students zone
<< back to site index
A summary of the book
PART 1: PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT
CHAPTER 1: SO YOU’RE GOING TO DO A RESEARCH PROJECT
- Begins by exploring and illustrating the dominance of research findings in our lives.
- Establishes the general principles that will enable you to produce a successful research report.
- Identifies the distinction between quantitative and qualitative methods – a distinction that drives the structure of the book.
- Suggests that you should aim for specificity of focus, and that you should always ask a good question.
- Draws up a summary of the nature of research.
CHAPTER 2: LET’S MAKE A START
- Discusses how you should choose a topic and turn it into a research question.
- Lists some down-to-earth practical ideas that will help you proceed.
- Describes 14 ways of ‘Doing research’.
- Asserts that it is the aim of the book to enable you to demonstrate your understanding of, and your ability to, handle all the various stages of the research process.
CHAPTER 3: DRAWING UP YOUR PERSONAL PROJECT ROADMAP
- Outlines 7 steps that will take you to the starting-line for data collection.
- Suggests that you should put it all together in a timed roadmap.
PART 2: QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
CHAPTER 4: THE PRINCIPLES OF SAMPLING
- Advises you to gather an appropriate sample that is achievable and that is as good as you can make it.
- Summarises the characteristics of 6 types of sample.
- Discusses the difference between probability and non-probability samples.
- Considers the nature of representativeness and bias.
- Emphasises the importance of describing the nature of your sample in your final research report.
CHAPTER 5: CARRYING OUT YOUR SURVEY
- Lists 20 quality questions for carrying out a successful survey.
- Offers an exercise based on a student project, which sets about investigating gender differences in the division of labour at home.
- Suggests another exercise in which you are invited to design a mini-survey relevant to your own field of interest.
CHAPTER 6: QUESTIONNAIRES
- Describes briefly the history of questionnaire design.
- Says that your questionnaire will be heavily influenced by the subject of your research, that it will be unique to you, but that you must be guided by some well-established rules and guidelines.
- Stresses the importance of outlining a detailed timetable for your project – taking it through to the later stages of data analysis and write-up.
- Describes the well-established principles of questionnaire construction
CHAPTER 7: THE ART AND SCIENCE OF SURVEY INTERVIEWING
- Considers your first encounter with a respondent.
- Outlines 8 principles of good practice.
- Discusses the design of interview schedules – and how they should differ from questionnaires.
- Draws your attention to technical terms like prompts, probes and analogue scales.
CHAPTER 8: ANALYSING YOUR SURVEY DATA
Says that the task of data analysis should be to the forefront of your mind from the very beginning.
- Describes some possible key variables.
- Takes you through 12 steps of data analysis.
- Provides a note on the nature of inferential statistics.
PART 3: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
CHAPTER 9: THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF STUDYING A SMALL SAMPLE
- Considers the practical and theoretical advantages of studying a small sample.
- Stresses that it remains important to have a research question clearly in your mind.
- Describes the nature of strategic sampling.
- Asks what factors you should take into account while gathering your sample.
CHAPTER 10: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH INTERVIEWING
- Asks how you might present yourself – and where you will be based.
- Reminds you that, as the interviewer, you will have an impact on the situation – and on your respondents’ responses.
- Offers 10 rules for running your interview.
- Discusses how you might record your interview.
- Draws your attention to some of the ideas on offer: focused interviews, narrative approaches or using vignettes or scenarios.
CHAPTER 11: THERE IS MORE TO QUALITATIVE RESEARCH THAN INTERVIEWING
- Takes you, one by one, through 8 qualitative methodologies:
- Ethnography and the anthropological tradition.
- Participant observation.
- Insider research.
- Non-participant observation – with an exercise that you can carry out at a railway station.
- Focus groups.
- Content analysis.
- Case studies.
- N=1 explorations.
CHAPTER 12: ANALYSING QUALITATIVE DATA
- 7 topics guide you through to a successful conclusion.
- Content analysis of the answers to open-ended questions.
- Interpretive content analysis of complete interviews.
- Observation.
- Focus groups
- Case studies.
- Triangulation and multiple methods.
- Nud*ist, NVivo and computer analyses of qualitative research.
PART 4: THE LAST LAP
CHAPTER 13: WRITING YOUR REPORT
- Offers 5 suggestions to help you produce a successful research report.
- Provides detailed guidance on the desired structure of a research report .
- Tells you how to present your findings in a quantitative research study:.
- Tells you how to present your findings in a qualitative research study.
- Presents a short note on the art of drafting
PART 5: MOVING INTO MORE COMPLEX TERRITORY
CHAPTER 14: A QUALITATIVE RESEARCHER’S BRIEFING SHEET
- Suggests ten golden rules in qualitative research.
- Discusses aspects of the language of qualitative research.
- Provides a useful glossary of terms commonly used in a qualitative methods context.
CHAPTER 15: TESTING FOR STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE
- Offers reader-friendly guidance in carrying out 8 of the most frequently employed tests of statistical probability – with the aid of SPSS:
- The Chi-square test – including an exercise in which you can carry it out by hand with a calculator.
- The Mann-Whitney test.
- The t-test for unmatched samples.
- The t-test for paired samples.
- The Wilcoxon Signed Rank test.
- The Sign test (another test you can do by hand).
- Spearman’s rank order correlation.
- Pearson’s product moment correlation.
© Martin Davies
02 January 2007