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Research methodology and methods
MSC. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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Introduction
Research andProjects
Interviews
Observations
Data Analysis
Research Design
Literature Review
Questionnaires
Reports
Further Readings
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INTRODUCTION
WhyResearch?
AcademicResearch
andPractice
StumblingBlocks
Road mapto success
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WhyResearch?
• New ideas to share
• Validate new ideas• Validate current ideas
• Reconcile differentideologies in the same field
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MSc. DegreeResearchProjects
• Original piece of research
• A stepping stone to youracademic goals or
professional practice
• High level of practical
application, or a matureunderstanding of the targetarea as a whole
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Stumbling/Road Blocksto Success
• Minimum amount of work
• One right answer
• The limited experience of thestudent
• The professional experience ofthe practicioner
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Stumbling/Road Blocksto Success
• Research only by the internet
• Failing to align project schedule
with academic department andstaff schedule
• Last minute preparations andactions
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Steps
toSuccess
•
Plan for success• Risk management
• Research concentration: aspecific research question
in a specific and narrowpart of the field.
• Choose an interesting
topic or a researchmethod.
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Steps
toSuccess
• Select a strong researchmethodology
• Use robust research
methods• Execute the plan –schedule and human
factors
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RESEARCH DESIGN
Research
Methodologyvs. Research
Methods
Qualitative vs.QuantitativeResearch
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Research Methodology Research Methods
Philosophy or thegeneral principlewhich will guide
your research
Overall
approach(systematicapproach)
Constraints,dilemmas, andethical choices
within yourresearch
Tools youuse to
gather andanalyse
data
Followsspecific
guidelines
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Explores attitudes,behaviour andexperiences
Generates statisticsthrough the use oflarge-scale surveyresearch
Qualitative Research Quantitative Research
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Qualitative Research
Methodology
Action Research
• The researcher
works in closecollaboration witha group of peopleto improve asituation in a
particular setting.
Ethnography
• The researcher
participates in agroup’s activitieswhilst observingits behaviour,taking notes,
conductinginterviews,analysing,reflecting andwriting.
Grounded Theory
• The generation of
theory which isgrounded in thedata – this meansthat it hasemerged from the
data.
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Quantitative Research
Methodology
Research questions has counting/numerical words
• e.g. ‘how many’, ‘test’, ‘verify’, ‘how often’ or ‘how satisfied’
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RESEARCH DESIGN ANDPROJECT EXECUTION
Research Design
and You
Research Designand ProjectExecution
RecruitingResearchSubjects
BookingSpaces/MakingReservations
Location and KitHandlingSubjects
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Research Design and You
Choose aninterestingtopic or a
researchmethod
Avoid boring,pointless
research
Personalcharacteristics –
socialising,mathematical
analysis or datamining
Professionalexperience
Academicexperience
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Research Design and
Project Execution
What is your research?
Why are your researching the topic?
Who will be your participants?
Where are you going to conduct your research?
When are you going to do your research?
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Recruiting Research Subjects
Get suitable subjects
Use a subset of the population over a sample ofthe population
Use professional and/or social networks
Volunteers may not represent the entirepopulation
Choose your research subjects carefully
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Booking Sessions/
Making Reservations
Counterbalancing differences
Anonymity of subjects
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Location and Kit
Space
Permission to use the space
Security
Permission to record
Recording equipment
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Handling Subjects
Practice before the real interview – pilot
Use a list to remind you
Refreshments
Time keeping
Clear Instructions and non-influencingdemonstrations
Appear pleasant, professional and interested
Thank them for participating
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SECONDARY RESEARCH | LITERATUREREVIEW
Why you search? What you search?What you search it
for?
How you search?What happens at
the end of thesearch?
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Why
yousearch?
• Explaining to the reader whatthe problem is that you’re
tackling.• Explaining which approaches
have been tried before.
• Explaining why they failed
(otherwise it would be solvedand no longer a problem).
• Explaining what yourapproach will be.
•Explaining the background toyour approach (previous work,etc.).
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Whatyou
search?
