Assignment Guidelines: Setting Up Your Research

Assignment Guidelines: Setting Up Your Research

Assignment Guidelines: Setting Up Your Research

Respond to the following exercises from Chapter One of The Literature Review in 150 to 200 words each. For the Additional Question, record the research and null hypotheses for your project.

• Exercise 1.1: Discovering the Subject of Your Interest or Issue of Inquiry
• Exercise 1.2: Understanding the Personal Viewpoint
• Exercise 1.3: Selecting the Focus of Your Study
• Exercise 1.5: Developing Your Interest Statement

Additional Question: What are your research and null hypotheses?

Please read this chapter to answer the questions above in your own way…

Chapter 1 The Role and Importance of Research 

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Who does research and why

• How research is defined and what some of its purposes are

• What a model of scientific inquiry is and how it guides research activities

• Some of the things that research is and some of the things that it isn’t

• What researchers do and how they do it

• The characteristics of good research

• How a method of scientific inquiry guides research activity

• The different types of research methods and examples of each

Assignment Guidelines: Setting Up Your Research

Say Hello to Research!

Walk down the hall in any building on your campus where social and behavioral science professors have their offices in such departments as psychology, education, nursing, sociology, and human development. Do you see any bearded, disheveled, white-coated men wearing rumpled pants and smoking pipes, hunched over their computers and mumbling to themselves? How about disheveled, white-coated women wearing rumpled skirts, smoking pipes, hunched over their computers, and mumbling to themselves?

Researchers hard at work? No. Stereotypes of what scientists look like and do? Yes. What you are more likely to see in the halls of your classroom building or in your adviser’s office are men and women of all ages who are hard at work. They are committed to finding the answer to just another piece of the great puzzle that helps us understand human behavior a little better than the previous generation of scientists.

Like everyone else, these people go to work in the morning, but unlike many others, these researchers have a passion for understanding what they study and for coming as close as possible to finding the “truth.” Although these truths can be elusive and sometimes even unobtainable, researchers work toward discovering them for the satisfaction of answering important questions and then using this new information to help others.

Early intervention programs, treatments of psychopathology, new curricula, conflict resolution techniques, effective drug treatment programs, and even changes in policy and law have resulted from evidence collected by researchers. Although not always perfect, each little bit of evidence gained from a new study or a new idea for a study contributes to a vast legacy of knowledge for the next generation of researchers such as yourself.You may already know and appreciate something about the world of research. The purpose of this book is to provide you with the tools you need to do even more, such as:

• develop an understanding of the research process.

• prepare yourself to conduct research of your own.

• learn how to judge the quality of research.

• learn how to read, search through, and summarize other research.

• learn the value of research activities conducted online.

• reveal the mysteries of basic statistics and show you how easily they can be used.

Today, more than ever, decisions are evidence based, and what these researchers do is collect evidence that serves as a basis for informed decisions.

• measure the behaviors, traits, or attributes that interest you.

• collect the type of data that relate to your area of interest.

• use a leading statistical package (SPSS) to analyze data.

• design research studies that answer the question that you want answered.

• write the type of research proposal (and a research report) that puts you in control—one that shows you have command of the content of the research as well as the way in which the research should be done.

Sound ambitious? A bit terrifying? Exciting? Maybe those and more, but boring is one thing this research endeavor is not. This statement is especially true when you consider that the work you might be doing in this class, as well as the research proposal that you might write, could hold the key to expanding our knowledge and understanding of human behavior and, indirectly, eventually helping others.

So here you are, beginning what is probably your first course in the area of research methods and wondering about everything from what researchers do to what your topic will be for your thesis. Relax. Thousands of students have been here before you and almost all of them have left with a working knowledge of what research is, how it is done, and what distinguishes a good research project from one that is doomed. Hold on and let’s go. This trip will be exciting.