Methodology of Scientific Research (Методология научного исследования). Учебное пособие
.pdfyour questions if you think it would be appropriate (e.g. if the respondent has mentioned something that you were not originally intending to ask about until later in the interview) but remember to go back to the questions you have temporarily skipped when the time is right.
5. Think about how you are going to end the interview. Don't let it simply 'trail off' because you have both run out of time or things to say.
Questions to discuss
1.What is an interview?
2.What are its advantages and disadvantages?
3.What are the rules the interviewer is to follow?
Written assignment
Set up an interview’s aim, choose a person to interview and prepare questions. Analyze the answers to see if you reached the aim set.
Focused group discussions
Focused group discussions are widely used in market research, particularly for testing reactions to new products, and in politics for testing reactions to new policies. The method is also sometimes used in health promotion research and social work research. As an approach it tends to be used in combination with other research techniques.
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Potential advantages
1.A good medium for exploring a group of people's views without imposing your own agenda on them too strongly.
2.Provides opportunities to explore the thinking behind the kinds of responses which might have been given to a questionnaire but without opting for the more expensive option of fol- low-up one-to-one interviews.
3.In the early stages of a project it can be a useful means of identifying issues or areas of interest that could be followed-up using more quantitative research methods.
4.A useful method of working with a group of people that operate as a group (a class of students, a department of colleagues, an interest or pressure group, etc.).
5.It provides the researcher with an opportunity to crosscheck responses, e.g. 'Does everyone agree with that?'...Does that reflect your experience as well? etc.
Potential disadvantages
1.Difficult to follow-up the views of individuals during the group discussion, especially on topics which may be sensitive.
2.Difficult to follow-up the views of individuals once the group discussion has been completed. If it was easy to do this why not opt for face-to-face interviews in the first place?
3.This method can be heavily affected by the dynamics of the group, especially if some members of the group are senior to others. One or two people can easily dominate the proceedings if they have clear views and are articulate. It is possible as a facilitator to counter this tendency but it takes experience and selfconfidence.
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Some tips for group discussion organizing
1.Keep the size of the group fairly small (8–12).
2.An hour is probably the minimum time to allow for the discussion to develop. It takes a while for the group to settle and for the right atmosphere to develop.
3.Draw up a list of topics or themes to be covered. These should loosely guide the discussion. You want a balance between allowing the discussion to develop its own momentum and making sure your issues are addressed.
4.Introduce yourself (if they do not already know you) and explain the purpose of the session, how long it will take and what you will do with the information.
5.Get them to briefly introduce themselves (if they do not know each other).
6.Decide how you will record the discussion. Will you tape it? Take notes? Get a colleague to take notes?
7.Good chairing skills are essential (a) to ensure that the discussion is dominated by one or two and (b) to find out if there is a consensus within the group on a particular issue or theme and (c) to judge when to move on to the next theme or issue.
Written assignment
Do all the preparatory work for focused group discussion on an economic issue. In class organize the focused group discussion and analyze the results.
Observation
Observation is a systematic description of events and behaviors in their actual social setting. Observation tends to be classified trough three dimensions. Firstly, whether the observer is a participant in what he or she is observing or is detached. Se-
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condly, whether or not those who are being observed are aware of this. Thirdly, the extent to which the observation is structured. The degree of structure can range from the observer taking notes or keeping a diary at one end of the spectrum to using coding schemes, checklists and category systems at the other.
Potential advantages
1.The biggest advantage of collecting data through direct observation is that it is one of the most direct research techniques. You are not asking people what they would do or think you are watching what they do and listening to what they say.
2.Used in combination with questionnaires or interviews, observation can therefore provide useful insights into the extent to which there is a correspondence or discrepancy between what people say and what they actually do. As such observation makes a useful contribution to the process of triangulating evidence.
3.The researcher observing his or her own practice has an advantage because the situation to be observed is familiar (which in turn reduces preparation time).
4.It allows the researcher to describe the full complexity of the situation, including the dynamics of the group being observed.
Potential disadvantages
1.It is very time consuming. How many times do you need to observe a situation or a group before you can be sure that you are describing with confidence what is really happening.
2.When the observer is also a practitioner observing his or her own practice then there is a potential problem of how to ensure that the observer can detach himself or herself sufficiently.
3.It is difficult to estimate the effect of the observer on the situation being observed.
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4.The analysis of observational data is time consuming and often opens to very different interpretations.
Here is a brief summary of some of the key issues when designing an observation schedule:
1.The first key question is: «Are you going to be a participant or detached observer? What are the advantages to either role in this particular setting?»
2.Linked to that question is: «Are you going to observe your own practice or the practice of your colleagues and are you going to observe your students or a colleague's?»
3.Are you going to tell the group that you will be observing
them?
4.Do you want a narrative description of what is happening or do you want to design a specific observation schedule. The former approach is often described as 'naturalistic' and used by social anthropologists and some sociologists. Some form of observation schedule is more often used by psychologists and educational researchers. Look at the different kinds of schedule in the recommended reading before making up your mind on this.
5.What specifically do you want to observe:
1)Do you need to describe the setting? [the layout of the room, where people are sitting, the equipment used, etc.).
2)Do you need to describe the people involved?
3)Do you need to describe every event and activity over a specific time period or just a sample of events, or select the ones you are interested in?
4)Are you just interested in the interactions between the tutor and the students or are you also interested in the interactions between the students?
5)Will it be useful to time each event or activity? What will this tell you? How will you use these data?
6)When will you record your observations: at the time or immediately afterwards or much later? [This can be a real problem when you are a participant observer].
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How will you record your observations? Pen and paper, video recording, audio recording?
