Research Methods in Social Sciences: Aralık 2015

29 Aralık 2015 Salı

Regression Analysis Tutorial

Please look at this tutorial, if you are going to be using regression analysis in your paper:

http://academic.udayton.edu/gregelvers/psy216/spss/reg.htm

23 Aralık 2015 Çarşamba

Data Categories

• Data categories should be mutually exclusive and exhaustive.

•Mutually exclusive: each possible survey response should belong to only one category, whereas

•Exhaustive: categories should cover the entire set of possibilities.

Data Categories

•Nominal data: different categories of data, but they lack an order. (A binary variable is a nominal variable with only two categories.)

Examples: sex (binary), name, nationality, eye color, city

•Ordinal data: Categorical data that has an intrinsic order. It only shows sequence. The distance between categories is not really standart, so we cannot add, subtract, etc.

Examples: Likert items (level of agreement), restaurant/hotel rankings, race rankings (first and second in a competition).

•Discrete data: only has integers and decimals are meaningless. We usually collact discrete data by counting items/events.

Example: The number of children in a family. The number of votes for a party.

•Continuous data: can take any range of values.

Examples: weight, height, age, heat.

•Interval data: Each position is equally distant from one another, but ratios are meaningless. Zero is not meaningful (it is arbitrary)

Example: Heat. 20 degree and 25 degrees are 5 degrees different. 35 degrees and 40 degrees are also 5 degrees different. But 40 degrees is NOT twice as hot as 20.

•Ratio Data: Numbers can be multiples of each other. can be multiplied and divided. Zero has a meaning.

•Example: Age, weight, height.

QUALITATIVE METHODS

There are ways of conducting qualitative research. We will cover 2 of the most common methods:

1. FOCUS GROUPS:

Morgan, D. (1996) Focus Groups. Annual Review of Sociology. 22: 129-152.

“Collects data through group interaction determined by the researcher.” P. 130

It is INTERACTIVE.

Generally 4-10 people. Smaller groups are preferred for emotionally charged topics. They are easier to mdoerate. They allow more sharing. There is less idea generation.

They can be strangers, or acquaintances. (what you prefer depends on your research question).

Goals:

İdea generation

Understanding what people think and how people talk on a topic

Possible problems:

Conformity

The group effect: people query each other and explain themselves to each other. We can see the extent of consensus and diversity of the participants.

The role of the moderator is important: do not interrupt the group interaction.

Some topics may be unacceptable for group discussion.

Questions: should the questions be standardized? How structured should the interview be?

Sampling: segmentation – consciously varying the composition of the groups (socioeconomic group, geography, education, sex, age).

1. Adds a comparative dimension

2. Facilitates discussion by making discussants similar to each other.

Saturation: after a few groups, the discussion starts repeating and the researcher can predict what they participants will say.

Time: Average is 90 minutes.

2. IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS:

Be fully prepared.

Cover all publicly available resources on the topic (Literature review).

Targeted and efficient questions.

Develop hypotheses in advance about what you expect.

Be open to have your hypothesis falsified

May conduct exploratory interviews with low-ranking people

Start interviews with low-ranking people

Record the interview IF POSSIBLE. Transparency!

HOW TO DO SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

1. Choose a research topic

2. Formulate a research question and testable hypotheses

3. Conduct literature review

4. Define the concepts

5. Decide how to measure your variables (Operationalization)

6. Collect data using qualitative and quantitative methods.

7. Analyze and discuss your findings.

OPERATIONALIZATION

Look at the literature on the topic:

How did others opertaionalize it before you?

Are there ready-made scales?

Is there a ready data set that you can use?

If you need to create your own data set, what type of data do you need? The hypothesis should determine what type of data is necessary.

1. Qualitative methods:
collect non-statistical findings
not generalizable: findings are not representative of a population.
deep explanations: you get a very deep understanding of a small group of people’s perspectives, or a few cases.

When you are reporting results, you should not generalize.

Qualitative data accumulates and gives us very valuable information.

It can be used in conjunction with quantitative data.

2. Quantitative methods:

statistical data,

representative: the data represents a broader population (a school, a city, a nation, etc.) . It can be generalized to that population.

broad explanations: you get a superficial understanding about the whole universe.

