ENGLISH RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3
TRUONG VAN ANH
SAIGON UNIVERSITY
Chapter 3: Thinking about methods
• Everyday research skills. Applying life skills and experience to research.
• Which method is best? Thinking about research philosophy and design.
• Families, approaches and techniques. Alternative approaches to thinking about research methods.
• Action research. Using your research project to study and change something you care about.
• Case studies. Focusing your research project on a particular example or examples.
• Experiments. Testing your research hypotheses through controlled studies.
• Surveys. Collecting data from people, materials and artefacts.
• Which methods suit? Different ways to think about your choice.
• Deciding about methods. Issues to bear in mind when deciding upon your research design.








Everyday research skills
Many everyday skills – such as reading, listening and watching – are important research skills. Researchers use such skills for the collection, selection, analysis and presentation of data.
Research involves the professionalization of these everyday skills.
Your experience and understanding of everyday skills provide a ready route into thinking about research design and methods.
Reading
We regularly read from a wide variety of sources: books, newspapers, magazines, instruction manuals and so on.
Listening
Unless we have a hearing impairment, we will spend much or all of our time, consciously or subconsciously, listening: to friends and members of our families, to our colleagues and associates, to the people we meet in the street or
in the shops, to radio and television programmes, to records, tapes or CDs, to the ‘background’ sounds of our environment.

Watching
We watch our children, pets and those we care for at home; we watch the behaviour of our colleagues at work; we watch what we are doing ourselves as we cross the street or negotiate our way through a crowded room; we watch television for information, entertainment or relaxation; we watch sporting or
cultural events in our leisure time. Through watching, you will have learnt to identify a wide range of visual signals, indicative of, for example, friendliness, unease or danger. Watching, like listening and reading, involves categorizing.
Choosing
Every day of our life we make many deliberate choices. Through choosing, you will have developed skills of relevance to selecting topics for research, methods to be used in research, and the subjects or objects to be sampled during the research.
Questioning
In performing everyday skills, we are implicitly questioning the information we receive through our senses, placing this within acceptable frameworks, critically assessing its relevance, and challenging it when we find it wanting.
Summarizing
We do not treat all of the information which we constantly receive in everyday life as being of equal value, but reject most of it as being of little or no value, and critically question much of the rest.
Through such everyday actions, you will have learnt a great deal about summarizing information: what to leave out, what to stress, what is of key importance.


Organizing
In addition to summarizing the information you receive in everyday life, you will have become quite adept at organizing it. You might do this by giving them the key points first, and then
filling in the detail; or by focusing on the most momentous events; or by telling your story in its historical sequence.
Writing
Write down what you have done (speaking, listening, watching, etc. ).
Presenting
Presentation may be seen as related to writing.
Reflecting
The final everyday skill to be considered here, reflection, is perhaps the most researcherly. It has to do with the ability to stand back from, and think carefully about, what you have done or are doing.
Which method is best?
Two ways:
• By providing some guidance about how you can develop an understanding of the underlying philosophical issues that impact on your research
• By indicating the main issues that you should consider in the initial design of your research.
The most common paradigms that new researchers are introduced to are those termed quantitative and qualitative.
Our advice to those who are new to these paradigm debates is twofold. First, you might begin by focusing on the following five paradigms: positivist and post-positivist, interpretive, critical and postmodern. The first three of these are the most common in social research. More recently, there has been a growth of interest in the potential and limitations of research that operates
within postmodern assumptions.
Social research paradigms: some definitions
Positivism: This is the view that social science procedures should mirror, as near as possible, those of the natural sciences. The researcher should be objective and detached from the objects of research. It is possible to capture ‘reality’ through the use of research instruments such as experiments and
questionnaires. The aims of positivist research are to offer explanations leading to control and predictability. Positivism has been a very predominant way of knowing the social world.


Post-positivism: Post-positivists argue that we can only know social reality imperfectly and probabilistically. While objectivity remains an ideal, there is an increased use of qualitative techniques in order to ‘check’ the validity of findings. ‘Post-positivism holds that only partially objective accounts of the world can be produced, for all methods for examining such
accounts are flawed’ (Denzin and Lincoln 2005: 27).


