1. Stage one: Planning and framing issues
2. Stage two: Gathering and recording
3. Stage three: Analysing the information
4. Stage four: Writing and Sharing

Planning and framing issues:

Choosing a topic and grounding your research
Forming a research statement

Generating Ideas

Story telling

Preliminary Reading
Research Proposal
Timetable
Pilot Study
Indicators - Relating your ideas to the empirical world

Gathering and Recording Information

Keeping records
Secondary and Primary Data
Methods of Collecting Data
Questionnaires

Analysing (Interpreting) Information

Coding Data
Analysing Data

Writing Up and Publishing

Choosing a topic and grounding your research

The first thing that you must do is to choose the topic you want to research. You may be given a list of suitable subjects. Or you may be left to choose your own.

You will want to ground your ideas in any work that has already been done: To relate your ideas to other people's ideas. Carole Adams says in a course handbook:

"..on most research topics there is already a body of knowledge in existence, which researchers must, as part of the research process, search for, secure and evaluate." (See preliminary reading)

Howard and Sharp say research is:

"Seeking through methodical processes to add to one's own body of knowledge and, hopefully, to that of others, by the discovery of non-trivial facts and insights". ( Howard, K. and Sharp, J.A. 1983 p.6)

You may want to start by choosing a general area in which you are interested. Maybe you have several possible ideas. Write them all down. Do not reject any ideas at this point.

To get your ideas moving on the areas, consider all the aspects of each that might be relevant. Think about the issues, talk to people, read around the subject and write something about them.

Preliminary Reading

To get an idea of what kind of project is practical you will almost certainly need to read and talk with people. For ideas and to gain focus, try some or all of the following:

• look through a good, recent introductory textbook and, if appropriate, more specialized works.
• look through some current periodicals in the field. Even if 95% of the articles are too technical for you to understand, you can skim through contents quickly, and the remaining 5% may give you some useful ideas.
• Sometimes it is possible to see examples of projects done by students in previous years. Ask your tutor or ask in the library.
• For many subject fields one can consult Abstracts (summaries) of all major work in the field.

Reading Notes

Your preliminary reading will not only be useful for choosing your topic. You will need to go back to some of the same sources to do a Literature Review for your project. So keep careful notes at every stage.

Your reading notes can include article summaries from Abstracts If you are using a computerized bibliographic source, you might be able to transfer information to your own disk or print it out there and then. Do not expect to remember what you have searched and where you found things. It is very easy to forget.

Label your notes so that somebody else could read and understand them. This should mean that you, too, understand them when you reread them.

Forming the question
Forming a Research Statement

A research statement turns your original ideas into something that can be researched. It may be a statement or a question. It is not necessarily the title of the project, but rather the topic or problem on which you will focus.
An example research statement might be:

The research will be an investigation into the design of a Personal Development Portfolio for clerical and managerial staff. It will look at what the staff think the portfolio will be is used for, establish the cost of setting it up, and make recommendations.

Be clear about what is required. What should the project look like when it is finished? It is important that when you present a project you meet all the requirements.

Whether required or not, preparing a research proposal helps you focus your ideas, and is worth doing for its own sake. Focusing your ideas means bringing them to a point. We start with rather hazy, general ideas, the work of the research proposal is to apply them in a way that will be useful.

You should not worry too much about getting with a proposal that proves unworkable or inadequate. Research proposals, like essay plans, are altered as the work progresses. You are very unlikely to be required to do exactly what you propose. As you read in the field, your work will take on more focus and what you intend to do will change. You should start with a clear plan, and change it when you need to.

A proposal will usually contain:

a proposed title
the project's aim or your hypothesis
the questions you need to answer
your methodology and
the time scale in which you propose to carry out the work.

A hypothesis is a tentative statement of what you think you are likely to find out in your research.

A research proposal describes what the researcher intends to do. The description should be clear enough that a competent reader would be able to do roughly the same, just on the basis of the description.

To start forming a research proposal, consider your topic, research statement and project ideas. How are you going to approach the topic? Ask yourself questions beginning 'Who' 'What' 'Where' 'When' 'Why' and 'How?'

You need to be very clear in your own mind about what you plan to investigate, and how you plan to go about it. Without a clear plan you are in danger of collecting a quantity of data, but of having little idea what to do with it.

Then consider your sources of information: books, journals, pamphlets, videos, people. Consider your methodology: interviews, questionnaires, observations, experimentation . . .

But do not produce a plan that's too complex to be summarised on one side of paper.

The form of a proposal, and of the project itself, varies. Experimental work in the sciences and social sciences is usually clearer if it follows the standard set of headings for laboratory reports and journal articles, and for a general idea of how to structure your work, you might find it helpful to look at journal articles in your field. A good way to organise a proposal is to use the categories as the project itself, (with some commonsense differences), using some of the standard Parts of a Report. There should be a proposed title or an initial short statement about what you intend to do, if you have not come up with a title. The introduction will be more sketchy than in the later report. But it should explain the following: Why are you doing this work? (What is your aim?) What problem are you wanting to investigate? What questions will you ask? What other research is relevant to your work? Description of your methodology materials, etc. may be tentative at this stage as you may not have made a final decision about your methods. But you may describe a range of possibilities. There will be no results unless you have done some brief trial or pilot work, but it is helpful to indicate any expectations you have concerning the results (any hypothesis) and how you will analyse the information you collect. Likewise, although you cannot have a discussion of results you do not have, you could give some ideas of how you plan to interpret and discuss various possible results. A proposal could also include a rough timetable of when you plan to carry out different stages of the work.

