how research was undertaken and may include the following elements, depending on the type of research
Uses sub headings (unlike the introduction)
Is vital to enable readers to both understand how you conducted (or will conduct) your research and to enable them to judge the validity of your results or findings
This section uses direct and descriptive writing style
Communication Research

7. Communication Research
Overview/Preamble
Overview (also called Preamble) of the research methods and rationale behind the research
Can include information on the type of study, nature of study, time horizon, and units of analysis eg
Two sets of groups were established from Communication students at the University of Western Sydney. Students discussed the same two questions on a real-time chat system and a bulletin board system.
Communication Research

8. Communication Research
Sample
Sample includes a description of the sample demographics/characteristics, sample size and any problems experienced/anticipated eg
A total of 772 students participated in the study. Female to male ratios were 3:1 in the BA (Communication) subjects involved. Modal age range was years. The participants who used the first set of discussions (using bulletin boards) were not involved in the second set (using real-time chat).
Communication Research

9. Materials/Instrument
Materials or Instrument describes any particular materials used eg test instrument such as a survey, observation schedule etc.
Also notes any other materials that may have been used such as a tape recorder eg
The test instrument employed in this study was the Bales Interaction Process Analysis (IPA)
Table 1 Bales IPA areas & categories
SOCIO-EMOTIONAL AREA
CATEGORIES (paired)
1. Seems friendly
12. Seems unfriendly
2. Shows tension release
11. Shows tension
TASK AREA
3. Agrees
10. Disagrees
4. Gives Suggestion
9. Requests suggestion
5. Gives Opinion
8. Requests opinion
6. Gives Orientation
7. Requests orientation
Communication Research

10. Communication Research
Procedure
Procedure identifies the steps or strategies used and any problems which arose eg
Participants were randomly assigned to online groups, which varied in size (5, 7, 9 or 11 members). Sixty-four groups used the first in-house bulletin board system to discuss both topics; 29 real-time groups later used the real-time chat program, Internet Relay Chat (or IRC) with both topics. Asynchronous group duration was three weeks, real-time groups duration varied but was usually finalised within an hour. All participants needed to access the special computer facilities, which were only accessible through university computer labs. All of the groupsﾕ transcripts were electronically recorded and stored. The origin of the raw data for this study was the indexed transcripts for each computer-mediated group.
This section can be written in paragraph form or you could use numbers or bullet points to make it easier to read
Communication Research

11. Communication Research
Statistics
Statistics refers to the statistical analyis methods of analysis that you will use to analyse the data eg
An ANOVA study was performed on the 12 Bales IPA categories with modality, size and topic as predictor variables.
In your proposal you might leave this out unless you know what they are. We will cover this later in the course. You should include this in your final report Method section
Communication Research