INLS 780-003 Research Methods

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Exercises, Workshops and Class Participation (20%)
Problem Statement (15%)
Literature Review (20%)
Research Proposal (25%)
Final Exam (20%)

Exercises, Workshops and Class Participation (20%)

Exercises. Exercises are designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate what you have learned from the readings and help you prepare for class. There are three take-home exercises, which will be posted online and several in-class exercises which will be distributed in-class. Take-home exercises are meant to help you prepare for class discussion, so you should bring your completed take-home exercises to class on the dates they are due. I will not accept late exercises.

Links to Take-Home Exercises: exercise 1 | exercise 2 | exercise 3

Workshops. There are two in-class workshops which will give you an opportunity to provide and receive feedback from your classmates about assignments related to your proposal. Workshops are scheduled for the Problem Statement Assignment and the Final Proposal. The basic protocol for workshops will be for you to submit both print and electronic copies of your assignments to me on the dates they are due. I will assign workshop partner(s) based on interests, post electronic versions of assignments online at a password protected URL, and send you an email with the names of your partner(s). You are expected to:

• retrieve and print copies of your partners' papers
• read your partners' papers
• provide feedback to your partners by annotating their papers
• write a one-and-a-half to one page, single-spaced summary of your review
• participate in group discussion of your partners' work during class

You should prepare two copies of the summary: one for the author and one for me. If you like, you may write additional questions and comments about the work that you reviewed on the document that you submit to me.

General Participation. Please plan to attend class and arrive on time. While you will not be penalized for missing class or arriving late, please note that if you are not in class you cannot participate, and thus, your participation grade is likely to suffer. Please be courteous to your classmates and course instructor by not conversing with others during class lectures.

Please turn off cell phones, pagers, and other devices that might disrupt class.

Participation is based on my perception of your participation in and out of class. Class participation consists of doing one or more of the following: being prepared for class, making observations about the readings and exercises, asking questions, taking notes, actively working on in-class exercises, providing appropriate, thoughtful feedback during workshops and actively listening.

If an unexpected problem arises for you during the course of the semester (serious illness, etc.), please let me know so that we can discuss an appropriate schedule for you. If you need to miss class because of a religious holiday, then we can make alternative arrangements for this as well.

Problem Statement (15%)

All research studies are based on one or more research questions. Research questions most often arise when a researcher identifies a problem with (or gap in) existing knowledge about a particular area. For this assignment, you will identify a research question, situate the research question within the context of current and previous research and provide a clear motivation and rationale for your research question. You will also describe the importance and potential contributions of your proposed research and identify a potential sample and population for your research.

Specifically, you should:

• Introduce the general research area and situate the topic of your research within that area.
• Identify and describe the problem that your research question addresses. State the purpose/objectives of the research.
• Identify a research question. If appropriate, include hypotheses.
• Find two empirical research articles that inform your question. These articles should appear in refereed publications. Summarize each article as described in Creswell, Ch. 2. Following each summary, indicate why/how the research informs your question. Attach a copy of each article to your paper (I will return these).

You should also answer the following questions:

• Why is this an important topic to study?
• What are the potential implications of this research (i.e. how could your findings contribute to a better understanding of the topic)? What is the practical value of your research (e.g., how might your findings improve services or applications)?
• Who do you think would be interested in this research (e.g. librarians, LIS researchers, system designers, the general public, children, teachers, etc.)? Why?
• To what academic/research areas does this work contribute?

Observe the following technical specifications when writing your paper:

• Use the APA or MLA style guide to format your paper and references.
• Provide a separate reference page.
• Give your paper a title. Whatever title you choose, it should reflect clearly and concretely the content of your paper.
• Double-space your paper, use one-inch margins and 12-point font.
• Proof-read and copy-edit your paper. Points will be deducted for gratuitous spelling and grammatical errors.
• When complete, your paper should be about five pages in length (excluding reference page).

[Note: Parts of this assignment taken from Dr. Wildemuth's INLS 98 assignment descriptions and from Harrison Carpenter's EBIO 3940 (University of Colorado) assignment descriptions.]

due sept 26, 2007, 6:00 pm

Literature Review (20%)

Understanding prior research on a particular topic is the basis of most, if not all, scientific discourse. Researchers must know what has been studied, discussed and recommended by other researchers so that they can argue for new lines of thinking. As a researcher, you need to see data in the context of ongoing research in order to understand their validity and significance. Hence, for this assignment, you will be required to research and analyze the published research (what scientists call "the literature") on a topic of your choice. This topic should be related to the research question and topic area you identified in your Problem Statement assignment.

Your final research proposal will contain a review of the literature that pertains to your research question. The creation of the literature review involves the identification and selection of items to include, and a synthesis of the pertinent information reported in those items. For each item selected for inclusion, you should have a good understanding of how it relates to your research question. In most literature reviews, scholars demonstrate that certain areas of research have not been explored, and that exploring those areas would produce some knowledge useful to the field.

You are expected to identify all the literature pertinent to your research question. A variety of techniques should be used, including (but not limited to) searching the appropriate disciplinary databases and the library catalog, searching the Web, consulting references of items already identified (to find older items), searching appropriate citation indexes (to find newer items), and scanning journal runs of particularly useful journals.

You should select for inclusion only those items that inform your research question or its context in some important way. For example, you would include any similar empirical studies and any published literature reviews on the topic. You would not include brief popular articles that may be of questionable validity. Consider your bibliography as a list of recommendations to others who might be pursuing similar research questions; what would you recommend that they read?

