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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Research methods
How can an organisation, public or private, ensure that it always operates in top form and, at the very least, meets the objectives for which it was established? The answer lies in the availability of factually correct, dependable and appropriate data. Obtaining such data is what this publication is about. Introduction To Research offers a step-by-step approach to the fundamentals of research. Introduction To Research guides the novice researcher through the research process, including how to choose the appropriate research methodology and how to adhere to the standards for conducting ethical research. It provides a synopsis of the entire research process, including the formulation of a research proposal. Introduction To Research is aimed at all students and researchers, across a variety of disciplines.
In light of the expensive nature of quantitative research, such as experiments, researchers must seek other methods of understanding the world around them. As such, new qualitative methods are gaining ground in the modern research community. Enhancing Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research with Technology explores the integration of new digital tools into the research process. Including current information on data visualization, research design, information capture, as well as social media analysis, this publication serves as an ideal reference source for academicians, scientists, information specialists, business managers, and upper-level students involved in interdisciplinary research.
Many resources exist to help new doctoral investigators to understand and engage with the tenets and philosophies that underpin doctoral-level research to allow for a sample of self-as-subject research. Every day, new forms of researcher-participant data collection and analysis protocols and contributions to the respective discipline in the use of these methods are designed by doctoral researchers and other scholars for heuristic inquiry and autoethnography. Autoethnography and Heuristic Inquiry for Doctoral-Level Researchers: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an essential research publication that explores the conventions of autoethnography or heuristic research within the specific context of doctoral-level research. In contrast to similar resources, this book presents various and unique systematic methods and procedures used within current research for data collection, analysis, interpretation and representations of data, and study contributions to illustrate the varied nuances and many choices doctoral-level researchers have when their research design is founded on the principles and tenets of autoethnography or heuristic inquiry. Thus, this book is ideal for doctoral research supervisors, doctoral students, independent researchers, and academicians.
Interdisciplinary research is a method that has become efficient in accelerating scientific discovery. The integration of such processes in problem solving and knowledge generation is a vital part of learning and instruction. Promoting Interdisciplinarity in Knowledge Generation and Problem Solving is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on interdisciplinary projects from around the world, highlighting the broad range of circumstances in which this approach can be effectively used to solve problems and generate new knowledge. Featuring coverage on a number of topics and perspectives such as industrial design, ethnographic methods, and methodological pluralism, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the promotion of interdisciplinarity for knowledge production.
Aspects of pedagogy are frequently researched, but the concept itself is poorly understood. More than just teaching and learning, pedagogy is about values, identities, relationships and interactions bounded by context. As such, researchers of pedagogy face the challenge of working out what constitutes pedagogical texts, data or evidence, and how these can be generated and understood. Research Methods for Pedagogy begins by exploring the different conceptualisations of pedagogy and their implications for how it is researched. The authors reflect on how their sociocultural stance on pedagogy influences the methods they choose to focus on in the book. Moving beyond just schools and formal pedagogies into informal and everyday pedagogies, the authors use a range of case studies across educational sectors and cultures to discuss methods for researching pedagogy. Common approaches such as ethnography and action research are included alongside some quantitative and quasi-experimental methods and often less familiar participatory, multimodal and reflective methods. The authors demonstrate the relationships between theoretical stance, pedagogical context and research approach. Finally, the book addresses the complexity of pedagogy research through discussion of particular ethical and relational aspects as it highlights innovations and developments in research methods for pedagogy. Boxed case studies, reflections on real research projects, a glossary of key terms and an annotated list of further reading all help to guide students and scholars through their research design and choice of methods in this area.
Mixed methods research provide researchers with an opportunity to understand problem for multiple perspectives and for this reason it is becoming prevalent in many fields. Little, has been done to elevate mixed methods research in information science. Research has demonstrated that its application in information science is low. This book is dedicated to this emerging methodology and promotes it's potential for providing a comprehensive picture of information science problems. This book will give international perspectives from people involved in the mixed methods research movement. This book is a appropriate for all types of researchers, students, supervisors, academicians, practitioners, and policy makers.