Interpretivism: Interpretivist approaches to social research see interpretations of the social world as culturally derived and historically situated. Interpretivism is often linked to the work of Weber, who suggested that the social sciences are concerned with verstehen (understanding). This is compared to erklaren (explaining), which forms the basis of seeking causal explanations and is the hallmark of the natural sciences. The distinction between verstehen and erklaren underlies that (often exaggerated) between qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Interpretivism has many variants. These include hermeneutics, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism.
Critical: Critical social paradigms critique both positivism and interpretivism as ways of understanding the social world. ‘Critical inquiry . . . [is not] a research that seeks merely to understand . . . [it is] a research that challenges . . . that [takes up a view] of conflict and oppression . . . That seeks to bring about change’ (Crotty 1998: 112).
Postmodern: While the other paradigms offer grand theories for understanding the social world, ‘advocates of postmodernism have argued that the era of big narratives and theories is over: locally, temporally and situationally limited narratives are now required’ (Flick 1998: 2). It sticks to practical life.
Research families, approaches and techniques
Research families
• Quantitative or Qualitative
• Deskwork or Fieldwork
Research approaches
• Action research
• Case studies
• Experiments
• Surveys
Research techniques
• Documents
• Interviews
• Observations
• Questionnaires

In this subsection we will consider two alternative research dichotomies: qualitative/quantitative and deskwork/fieldwork. Qualitative or quantitative?
Quantitative research is empirical research where the data are in the form of numbers. Qualitative research is empirical research where the data are not in the form of numbers.
(Punch 2005: 3)

Quantitative research tends to involve relatively large-scale and representative sets of data, and is often, falsely in our view, presented or perceived as being about the gathering of ‘facts’.
Qualitative research, on the other hand, is concerned with collecting and analyzing information in as many forms, chiefly non-numeric, as possible. It tends to focus on exploring, in as much detail as possible, smaller numbers of instances or examples.

Fieldwork or deskwork?
Fieldwork refers to the process of going out to collect research data. Such data may be described as original or empirical, and cannot be accessed without
the researcher engaging in some kind of expedition. It might, for example, involve visiting an institution to interview members of staff, or standing on a street corner administering questionnaires to passers-by, or sitting in on a meeting to observe what takes place.
Deskwork, on the other hand, consists of those research processes which do not necessitate going into the field. It consists, literally, of those things which can be done while sitting at a desk.
Approaches
Four basic approaches to, or designs for, research in the social sciences: action research, case studies, experiments and surveys.
Techniques
Four basic social science research techniques: the study of documents, interviews, observations or questionnaires.
You might mix or vary your usage. It is up to you, given your preferences, the resources you have available, the constraints you are operating under, and the particular issues which you wish to research.
Action research
AR [action research] is a complex, dynamic activity involving the best efforts of both members of communities or organizations and professional researchers. It simultaneously involves the co-generation of new information and analysis together with actions aimed at transforming the situation in democratic directions. > Improving or developing your work/study.
A conventional action research approach was envisaged to:
• examine the nature of the problem situation;
• devise an appropriate product-based intervention;
• trial this (and the supporting mechanisms);
• evaluate the impact.


Case studies
The case study researcher typically observes the characteristics of an individual unit – a child, a clique, a class, a school or a community. The purpose of such observation is to probe deeply and to analyze intensively the multifarious phenomena
that constitute the life cycle of the unit with a view to establishing
generalizations about the wider population to which that unit belongs.
To serve as a foundation for generalizations, case studies should be related to a theoretical framework, which in turn may be adjusted as case study results provide new evidence.
Advantages and disadvantages of case studies
Advantages
1 Case study data is drawn from people’s experiences and practices and so it is seen to be strong in reality.
2 Case studies allow for generalizations from a specific instance to a more general issue.
3 Case studies allow the researcher to show the complexity of social life. Good case studies build on this to explore alternative meanings and interpretations.
4 Case studies can provide a data source from which further analysis can be made. They can, therefore, be archived for further research work.
5 Because case studies build on actual practices and experiences, they can be linked to action and their insights contribute to changing practice. Indeed, case study may be a subset of a broader action research project.
6 Because the data contained in case studies are close to people’s experiences, they can be more persuasive and more accessible.
Disadvantages
1 The very complexity of a case can make analysis difficult. This is particularly so because the holistic nature of case study means that the researcher is often very aware of the connections between various events, variables and outcomes. Accordingly, everything appears relevant. It is not, however; and to write up your case as if it is does not make for good research. You might think about this in terms of a Russian doll metaphor, where each piece of data rests inside another, separate but related.
You need to show the connections but not lose sight of the whole.
2 While the contextualization of aspects of the case strengthens this form of research, it is difficult to know where ‘context’ begins and ends.

Experiments
At its most basic, the experiment consists of an experimental group which is exposed to the intervention under investigation and a control group which is not exposed. The experimental and control groups should be equivalent, and investigated systematically under conditions that are identical (apart from the exposure of the experimental group), in order to minimize variation between them.
Advantages of experiments
1 Through the random assignment of people to intervention and control groups (i.e. randomization of extraneous variables) the risk of extraneous variables confounding the results is minimized.
2 Control over the introduction and variation of the ‘predictor’ variables clarifies the direction of cause and effect.
3 If both pre- and post-testing are conducted, this controls for time-related threats to validity.
4 The modern design of experiments permits greater flexibility, efficiency and powerful statistical manipulation.
5 The experiment is the only research design which can, in principle, yield causal relationships.