• Books, the internet,journals, conference
proceedings,
• Bibliographic databases
• Trustworthy sources ofinformation
• Most accurate,comprehensive and
sophisticated descriptionsof previous approaches
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What yousearch it for?
• Get a quick, trustworthyoverview of a field: review
articles, introductionsection of recent journalarticle.
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How
yousearch?
•
Keyword• Boolean algebra/search
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Whathappens
at the endof thesearch?
• What is the problem that you aretackling?
• Why is it an academically significantquestion worth doing a project on?
• What are the main things that havebeen tried before? (And what hasbeen tried that not many peopleknow about?)
•
Who tried them?
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Whathappens at
the end ofthe search?
•Why didn’t those approaches work?
• What are you going to try that’sdifferent?
• Where did you get that idea from?
• What evidence is there to suggestthat this might work better?
• If it doesn’t work, will that findingbe a useful, significant absence, or
will you just look like an idiot?
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INTERVIEWS
InterviewTypes
Why interviewat all?
BetterTechniques
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Interview?
• two or more people are interacting with each other
Interactive
• the interaction happens live
Real time
Occurs in the natural language
Do the requisite background reading, training andpiloting
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Interview Types
Unstructuredinterviews:
Go in without anypredetermined
structure and usingyour judgement todecide what to do
next.
Semi-structuredinterviews:
Some predeterminedtopics and questions
But leave some spacefor following up
interesting topicswhen they arise
Structuredinterviews:
A list of topics or a listof questions
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Why Interview At All?
Advantage •No restrictions on the type and the format of questions
Advantage •Can poke around in a versatile manner.
Advantage
•Can give some useful insights into what’s out there, and alsointo what appears not to be out there.
Disadvantage
• Low-level skills
Disadvantage •Better techniques available
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Better Techniques
Collect data about the past or the future events:
• Critical incident technique
• Scenarios
Reference to the appropriate literatures about memory
Collect data about the present:
• Think-aloud technique
•Observation
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QUESTIONNAIRES
Questionnaires?
BetterTechniques
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Another Questionnaire?
List ofquestionswhich wasprepared
beforehand.
The rightquestions to
get to
requiredinformation
The rightphrasing of
the questions
How did youidentify andvalidate the
appropriateresponses tooffer for each
question?
Is the onlychoice for
datacollection?
Read specificbooks on
questionnaire
design
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Why Do A Questionnaire At All?
Advantage
• good for using to find out how widespreadsomething is.
Advantage
• useful for is ancillary data collection.
Disadvantage
• Very low response rates
Disadvantage
• Unhelpful Responses
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Better Techniques
Which questions?•What will this question give me?
•What literature or evidence can I use to justify the inclusion of this question?
What phrasing?
•Clear and unambiguous
•Have someone check the questions before distribution
What structure?
•Length
•Layout
What response?
•Predetermined classes >>> Not always neat
•Text > Select Option > Number> Analogue Likert-style scale
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OBSERVATIONS
ObservationTypes
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Observation Types
DirectObservation
IndirectObservation
Ethicalquestions
(Risks)
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Disclosed participant observation
The researchsubjects
know thatyou are
collecting
data
Advantage |
You cangather dataopenly
Advantage |You know
what isnormal
behaviour ifyou are a
member of
the group
Disadvantag
e | Gettingacceptanceby the groupif you are nota member of
the group
Disadvantage | Presented
with asanitised
version
Disadvantag
e | Emotionalattachmentto the
subjectsbeing studied
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Undisclosed participant observationThe research subjects
does not know that youare collecting data
Advantage | You cangather data without the
sanitised version
Disadvantage | Ethics
and Risks
Disadvantage |Emotional attachment to
the subjects beingstudied
Avoid this technique forM-level Students unless
you are undercoversecurity/field
intelligence officer!
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REPORTS
ReportTypes
Advantages
Risks and
Ways AroundThem
FutureReadings
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Report Types
Person Involved Past Activities PresentActivities
Future Activities
Oneself Critical incidenttechnique oroffline self-report
Online self-report (think-aloudtechnique/concurrentverbalisation
Scenario
Someone else Critical incidenttechnique
Online report ofothers
Scenario
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Advantages
Explain how something happens in their own words.