An intellectual property discussion is central to qualitative research projects, and ethical guidelines are essential to the safe accomplishment of research projects. Undertaking research studies without adhering to ethics may be dangerous to researchers and research subjects. Therefore, it is important to understand and develop practical techniques for handling ethics with a specific focus on qualitative projects so that researchers conducting this type of research may continue to use ethical practices at every step of the project. Data Analysis and Methods of Qualitative Research: Emerging Research and Opportunities discusses in detail the methods related to the social constructionist paradigm that is popular with qualitative research projects. These methods help researchers undertake ideal qualitative projects that are free from quantitative research techniques/concepts all while acquiring practical skills in handling ethics and ethical issues in qualitative projects. The chapters each contain case studies, learning outcomes, question and answer sections, and discuss critical research philosophies in detail along with topics such as ethics, research design, data gathering and sampling methods, research outputs, data analysis, and report writing. Featuring a wide range of topics such as epistemology, probability sampling, and big data, this book is ideal for researchers, practitioners, computer scientists, academicians, analysts, coders, and students looking to become competent qualitative research specialists.
Using Non-Textual Sources provides history students with the theoretical background and skills to interpret non-textual sources. It introduces the full range of non-textual sources used by historians and offers practical guidance on how to interpret them and incorporate them into essays and dissertations. There is coverage of the creation, production and distribution of non-textual sources; the acquisition of skills to 'read' these sources analytically; and the meaning, significance and reliability of these forms of evidence. Using Non-Textual Sources includes a section on interdisciplinary non-textual source work, outlining what historians borrow from disciplines such as art history, archaeology, geography and media studies, as well as a discussion of how to locate these resources online and elsewhere in order to use them in essays and dissertations. Case studies, such as William Hogarth's print Gin Lane (1751), the 1939 John Ford Western Stagecoach and the Hereford Mappa Mundi, are employed throughout to illustrate the functions of main source types. Photographs, cartoons, maps, artwork, audio clips, film, places and artifacts are all explored in a text that provides students with a comprehensive, cohesive and practical guide to using non-textual sources.
The delivery and availability of information resources is a vital concern to professionals across multiple fields. This is particularly vital to data intensive professions, where easy accessibility to high-quality information is a crucial component of their research. Library and Information Services for Bioinformatics Education and Research is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly material on the role of libraries for the effective delivery of information resources to optimize the study of biological data. Highlighting innovative perspectives across a range of topics, such as user assessment, collection development, and information accessibility, this publication is ideally designed for professionals, managers, computer scientists, graduate students, and practitioners actively involved in the field of bioinformatics.
Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyondoffers an in-depth and captivating step-by-step guide to the use of semi-structured interviews in qualitative research. By tracing the life of an actual research project-an exploration of a school district's effort over 40 years to address racial equality-as a consistent example threaded across the volume, Anne Galletta shows in concrete terms how readers can approach the planning and execution of their own new research endeavor, and illuminates unexpected real-life challenges they may confront and how to address them.The volume offers a close look at the inductive nature of qualitative research, the use of researcher reflexivity, and the systematic and iterative steps involved in data collection, analysis, and interpretation. It offers guidance on how to develop an interview protocol, including the arrangement of questions and ways to evoke analytically rich data.Particularly useful for those who may be familiar with qualitative research but have not yet conducted a qualitative study, Mastering the Semi-Structured Interview and Beyondwill serve both undergraduate and graduate students as well as more advanced scholars seeking to incorporate this key methodological approach into their repertoire.Anne Gallettais Associate Professor at the College of Education and Human Services at Cleveland State University.William E. Cross, Jr.is the author of Shades of Black: Diversity in African-American Identity.In theQualitative Studies in Psychologyseries
This book examines the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. The empirical entry point for such inquiry is a series of research initiatives that have used mixed method, combined qualitative and quantitative, or Q-Squared ( Q(2)) approaches, to poverty analysis. The Q(2) literature highlights the vast range of analytical tools within the social sciences that may be used to understand and explain social phenomena, along with interesting research results. This literature serves as a lens to probe issues about knowledge claims made in poverty debates concerning who are the poor (identification analysis) and why they are poor (causal analysis). Implicitly or explicitly, questions are raised about the reasons for emphasising different dimensions of poverty and favouring different units of knowledge, the basis for distinguishing valid and invalid claims, the meaning of causation, and the nature of causal inference, and so forth. Q(2) provides an entry point to address foundational issues about assumptions underlying approaches to poverty, and applied issues about the strengths and limitations of different research methods and the ways they may be fruitfully combined. Together, the strands of this inquiry make a case for methodological pluralism on the grounds that knowledge is partial, empirical adjudication imperfect, social phenomena complex, and mixed methods add value for understanding and explanation. Ultimately, the goals of understanding and explanation are best served if research questions dictate the choice of methodological approach rather than the other way around.