Timetable your Research and Report

You have to be able carry out your research and write it up by the deadline.

Basic time management skills may be even more relevant here than in other aspects of study. At the start of your research period you must already know exactly when your project is due. Using that, construct a timetable, working backwards, with plenty of time for writing up.

Do not underestimate the time needed for writing up and finishing your report. As well as planning extra time for unforseen problems, allow time for feedback on your draft (from a tutor, for example) and for revising it. If the report has to be bound, know how this is done, and allow time for that. Also take into account the extra pressure on your time if writing up the report coincides with exams and the completion of your other assessments.

You will save a lot of time by being very clear about the format your research report should take. Usually, much of your report will not depend on the research findings. All these parts should be drafted in advance so that the research findings can be slotted in when you have them.

In preparing your research plan, allow for unexpected delays and setbacks. You are cooperating with other human beings who will not usually attach the same importance to what you are doing as you do.

If possible, use a pilot study to anticipate and avoid problems in the research

There are special problems about timetabling research which are only learnt by experience. If this is your first piece of research, you will not have had that experience, so take what opportunities you have to discuss with experienced researchers in your field their tricks and techniques for finishing on time.

Pilot study

A pilot is a test run of something to see how it works before you commit yourself to the full version. If you can allow the time, it is an excellent idea to carry out a small Pilot Study. That is, collect and analyse a small amount of data before you start to collect your main data. It is best to discover any obvious problems with your methods right at the start.

It is particularly important to pilot questionnaires and interviews before you start your proper research. You should get several people to complete the questionnaire to see whether they are able to understand and answer the questions. Similary you should cary out at least one interview, where you can also get an idea of how much time the interviews might take.

Julie Ford gives this example:

"Let us suppose that you have a theory from which you have derived the hypothesis that academic success amongst sociology students increases with political involvement" Ford, J. 1975, p.173)

The hypothesis seems clear enough: The more politically involved your sociology students, the more you expect them to be academically successful.

The things that change are called variables. So the variables in this hypothesis are political involvement and academic success. You have to decide what you will use as the indicator of these variables. Here are two simple possibilities:

variable	indicator
political involvement	membership of one of a list that you make of political groups
academic success	grades in specified examinations

We want our indicators to be valid and reliable

By valid is meant that it is a good indicator of what we want to count or measure. For example, you want to count the number of people who are working class and the number who are not. Would how much each earns be a good indicator? Or, perhaps we should ask how good an indicator it would be.

By reliable is meant that the indicator produces results that do not vary in an irrelevant way. For example: You might put coins in piles of tens and then check that there are ten in each pile by measuring the height of the pile. This is reliable if all the coins are the same thickness. If some are thinner than others, it is not reliable.

Have a look at an early (1845) effort to use crime statistics. Here, Engels wants to know what proportion of crimes are committed by working class (proletarian) people. Unfortunately, the Home Office has not coded its data by class. It has noted what proportion of criminals can read and write. Engels takes not being able to read and write as an indicator of being proletarian.

1) How good (valid) do you think this indicator? Is it the best he has?

2) Would it be reliable over time? For example, could you use it on statistics from 1845 and 1945 to see what proportion of crimes were committed by working class people? [Education of the working class would make the results vary in an irrelevant way. The changes being measure would be more education than class]

Keeping Records

You will need a method of :

Keeping track of all the secondary sources you consult.

Recording, organising, storing and retrieving your primary data

Recording the Source

name of author(s) (surname and first initial)
date of publication
title
place of publication and publisher
page number

Labelling and Categorising Data

Social Research Association Ethical Guidelines

These include:

"3.2 Exposing and reviewing their methods and findings

Within the limits of confidentiality requirements social researchers should provide adequate information about their methods to colleagues to permit procedures, techniques and findings to be assessed by others."

Statement of ethical practice. British Sociological Association

This includes:

"16) As far as possible participation in sociological research should be based on the freely given informed consent of those studied. This implies a responsibility on the sociologist to explain in appropriate detail, and in terms meaningful to participants, what the research is about, who is undertaking and financing it, why it is being undertaken, and how it is to be disseminated and used"

"18) Research participants should understand how far they will be afforded anonymity and confidentiality and should be able to reject the use of data-gathering devices such as tape recorders and video cameras."

British Society of Criminology's Code of Ethics for Researchers in the Field of Criminology

Practical situations that present an ethical dilemma are discussed in a "Frequently asked questions section" at the end. These include

Q2: "I've been doing some focus group discussions with school children about their views on crime and punishment. In a small group of ten year olds one day, they started talking about a man called John who gives them sweets at the gate of the school. There was a lot of hushing and shushing and exchanged glances at this point, and it became clear that I was being told something I wasn't meant to hear because of their parents. What should I do?"