Give perception and organisation of thoughts of the author
Understand the rationale for actions and behaviours
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Risks Ways Around Them
Sanitised accounts
Interferenceeffects because
the reportinggets in the way
of the task
Partiality ofcoding results
Ask to report onanother’s behaviour.
Compare theperformance of
people doing thetask while
reporting vs. people
doing the task but not reporting.
One independentjudge to do thecoding for you.
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Further Readings
For methodological underpinnings, read literature in psychologyon short-term memory and working memory.
Reports dealing with past events, it’s advisable to read theliterature on shortcomings of human memory.
For reports of current activities, the best starting place is thepsychology literature.
Reports of future activities, read the literature on scenarios.
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DATA ANALYSIS
Contentanalysis
Discourseanalysis
Knowledgerepresentation
Statistics
Descriptivestatistics
Measurementtheory
Inferentialstatistics
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What types?
• what is said in a text, how it issaid, and how often it’s said.
Content analysis:
•
who says what, about what, towhom, in what format.Discourseanalysis:
• formats, structures and concepts
for making sense of knowledge.
Knowledge
representation:
• describing things with numbers,and assessing the odds.`
Statistics:
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What types?
• giving a systematic description ofthe numbers you’ve found
Descriptivestatistics:
• types of measurement and theirimplications
Measurementtheory:
• what are the odds against yourfindings being due to randomchance?
Inferentialstatistics:
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ETHICS
Participants
Disclosure
Plagiarism
Code ofethics
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Ethics and Research
Treatparticipants
withrespect
Disclosedand
undisclosedresearch
Plagiarism -Code ofethics
l h l l
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Plagiarism: http://www.plagiarism.org/plagiarism-
101/overview/
•An act of submitting another’s work,word-for-word, as one’s own.1. CLONE:
•A written piece that containssignificant portions of text from asingle source without alterations.
2. CTRL-C:
•The act of changing key words andphrases but retaining the essentialcontent of the source in a paper.
3. FIND–REPLACE:
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Plagiarism
•An act of paraphrasing from other sources andmaking the content fit together seamlessly. fromother sources and making the content fit togetherseamlessly.
4. REMIX:
•The act of borrowing generously from one’s ownprevious work without citation; To self plagiarize.
5.RECYCLE:
•The act of combining perfectly cited sources withcopied passages—without citation—in one paper.6. HYBRID:
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Plagiarism
• A paper that represents a mix of copied material fromseveral different sources without proper citation.7. MASHUP:
• A written piece that includes citations to non-existent orinaccurate information about sources8. 404 ERROR:
• The “Aggregator” includes proper citation, but the papercontains almost no original work.
9.AGGREGATOR:
• This paper includes proper citation, but relies tooclosely on the text’s original wording and/or structure.10. RE-TWEET:
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Further Resources
• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/1/
Purdue OnlineWriting Lab
(OWL)
• http://www.plagiarism.org/citing-sources/overview/ Citations:
• http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/resources/webcasts
TurnitinWebcasts:
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Code of Ethics
PersonalMorals
Shared
Morals
School
Policy
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Further Reading
Research Methods for Postgraduates. Tony Greenfield. (Ed.) 2ndEdition. London : Arnold, 2002, 12.
Dawson, Dr Catherine. 2002. Practical Research Methods. Oxford :How To Books, 2002.
Kumar, Ranjit. 2005. Research Methodology: A Step-by-Step Guidefor Beginners. 2nd Edition. London : SAGE Publications Ltd, 2005.11291194X.
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Further Reading
Maimon, Elaine P. and Peritz, Janice H. 2003. A Writer's Resource: A Handbook for Writing and Research. 1st Edition. New York City :McGraw-Hill, 2003. 0-07-294404-8.
Rugg, Gordon and Petre, Marian. 2007. A Gentle Guide toResearch Methods. Maidenhead : Open University Press,McGraw-Hill Education, 2007. 978 0 335 21927 8.
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QUESTIONS ANSWERS
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Thank You