This edited collection is intended as a primer for core concepts and principles in research ethics and as an in-depth exploration of the contextualization of these principles in practice across key disciplines. The material is nested so that readers can engage with it at different levels and depths. It is unique in that it combines an analysis of complex ethical debates about the nature of research and its governance with the best of case-based and discipline-specific approaches. It deals with the following topics in depth: in the natural
sciences, it explores the scientific integrity of the researcher
and the research process, human cloning as a test case for the
limits to research, and the emerging ethical issues in
nanotechnology; in the health sciences, it takes up the question of
consent, assent and proxies, research with vulnerable groups and
the ethics of clinical trials; in the social sciences, it explores
the issues that arise in qualitative research, interviews and
ethnography; and in the humanities, it examines contested
archaeologies and research in divided societies. Overview of Research Ethics Principles Full text papers from experienced researchers across many disciplines Dialogue with ethicists
Research Methodology in Strategy and Management advances understanding of the methods used to study organizations - including managers, strategies, and how firms succeed. Just like the impact felt across many other aspects of life and work, COVID-19 significantly changed the way we approach and conduct research. Many researchers will need to tread unfamiliar methodological ground to address these challenges and seize these opportunities to hone their craft, conducting interesting research in a novel environment. That is precisely why we are making 'crisis' the central focus of this volume. Research in Times of Crisis is an informative book for all academics and researchers working in the fields of management, strategy, international business, entrepreneurship and organization theory.
Covering a topic applicable to fields ranging from education to health care to psychology, this book provides a broad critical analysis of the assumptions that researchers and practitioners have about causation and explains how readers can improve their thinking about causation. In virtually every laboratory, research center, or classroom focused on the social or physical sciences today, the concept of causation is a core issue to be questioned, tested, and determined. Even debates in unrelated areas such as biology, law, and philosophy often focus on causality-"What made that happen?" In this book, experts from across disciplines adopt a reader-friendly approach to reconsider this age-old question in a modern light, defining different kinds of causation and examining how causes and consequences are framed and approached in a particular field. Each chapter uses applied examples to illustrate key points in an accessible manner. The contributors to this work supply a coherent critical analysis of the assumptions researchers and practitioners hold about causation, and explain how such thinking about causation can be improved. Collectively, the coverage is broad, providing readers with a fuller picture of research in social contexts. Beyond providing insightful description and thought-provoking questioning of causation in different research areas, the book applies analysis of data in order to point the way to smarter, more efficient practices. Consequently, both practitioners and researchers will benefit from this book.
This volume of the World of Science Education gathers contributions from Latin American science education researchers covering a variety of topics that will be of interest to educators and researchers all around the world. The volume provides an overview of research in Latin America, and most of the chapters report findings from studies seldom available for Anglophone readers. They bring new perspectives, thus, to topics such as science teaching and learning; discourse analysis and argumentation in science education; history, philosophy and sociology of science in science teaching; and science education in non-formal settings. As the Latin American academic communities devoted to science education have been thriving for the last four decades, the volume brings an opportunity for researchers from other regions to get acquainted with the developments of their educational research. This will bring contributions to scholarly production in science education as well as to teacher education and teaching proposals to be implemented in the classroom.