MEASURING THE RIGHT THING:

1. VALIDITY

Am I measuring the RIGHT THING? Am I measuring what I am supposed to be measuring? Or am I measuring something else?

Measuring democracy:

We can ask people, if they like democracy. Let us say that 90% of the people in a country say that they like democracy. Does that mean that country is democratic? No. We are measuring the wrong thing.

2. RELIABILITY

Am I measuring it CORRECTLY?

Measuring Democracy

To measure democracy, we look at the number of incarcarated journalists.

The government says that there are no incarcarated journalists. However, Journalists Without Borders say that there are 248 journalists in prison. Which data is more reliable? Which one are we going to use?

Measuring alcoholism:

Ask people how much they drink per week.

Reliability problem: people lie about how much they drink. OR They may not know how much they drink.

Literature Review

Literature Review

1. Write a literature review on any topic of your choice.

2. Your review should be a minimum of 200 words and maximum of 300 words.

3. It should include a minimum 5 and maximum of 8 social science journal articles.

4. No books, websites, news articles or other sources will be accepted. You are ONLY allowed to refer to social science journal articles.

5. ALL of your sources should be in English. Sources in Turkish are not allowed.

6. Read the literature review samples I handed out in class. Those are GOOD examples. You can find more examples in political science, sociology and psychology journals.

This is an excellent source on how to write a literature review. Read it very carefully before you write your literature review.

http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/literature-reviews/

Also, have a look at this link:

http://www.literaturereviewhq.com/3-great-methods-to-structure-your-literature-review/

And this:

http://sydney.edu.au/stuserv/learning_centre/help/thesis/th_litReview.shtml

Online Research

ONLINE RESEARCH:

There are many ways of conducting online research. Here are two common and practical methods:

METHOD 1:

STEPS

1. Download Zotero as an extension or stand alone:

https://www.zotero.org/download/

2. Go to the databases on the IKBU library website:
http://www.kemerburgaz.edu.tr/egitim-hayati/liste.aspx?SectionID=kAR%2fUExqe98m13gkIePW2w%3d%3d

3. Pick a database: e.g. JSTOR
http://www.jstor.org/

4. Search one or more terms: e.g. TERRORISM

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=terrorism&acc=on&wc=on&fc=of

5. Download the article on Zotero, if it is free: e.g.

Krieger, T., & Meierrieks, D. (2011). What causes terrorism? Public Choice, 147(1/2), 3–27.

http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/48/3/339.full

6. Choose from the articles that are cited in the article. Go to “References” section. Choose the ones that are relevant to your research. Click and download.

7. Prepare an annotated bibliography.

METHOD 2:

STEPS:

1. http://scholar.google.com/

2. Search a term. E.g. terrorism

3. Limit the dates. E.g. since 2000

4. Choose an article.

5. Click on cited by…

6. Go to the page, where all the articles that cited this article are listed:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=12009381199502201963&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en

7. Find the articles/books that are relevant to your research.

8. You can reach some articles/books by clicking the links on Google Scholar. If you cannot, go to the IKBU library website.

9. Search those articles on the library website. E.g.

Pape, R. A. (2003). The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. The American Political Science Review, 97(3), 343–361.

9 Aralık 2015 Çarşamba

Survey Links

ISSP

Eurobarometer

8 Aralık 2015 Salı

Term Paper Guidelines

Term Paper Guidelines

· No cover page!

· You NEW NUMBER should be on the upper right side of the paper, on the first page.

· All pages should be numbered.

· Class name and number should be on the upper left side (IR 303 Research Methods in Social Sciences, Fall 2015).

· Title should be in the center.

· 12 FONT, Times New Roman

· No indentation from left or right.

· No extra space at the bottom of the top (including the first page).

· Double spaced.

· 6-8 pages EXCLUDING the Appendix and the References. (6 full pages, 5 and a half pages will not be accepted). If you use do not use any statistical methods, your paper should be on the long side.

· Your paper should be stapled.

PAPER SECTIONS

These are the sections that MUST be in your research paper. Separate them and write the section name.

1. TITLE

Your title should be your research question: “Is there a relationship between …?”

2. INTRODUCTION

Your first sentence should be your hypothesis.

Your first paragraph should be an outline of your paper.

