Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Research
Whenever I think about research, I always ponder how much I don’t know. Most of my research uses critical theory, so I’m not as well schooled in the methods Cornelissen describes as I feel I should be, especially now. I’m currently writing and introduction to an edited collection about teaching professional and technical communication. I am planning to conduct a survey about teacher preparedness and to do that I need to write the survey, get IRB approval (which I’ve never done and need to have CITI training), post the survey, and then analyze the results. I have never done this kind of research, and I find that I’m learning as I go along. It seems to me that with all the methods Carnelissen describes, what is true to all of them is know your audience. I think I have written my survey about four times, and I’m still wondering if I’m on the right track. I’m lucky to have colleagues willing to help me through this process. I’m glad Cornelissen uses the word, cycle, to talk about the stages of research. I think, for the most part, that all the stages happen at the same time because as researchers we’d constantly thinking about the planning, execution and measurement and evaluations as well as revising the our objectives. In some ways, I’m feel like I’m already writing the introduction and that I know what to expect from the survey results. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by the outcomes. I’m looking forward to reading your seminar papers at the end of the semester. I don’t usually get to teach a seminar so I don’t get to see seminar papers very often. I’ll be interested in how you go about your research so feel free to talk about that when you write your End-of-Semester Reflection.
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Last semester I completed two quantitative research experiments and found that learning by doing was an ideal way to understand the techniques of each. Here are a few details that I learned. Survey research can produce reliable and useful information for making decisions or understanding problems in a variety of trades. Analytical surveys seek to communicate and clarify why situations exist. An advantage of survey research is that its allows a study to be investigating problems in a realistic setting, without the use of a laboratory setting. Survey research can be reasonably priced. Surveys allow for large amounts of data to be collected from a diverse group of people. A number of variables and a variety of can be utilized to understand the collected data. Surveys can be conducted almost anywhere and are not limited by geographic boundaries. Additionally, a host of data already exists to help or supplement a survey.
ReplyDeleteAn important disadvantage of survey research is that it is hard to establish causation and/or to because independent variables cannot be manipulated independent variables. As a result of gathering cross-sectional data in a survey, researchers “cannot be certain if the relationships between independent and dependent variables are causal or noncausal” (Wimmer & Dominick, 2013, p. 193). Inappropriate wording (poorly written/bad questions) or placement of questions (poor survey design/bad placement) can cause bias and/or response rates to decline. Survey respondents may find it difficult to answer questions about themselves. Respondents may provide what they think is a prestigious answer instead of acknowledging they do not know the answer to seem more educated, knowledgeable or to be more socially desirable.
While there is nothing researchers can do to prevent lying, larger samples sizes can help fix this challenge. Respondents may answer a survey because they want to voice opinions.