This fascinating book gives readers an appreciation of how biomedical research should work and how the reality is all too often seriously flawed. Explaining the logical basis of the different research approaches used by biomedical research scientists and their relative merits, it will help readers to make more realistic appraisal of media reports linking aspects of lifestyle, environment or diet to health outcomes and thus judge whether such claims are a real effect worthy of consideration for behavior change or deserving of further research resources. Key features: increases awareness of research fraud and some of the characteristics of fraudulent science and scientific fraudsters shows that whilst outright fraud may be uncommon, fudging of results to help achieve statistical significance may be more prevalent incorporates real-life case studies highlighting some of the infamous cases of research fraud and major scientific mistakes and the impact that they have had provides a convenient overview of the research process in the biomedical sciences, with a focus on research strategy rather than individual methods find supplemental detail on the author's blog https://drgeoffnutrition.wordpress.com/about/ By raising awareness of the possibility that research data may have been dishonestly generated and outlining some of the signs and symptoms that might suggest data fabrication, Error and Fraud: The Dark Side of Biomedical Research will help students and researchers to identify the strengths and limitations of different research approaches and allow them to make a realistic evaluations of their own and others' research findings.
The second edition of this innovative textbook illustrates research methods for library and information science, describing the most appropriate approaches to a question-and showing you what makes research successful. Written for the serious practicing librarian researcher and the LIS student, this volume fills the need for a guide focused specifically on information and library science research methods. By critically assessing existing studies from within library and information science, this book helps you acquire a deeper understanding of research methods so you will be able to design more effective studies yourself. Section one considers research questions most often asked in information and library science and explains how they arise from practice or theory. Section two covers a variety of research designs and the sampling issues associated with them, while sections three and four look at methods for collecting and analyzing data. Each chapter introduces a particular research method, points out its relative strengths and weaknesses, and provides a critique of two or more exemplary studies. For this second edition, three new chapters have been added, covering mixed methods, visual data collection methods, and social network analysis. The chapters on research diaries and transaction log analysis have been updated, and updated examples are provided in more than a dozen other chapters as well. Provides comprehensive coverage of research methods used in library and information science, discussing their strengths, weaknesses, and biases Presents completely updated content that includes several new chapters on innovative methods (mixed methods research and social network analysis), and more than half of the methods chapters focus on critiquing new research studies Covers both qualitative and quantitative methods as well as mixed methods Analyzes examples of award-winning library research
Academic libraries have traditionally had two key functions, to support teaching and to support research. In an evolving and competitive university environment, along with the emergence of various technologies and substantial changes in scientific communication, university management has reached a turning point. Academic libraries are facing a paradigm shift in the role they need to play to achieve the research objectives of universities. Research support services in academic libraries have evolved as a response to these changes. They are heterogeneous, adapt to their university culture, adopt different points of view, take different approaches in their organizational structures, and include a diverse catalog of activities. Having an overview of different experiences will allow libraries to adopt best practices, redefine services, and even establish new management and collaboration models. Cases on Research Support Services in Academic Libraries is a critical scholarly resource that uses case studies to systematize the experiences of research support services in academic libraries for the support of higher education faculty. The cases focus on such items as the role of technology and its impact as well as how these services help to improve the excellence of universities. Featuring a wide range of topics such as library services, data management, and open science, this book is ideal for librarians, academicians, professionals, researchers, and students.
Researching Education for Social Justice in Multilingual Settings provides innovative guidance on carrying out qualitative research in education by offering a wide range of examples of research projects with a focus on the methodologies and data collection strategies used. Rather than decontextualised 'how-to' advice, the book offers insights into the complexities of actually carrying out research in multilingual settings. In this practical guide, examples of real-life projects are framed by chapters providing a theoretical background to the principles of ethnography and to the processes and practices of qualitative research, focusing on data generation and collection strategies. Case study chapters offer a rich understanding of the detail of qualitative research in education from the points of view of people who have engaged in it. Moreover, the book promotes understanding of current research that aims to make a difference to pupils, students, teachers and families whose diverse languages and cultural experiences are not fully valued in society and in mainstream education contexts. Pedagogical features that support private study and use on courses include a glossary of key terms, guiding questions for reading at the start of each section, and discussion questions to promote reflection as well as suggestions for further reading. Researching Education for Social Justice in Multilingual Settings is a supportive guide to the principles of ethnography and the processes of qualitative research for all those wishing to investigate complex problems in multilingual education settings. |
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