HD 513

Research Methods

Goals: The primary goals of the course are to prepare students

1. to be able to understand and evaluate social science research publications
2. to design and conduct independent research
3. to understand and carry out data description and analysis tasks using a statistical program

To this end, we will explore basic theoretical issues underlying social science research (e.g. causality, validity, reliability, sampling) and how they relate to the design and execution of research studies. We will also cover major conceptual, technical, and practical issues involved in conducting and evaluating social scientific research.

Objectives related to Goal 1 are that students will be able to identify and discuss, critically,

• the design and conduct of a series of scientific studies reported in peer-reviewed journal articles
• the methods used in analyzing the data in those studies
• the presentation of analysis results
• the final conclusions drawn
• strengths and limitations of the studies, given their research questions, in terms of sampling; study design; internal and external validity

Objectives related to Goal 2 are that students will:

• identify a research question of interest to them
• carry out a search of the literature
• write up a summary of the literature in the area
• come up with a testable hypothesis, based in relevant theory and on information from the literature search
• design a study to test the hypothesis
• write up and present the proposed study background and method

Objectives related to Goal 3 are that students will:

• become proficient in using a statistical package to perform basic descriptive and inferential analyses
• identify, interpret and understand appropriate application of basic descriptive and inferential statistics
• understand technical terminology related to data management and variable description