If you are using an observation schedule can you use a coding system to make the data collection process easier?
Is observation the only source of data for your research or will it be complemented by interviews, questionnaires or other methods? If the latter how will you relate one kind of data to another?
Written assignment
Choose the phenomenon you are going to observe. Answer the questions given in the written from. Analyze the results of the observation.
Documentary analysis
Historians, political scientists and economists may design their research around the analysis of documents, records and statistics but for most action researchers investigating their own and others' practice documentary analysis is mainly a supplementary method employed for collecting background information and for triangulating with the main methods used.
Practitioners can make use of a wide range of documents, including course and module outlines, course materials, staff development documents, inspection reports, examiners' reports, minutes of meetings, memoranda, letters, diaries, students' journals, administrative records, management information system studies, etc.
Potential advantages
1. Unlike most research instruments and data sources, documents are not so prone to being influenced by the researcher.
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2.Documents enable the researcher to investigate the background and context of the situation and the specific problem they are interested in.
3.A useful means of evaluating the extent to which the rhetoric (or the policy) is actually put into practice [but of course you also need other means and other sources for evaluating practice].
4.Documentary analysis is a useful means of analyzing the 'official' view and accessing the 'official' record of events, decisions and plans.
5.Some documents [e.g. student assessments] can provide a measure of the impact of changes introduced during the Action Research process.
Potential disadvantages
1.Research bias may be restricted in one sense because the researcher has not produced the documents [in the same way as he or she has devised the questionnaire or interview schedule] but bias can still be present in the selection of the documents.
2.Documentary analysis – if it is to be systematic – is time consuming. Analysis can range from reading and commenting on it to undertaking a full-scale content analysis or from quoting a mission statement to undertaking a statistical analysis of student assessment results for the last five years.
3.There is little guidance available from experienced researchers on how to analyze some kinds of documents [e.g. students' diaries or reflective journals].
Documents require a critical reading similar to the skills employed by the historian when analyzing primary sources. Each document was written for a particular purpose and within a specific context which may not necessarily be obvious from the document itself. Documents have to be interpreted as well as read and this calls for expertise and experience.
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Experiments
The key feature of any experiment is that the researcher deliberately controls and manipulates the conditions under which the effects of a change or intervention can be measured. Cohen, Manion & Morrison (2000) provide a useful brief description of experimental research in the natural and physical sciences:
Imagine that we have been transported to a laboratory to investigate the properties of a new wonder fertilizer that farmers could use on their cereal crops, let us say wheat. The scientist would take the bag of wheat seed and randomly split it into two equal parts. One part would be the grain under normal existing conditions – controlled and measured amount s of soil, warmth, water and light and no other factors. This would be called the control group. The other part would be grown under the same conditions – the same controlled and measured amounts of soil, warmth and light as the control group but, additionally, the new wonder fertilizer. Then, four months later, the two groups are examined and their growth measured. The control group has grown half a meter and each ear of wheat is in place but the seeds are small. The experimental group, by contrast has grown half a meter as well but has significantly more seeds on each ear, the seeds are larger, fuller and more robust» (p. 211).
The key features of the experiment are:
▪An experimental group and a control group.
▪A random allocation to each group to eliminate the possibility that any variables not thought to be crucial to the experiment might have any unintended effects.
▪The identification of key variables that will have some ef-
fect.
▪The control of these key variables.
▪The application of the special treatment to the experimental group but not the control group.
▪Measurement of the effect of the treatment and comparison of the outcomes for the two groups.
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The basis of conducting an experiment
With an experiment, the researcher is trying to learn something new about the world, an explanation of ‘why’ something happens.
The experiment must maintain internal and external validity, or the results will be useless.
When designing an experiment, a researcher must follow all of the steps of the scientific method, from making sure that the hypothesis is valid and testable, to using controls and statistical tests.
Whilst all scientists use reasoning, operationalization and the steps of the scientific process, it is not always a conscious process.
Experience and practice mean that many scientists follow an instinctive process of conducting an experiment, the ‘streamlined’ scientific process. Following the basic steps will usually generate valid results, but where experiments are complex and expensive, it is always advisable to follow the rigorous scientific protocols. Conducting an experiment has a number of stages, where the parameters and structure of the experiment are made clear.
Whilst it is rarely practical to follow each step strictly, any aberrations must be justified, whether they arise because of budget, impracticality or ethics.
Stage one
After deciding upon a hypothesis, and making predictions, the first stage of conducting an experiment is to specify the sample groups. These should be large enough to give a statistically viable study, but small enough to be practical.
Ideally, groups should be selected at random, from a wide selection of the sample population. This allows results to be generalized to the population as a whole.
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In the physical sciences, this is fairly easy, but the biological and behavioral sciences are often limited by other factors.
For example, medical trials often cannot find random groups. Such research often relies upon volunteers, so it is difficult to apply any realistic randomization. This is not a problem, as long as the process is justified, and the results are not applied to the population as a whole.
If a psychological researcher used volunteers who were male students, aged between 18 and 24, the findings can only be generalized to that specific demographic group within society.
Stage two
The sample groups should be divided, into a control group and a test group, to reduce the possibility of confounding variables.
This, again, should be random, and the assigning of subjects to groups should be blind or double blind. This will reduce the chances of experimental error, or bias, when conducting an experiment.
Ethics are often a barrier to this process, because deliberately withholding treatment, as with the Tuskegee study, is not permitted.
Again, any deviations from this process must be explained in the conclusion. There is nothing wrong with compromising upon randomness, where necessary, as long as other scientists are aware of how, and why, the researcher selected groups on that basis.
Stage three
This stage of conducting an experiment involves determining the time scale and frequency of sampling, to fit the type of experiment.
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