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Summary Methodology for Premasters
- Instelling
- Tilburg University (UVT)
Summary of the slides + book (Treadwell, 2020)
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METHODOLOGY FOR PRE-MASTERS - LECTURESBook: Introducing Communication Research, Treadwell
Lecture 1 - Introduction (chapter 1)
Lecture 2 - Starting Your Research (chapter 1 + 2)
Lecture 3 - Theory & Hypotheses; Variables (chapter 2)
Lecture 4 - Research Ethics (chapter 3 + Code of Conduct)
Lecture 5 - Literature Review and Systematic Review (chapter 4 + Vromans et al.)
Lecture 6 - Experiments (chapter 10)
Lecture 7 - Sampling (chapter 6)
Lecture 8 - Surveys (chapter 9)
Lecture 9 - Reliability and Validity (chapter 5)
Lecture 10 - Content Analysis and Big Data Analysis (chapter 11)
Lecture 11 - Qualitative Research and Case Studies (chapter 13)
Lecture 12 - Interviews and Focus Groups (chapter 13)
Lecture 13 - Contextual Inquiry and Diary Studies (Jensen + Rigby)
Lecture 14 - The Future of Science (Munafo)
,Lecture 1 - Introduction (chapter 1)
1. Communication Research
The first step, as in Scientific Research, is to decide what questions, assumptions and methods will best get
your answers to your interest questions. The next step is to identify how best to get answers to these
questions.
Choosing a research method or methods unavoidably requires making assumptions and decisions about the
nature of human behavior, such as whether people are basically all alike or are unique individuals.
1.1. Basic assumptions behind communication research
Observations capture/do not capture an underlying reality: one assumption is that what we choose to look
at, tells us something about an underlying reality we cannot see but assume exists (e.g., power, an attitude).
Theories about human behavior can/cannot be generalized: a second assumption is that theories about
human behavior can be generalized. (E.g., Your grandfather has a LinkedIn account and your young sister has
a Twitter account, it would be useful to be able to say “young people are more likely than older people to
have a Twitter account”. Assuming that your grandfather is like other grandfathers and your sister is like
other younger sisters. There is an assumption that people are similar in the way they behave)
Researchers should/should not distance themselves from their research participants: third assumption
relates to the researchers level of engagement with their research participants. The more distance, the more
neutral or dispassionate they can be in reporting a group's behavior, but unable to get insights.
Research should/should not be done for a specific purpose: A fourth assumption is about the purpose or
reason that should underlie research. It is that curiosity, plus the pleasure of discovery for its own sake, that
continues to drive them.
There is/is not one best position from which to observe human behavior: A fifth assumption is simply that
some aspects of a question are more important to look at than others and, related, that there is one best
standpoint from which to observe human communication. Components in human interactions:
★ Source ★ Receiver
★ Message ★ Noise
★ Channel ★ Contex
This basic model does indicate some possible major entry points into the study of human interaction. For
example, a major area of research on the first component of the model is source credibility.
1.2. A series of unavoidable decisions
The field of study: Wide or Narrow → realistically, we must research the available and the achievable →
feasibility!
The researcher: Dispassionate or Involved → the scientific tradition (dispassionate) values objectivity and
dispassionate observation, where the reward is the satisfaction of a new finding. By contrast, action research
(involved) engages in research to improve people’s lives.
,The approach: Objective or Subjective → social scientists bring the assumption of an external “real” world
that can be observed, understood, and agreed on to the study of human interaction. By contrast,
phenomenologists and ethnographers try to understand people’s subjective worlds.
The perspective: Your Questions or Their Answers → when you ask people a series of specific questions
(survey-type → quantitative) that provides an answer to the researcher’s questions, may well answer that
question but completely fail to capture how users feel about the topic of interest. Another option is to let
participants respond in their own words (qualitative process).
The sample: Large or Small → depends on the research (public opinion researchers, big sample /
small-sample researchers, small sample)
The data: Qualitative or Quantitative → human subjectivity cannot be captured in mere numbers, for
example. The most obvious blending is in the approach called triangulation, in which researchers use
multiple methods providing multiple perspectives to ensure that they have a good fix on a problem.
Approaches such as Q methodology assume that it is respondents’ subjective views of the world that are of
interest but combine that research focus with quantitative, computational approaches to recording and
assessing these views (Diary studies is an example of Q methodology).
The report: Subjective or Objective → depends on the researcher:
Subjective researchers:
● May use the primarily qualitative languages of ethnomethodology and phenomenology and report
what their informants have to tell them in their informants’ own words.
● Believes that credibility and reporting are enhanced by including personal experiences and
reactions.
● The involved researcher may unabashedly use “I” writing.
Objective researchers:
● By contrast, social science researchers typically use statistics to report and interpret the data they
have collected.
● Dispassionate researchers will report in a language that strives for neutrality and that removes them
from the narrative altogether.
● The dispassionate researcher believes credibility is maximized by objective reporting
“uncontaminated” by sentiment and value judgments (ignoring perhaps the idea that to adopt this
style of writing is in itself a value judgment).
2. Scientific Research
Every research starts with an interest in or question about a phenomenon.
Before doing research, you have to know what is already known so that you don’t write about something
that is already studied. → You can use this as your basis.
After that, you will have to provide your own description or explanation of the phenomena → Worldview
(take into account how you think social reality functions) / Epistemology (based on the theory of knowledge).
There are four approaches to study social reality:
- Constructivist (=subjectivity): we each construct our view of the world based on our perceptions. If we are
going to examine people, you will look at very specific people, under very specific circumstances.
, Researchers rely on participants’ subjective view of the world. Research is interpretive and qualitative,
moving from observation to theory development.
- Postpositivist (= objectivity): challenges the notion of the absolute truth, not everything is completely
knowable. Social reality is extremely complicated so it’s difficult to make generalizations. It understands
things on average. Ideas are reduced to sets of data that allow hypothesis testing, and theory leads to data
collection and testing the theory using qualitative methods (objective observation and measurement). Eg:
Why does social media make people depressed? With a survey or questionnaire, you can see what is the
average of people who are actually depressed because of social media.
*Positivist: (doesn’t exist anymore) sets out to predict and control reality. It strongly focuses on the
deterministic view of cause and effect (causality) which derives from deductive reasoning that
research is guided by theory.
- Transformative: is change oriented and argues for mixing research with politics to confront social
oppression, focusing on marginalized groups. It embraces action research and critical analyses.
- Pragmatism: focused on solutions to problems, using all possible approaches to understanding these
problems. Embraces mixed-methods research. It is “real world” and practice oriented with a focus on the
problem rather than the research method.
Then you will get to work with this data (from the survey, experiment or questionnaire).
When should we believe an explanation or description? Only if the research is reliable and valid. These
concepts will evaluate the quality of your research.
- Reliability: how consistently a method measures what it is intended to measure → If you do some kind of
observation and you do it again, you will come to the same conclusion.
- Validity: how accurately a method measures what it is intended to measure → the results measure what
they are supposed to measure.
Every research is always provisional. Someone might come up with a better explanation. When you are done
with your research it becomes a belief - we are never looking for the absolute truth.
Two characteristics of scientific method are observation or empiricism and the attempt to rule out
alternative explanations. When you are observing an increase or decrease in something, you might think
that the cause of this is something in particular, but you need to call out all the other variables that might be
the cause of it (→ control confounding variables!)
3. Scientists
They have strict rules to try and guarantee the quality of academic research. And they use theoretical insights
to interpret their observations.
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