A2: The welfare of vulnerable participants in research, such as children, overrides other concerns. See sections 4i and 4iii of the Code of Ethics. Research with children should only be undertaken by people who have themselves been cleared for the purpose by the Criminal Records Bureau. If research uncovers suspected child abuse, this must be disclosed to the proper authorities for investigation. In this case, the suspicion is vague but valid: the researcher should inform a senior staff member at the school of what was said.

Secondary and Primary Data

Books, encyclopedias, newspapers, journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and reports.

Letters, documents, memos, files, minutes of meetings etc. and unpublished dissertations.

Films, photographs, videos, radio recordings...

There are many different ways of collecting data. Which method or combination of methods you use will depend upon your subject area. These are some of the terms used to describe different methods.

Action research
Case Studies
Documentary research
Field experiments
Field Work; Participant Observation and Ethnography
Interviews
Laboratory experiments
Observation and visits
Qualitative Data
Quantitative Data
Questionnaires and surveys
Statistical experiments
Structured Data
Unstructured Data

The way you will be analysing the data may influence the layout of the questionnaire. For example, closed questions provide boxes for the respondent to tick (giving easily coded information), whereas an open question provides or a box for the respondent to write answers in (giving more freedom of information, but more difficulty coding).

Questionnaire design should bear in mind who your respondents will be, and what personal details you need to know about them. Keep your questionnaire short, less than thirty items. Do not ask for information just for the sake of it; only ask what you need to know. Consider whether you will ask them the questions yourself or leave them to fill in the answers by themselves. Be wary of traps when wording your questions.

You may use a questionnaire with only a few respondents. In this case you will probably use a detailed questionnaire. But a shorter one can be used as a method of extracting attitudes and opinions from a sizeable sample of respondents. This is a survey.

Interviews

An interview is a series of questions a researcher addresses personally to respondents. ( Macionis, J. and Plummer, K. 1998 p.44)

An interview may be structured (where you ask clearly defined questions) or unstructured, where you allow some of your questioning to be led by the responses of the interviewee. Especially when using unstructured interviews, using a tape recorder can be a good idea, if it does not affect the relationship with the person being interviewed.

Laboratory Experiments: If your primary data are to be collected in the laboratory you must be scrupulously careful about the way your equipment is designed and set up. You must devise a method for recording your results that can be interpreted by others as well as by you. Results should be able to be repeated by another experimenter. Laboratory experiments may relevant to all major research groupings, with the possible exception of the humanities, but are primarily used in physical science, life science, and engineering research.

Field Experiments: In the context of research methods, a field experiment suggests that an investigation subjected to certain controls is conducted in non laboratory conditions. For example, a new low fat ice cream may have been developed as a result of laboratory research and a field experiment may be set up to see how well it is liked by students.

Field Work; Participant Observation and Ethnography:

Field work In the development of biology teaching at London University, students were taken to salt marshes in Brittany to study the distribution of plants (ecology) from 1904. Previous practical work had been with a microscope in the laboratory, studying the structure of plants (morphology)

Participant Observation is a method by which researchers systematically observe people while joining in their activities. Cultural Anthropologists developed these methods (which they call fieldwork)) to study communities in other societies. Anthropologists call the studies they write describing other societies: ethnographies. Sociologists and others using participant observation to describe people in particular social settings within their own society may call their work case studies. ( Macionis, J. and Plummer, K. 1998 p.48)

Observation and Visits: You can collect data by observation when you make a visit to anywhere that is appropriate to your research: a nursery, a residential home, a factory, a building site, an office, a shopping centre, etc. Think and plan in advance the questions you are looking for answers to and also think and plan your methods of recording, storing and retrieving the material. It is not always convenient or acceptable to make notes as you go along so a useful technique is to write a report of what you have heard and seen immediately afterwards.

Case Studies: A case study is often the basis for a student project, especially in the social sciences. In this type of research a student may spend a period in an organisation and the comments and conclusions that emerge will be based solely on his or her experiences in that setting. Reference would usually be made to written records of the organisation too. (See also, Action Research).

Action Research This approach is used to investigate a concrete problem located in a particular situation. For example, an education student might carry out on the spot research in the classroom and a tourism student might do it in a hotel in which s/he is working. A variety of mechanisms can be used to collect data: questionnaires, interviews, observations, case studies, diaries etc.

Documentary Research: Here you would be systematically and objectively locating, evaluating, and synthesising evidence in order to establish facts and draw conclusions concerning a set of events. Rather than collecting your own data, you would be using secondary data, that is, documents that are already in existence, published an unpublished.

• 1. Do you colour your hair? Yes..... No.....
• 2. If yes, does it ever turn red? Yes..... No....
• 3. If yes, what product do you use? ...................................................

single: SIG
married: MAR
separated: SEP
divorced: DIV
cohabiting: COH

"Consider submitting your research paper to a campus newspaper or magazine, or making a presentation to a seminar, a meeting of any people you have been involved in studying, or perhaps a meeting of [professionals in your field]. The important point is to share what you have learned with others and to let others respond to your work." ( Macionis, J. and Plummer, K. 1998 p.59)

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