Disadvantages
1 It is difficult to design experiments so as to represent a specified
population.
2 It is often difficult to choose the ‘control’ variables so as to exclude all confounding variables.
3 With a large number of uncontrolled, extraneous variables it is impossible to isolate the one variable that is hypothesized as the cause of the other; hence the possibility always exists of alternative explanations.
4 Contriving the desired ‘natural setting’ in experiments is often not possible.
5 The experiment is an unnatural social situation with a differentiation of roles. The participant’s role involves obedience to the experimenter (an unusual role).
6 Experiments cannot capture the diversity of goals, objectives and service inputs which may contribute to outcomes in natural settings.
(Source: Adapted from Bowling 2002: 218–19)

Surveys
A social survey is a type of research strategy. We collect the same information about all the cases in a sample. Usually, the cases are individual people, and among other things we ask all of them the same questions.
Surveys involve systematic observation or systematic interviewing. They ask the questions which the researcher wants answered, and often they dictate the range of answers that may be given. We ask everyone precisely questions that we want answered. More than this, we try to ask the questions in precisely the same way in each interview – to standardize the questionnaire as a measuring instrument.
Advantages
1 With an appropriate sample, surveys may aim at representation and
provide generalized results.
2 Surveys can be relatively easy to administer, and need not require any
fieldwork.
3 Surveys may be repeated in the future or in different settings to allow
comparisons to be made.
4 With a good response rate, surveys can provide a lot of data relatively
quickly.
Disadvantages
1 The data, in the form of tables, pie charts and statistics, become the main
focus of the research report, with a loss of linkage to wider theories and
issues.
2 The data provide snapshots of points in time rather than a focus on the
underlying processes and changes.
3 The researcher is often not in a position to check first hand the understandings of the respondents to the questions asked. Issues of truthfulness and accuracy are thereby raised.
4 The survey relies on breadth rather than depth for its validity. This is a
crucial issue for small-scale researchers.
Which methods suit?
The question ‘quantitative or qualitative?’ is commonly asked, especially by beginning researchers. Often, they are putting the ‘methods cart’ before the ‘content horse’. The best advice in those cases is to step back from questions of method [and tools], and give further consideration to the purposes and research questions, bearing in mind that the way questions are asked influences what needs to be done to answer them.
Developing reflexivity: some questions to ask yourself
Think about a situation you have been in, preferably in piloting your research.
1 What was your role in this situation?
2 Did you feel comfortable or uncomfortable? Why?
3 What actions did you take? How did you and others react?
4 Was it appropriate? How could you have improved the situation for yourself, and others?
5 What could you change in the future?
6 Do you feel as if you’ve learnt anything new about yourself or your research?
7 Has it changed your way of thinking in any way?


8 What knowledge, from theories, practices and other aspects of your own and others’ research, can you apply to this situation?
9 What broader issues – for example ethical, political or social – arise from this situation?
10 Have you recorded your thoughts in your research diary?

Deciding about methods
By now, you may have a fairly clear answer to the following questions:
• How are you going to do the research?
• What is your strategy and approach?
• What techniques or methods are you going to use?
Or you may still be pretty vague. If you are in the latter position,
you might wish to read around your subject more, and return to this point later. If you do have some ideas, think about them for a few minutes, and then try to succinctly summarize your intended research design using Exercise 3.6.


Summary
Having read this chapter, you should:
• appreciate that you already have many everyday skills which will be of use to you in your research;
• have a good understanding of the different approaches, techniques and methods which are available to you as a small-scale researcher in the social sciences;
• have decided, or be closer to deciding, which methods you are going to use, and be able to justify that choice;
• have a clearer idea of your own methodological preferences.


Exercises
3.1 Is action research primarily or necessarily qualitative research? Give reasons for your answer. What research paradigm(s) do you think action research best fits within?
3.2 Using Yin’s typology – single or multiple; exploratory, descriptive or explanatory – how would you characterize the examples of case studies included in Box 3.10?
3.3 The police are experimenting with a zero tolerance policy against drunk and disorderly behavior in selected town centres. How would you judge whether their approach had been successful? How does this strategy differ from action research?
3.4 Are the results of survey research necessarily more accurate than those arrived at using other approaches? Do surveys lend themselves to qualitative as much as quantitative research strategies?
3.5 At the beginning of the chapter, ten everyday research skills were identified. For each of these skills, give yourself a rating on a scale from 1 (low) to 10 (high). Is your mix of skills appropriate for the research approaches or techniques you plan to adopt?
3.6 Note down the research methods you plan to use. What are their advantages and disadvantages? What other methods might you use as alternatives?









GOOD LUCK!