Once you are confident that you have not missed any important sources of information, you should begin writing your literature review. Analyze the information you glean from the sources: areas of overlap or repetition indicate established approaches to the research; conflicting or differing perspectives indicate some manner of disagreement; equal representation among several perspectives may indicate competition or a lack of established research priorities. Use your analysis to group the literature into topical or thematic categories. Then use your categories to develop an outline for the review. DO NOT simply provide summaries of the articles or present an annotated bibliography. Find a broad way to functionally describe and relate the literature to your research question.

Making the distinction between what the literature says and what you know about a topic is extremely important in science and in scientific writing. It is because scientists make this distinction that their writing is often filled with hedges - phrases like, "the data suggest," "it has been noted that," "researchers contend that," etc. Rarely will you see phrases like, "it's clear that," "this means," "it is a fact that," etc. in scientific writing, those claims are said to be too strong. Be careful about what you assume is the 'truth.'

I expect you to read the following two documents before you begin your literature review, (1) Writing a Psychology Literature Review (University of Washington) and (2) Literature Reviews (UNC Writing Center).

Observe the following technical specifications when writing your paper:

• Use the APA or MLA style guide to format your paper and references.
• Provide a separate reference page.
• Give your paper a title. Whatever title you choose, it should reflect clearly and concretely the content of your paper. This can be the same title you used in your Problem Statement assignment.
• Double-space your paper, use one-inch margins and 12-point font.
• Proof-read and copy-edit your paper. Points will be deducted for gratuitous spelling and grammatical errors.
• Provide Introduction and Conclusion sections. In the Introduction be sure to describe the topic, and state the problem and research question briefly.
• Your review should include at least 8 research articles from refereed publications; at least 4 of these must be empirical research articles.
• In addition to these articles, you may also include references to trade journals and other sources, but you must indicate this in your review.
• Annotate your reference page to indicate whether an article describes empirical research or not.
• When complete, your paper should be about 10-12 pages in length (excluding reference pages).

[Note: Parts of this assignment taken from Dr. Wildemuth's INLS 98 assignment descriptions and from Harrison Carpenter's EBIO 3940 (University of Colorado) assignment descriptions.]

due oct 29,2007, 6:00 pm

Research Proposal (25%)

Your research proposal consists of parts from your Problem Statement and Literature Review assignments, plus an additional section on your study method and several smaller, summary sections. For the research proposal, I expect you to revise your previous two assignments and incorporate them into the proposal, as well as write several new sections, the most important of which is the method section.

Your proposal will have nine major sections:

1. Title Page (one page)
2. Abstract : this is a new section and should summarize your research in 150-200 words (one page)
3. Introduction : this consists of a revision of your Problem Statement assignment less your discussion of the importance of the research. You should also add an explicit statement of the PURPOSE of your research. (approximately 4-5 pages)
4. Literature Review : this consists of a revision of your Literature Review assignment (approximately 10-15 pages)
5. Method : this is a new section (see below for details) (approximately 7-10 pages)
6. Importance of Study : this consists of a revised portion of your Problem Statement assignment (approximately 1-2 pages)
7. Summary and Conclusions : this is a new section; summarize the contents of your proposal and write some concluding remarks. (approximately 2-3 pages)
8. References : this consists of a revision of the reference page from your Literature Review assignment. (variable length)
9. Appendices (variable length)

method section

In preparation for conducting a research study, you will need to make many decisions related to the study design, the sample to be included, the methods you will use for data collection, and the methods you will use for data analysis. Your proposal should provide a detailed description of the methods you plan to use in conducting your study. It should provide enough detail so that a classmate could conduct your study in your absence, exactly as you intended, without having to ask you any questions about what to do.

There is likely to be significant variability from person to person in how the methods section will be written up, because it will depend on the design of the study. Sample outlines for typical experimental study proposals and qualitative study proposals can be found in Creswell.

Specifically, in your method section you should provide a:

• General description of the method you will use. I expect you to draw on (and cite) our course textbook for this description. Feel free to use additional sources as well.
• Justification for why this is an appropriate method for your research question.
• Description of the sample, population and sampling technique.
• Description of how and where subjects will be identified and recruited. Indicate who will do the recruiting, and tell how subjects will be contacted. (if appropriate)
• Description of any inducement for participation and any costs borne by subjects (if appropriate).
• Description of variables and measurement techniques (if appropriate).
• Description of the data collection instruments and materials. You must include a draft of your instrument(s) as an Appendix. For instance, this might include a survey, an interview schedule, an interface mock-up or all three.
• Detailed, step-by-step, sequential description of your study procedures (i.e. what will happen in your study), including duration of subject participation and location of study (if appropriate).
• Discussion of any possible ethical issues.
• Preliminary plan for analyzing the data.
• Discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of your study method (this discussion should include general limitations of the method as well as limitations of your particular research study). Be sure to address validity and reliability issues.
• Week-by-week timeline for completing the study. Include this in the Appendix, but refer to it within the text of your method section.

For your Research Proposal, you should follow the technical specifications provided in previous assignment descriptions.

[Note: Parts of this assignment taken from Dr. Wildemuth's INLS 98 assignment descriptions.]

due DRAFT of proposal nov 19, 2007, 6:00 pm

due FINAL proposal FRIDAY, dec 07, 2007, 5:00 pm (PAPER COPY)

Final Exam (20%)

The final examination will consist of 50 multiple choice questions about the material covered during the course. This will primarily include material from Babbie's (2004) text and class lectures. A practice exam will be made available prior to the exam.

date of exam dec 12, 2006