“In this paper, I will hypothesize that … In the first section of the paper, I wil review the literature on ….. In the second section, … In the third section …… I will conclude that”

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

· Your literature review should be about your hypothesis, not your variables. There should be no personal opinions in a literature review. You should critically analyze the literature to show what has been dones so far and what needs to be done now.

· It should also include definitions of your key terms.

· It should identify important trends in the literature about your hypothesis.

· You should connect the trends in literature to your hypothesis. You should explain why there is a need to write this paper.

· Your literature review should be up to date. Your references should be recent (Most of your references should be from the last decade).

· It should be around 2 pages.

4. METHOD

· How do you support your hypothesis?

· What is your independent variable?

· What is your dependent variable?

· Identify them.

· How are you going to OPERATIONALIZE them? (How will you measure them?) Explain this in detail.

· What method do you use in your research? Is it quantitative or qualitative? Write it.

· Explain your method in detail. How did you conduct your study?

· Did you use focus group interviews or in-depth interview?

· Did you do content analysis? Did you trace the historical process? Did you use a survey? Did you conduct an experiment?

· ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS: If you used human subjects, how did you ensure that they were not harmed by your research? Your subjects should be over 18 and mentally capable. If not, you have to get permission from their legal guardians.

5. FINDINGS

· What did you find in your research? Explain in detail. Use graphs and tables, if necessary.

· You CANNOT USE tables and graps from other sources. You have to make YOUR OWN tables and graphs.

· Explain every word and every number on your tables and graphs!

· Explaing historical events and people, if you mention them. Be thorough.

6. DISCUSSION / ANALYSIS

· This is the most important section of your paper. This is where you analyze your findings.

· Do not provide your opinion! This is not an opinion paper. This is a research paper. You need to support everyting you say.

· Explain your findings. What do they mean?

· Do your findings support your hypothesis?

· How do your findings fit in the literature?

· What do your findings contribute to the literature?

· Do your findings have an real world/ policy implications?

· What do you think needs to be researched, in light of your findings?

· What are the weaknesses and strenghts of your research?

7. CONCLUSION

· Summarize your paper. This section should be short. Do not include opinions or platitudes.

APPENDIX

· Include surveys and other related material in the appendix. Do not translate your surveys in the appendix to English. Include the original questions in Turkish. BUT everything should be translated in the main text of the paper.

· Send me the recordings of the interviews per email.

REFERENCES

· You need AT LEAST 15 references.

· Do not provide the name of the article in the text.

· Article and journal names go in the reference section.

· Use APA 6

Last Name, The first letter of the first Name. (Year of publication) Article Name. Journal Name. Journal Number. Page Numbers.

· Do not provide hyperlinks to the references!

· Don’t include hyperlinks in the references. Just write the bibliographic information.

· Do not use old references for current issues:

~~There are 55 million people in Turkey (Özdemir, 1983).~~

This is old information and it is no longer correct.

· If you include a SHORT quote from another source in the text, put it in quotation marks: “As writers, few of Kristof’s interlocutors had his pithy, winning ease.”

· If you include a LONG quote in the text, make it an indented paragraph, use font size 10 to indicate that it is a quote:

To a degree, some of the responses, though convincingly argued, inadvertently bolstered Kristof’s case because of the style in which they were written: fractious, humorless, self-serious, and defensively nerdy. As writers, few of Kristof’s interlocutors had his pithy, winning ease. And yet, if they didn’t win with a knock-out blow, the professors won on points. They showed that there was something outdated, and perhaps solipsistic, in Kristof’s yearning for a new crop of sixties-style “public intellectuals.” (Rothman, 2014).

· Do no use sources in Turkish. All your sources should be in English.

· All your sources should be journal articles or official statistics/data or academic books.

LANGUAGE

· Learn to use the words research and study:

RESEARCHES: Research is always singular.

Study can be plural à Studies show that…

· Verbs are very important

Smith (2009) argues that

Smith (2009) finds that

Smith (2009) indicates that

Smith (2009) shows that

Smith (2009) illustrates that

Smith (2009) agrees with Connor (2007)

Smith (2009) investigates this topic.

Smith’s (2009) findings show that…

This articles shows that … (Smith, 2009)

To research, to put forth, to bolster, to support, to illuminate, to uncover, to discover, to explain, to imply, to apply (to), to connect (with), to review, to analyze, to explore, to engage with, to allude to, to refer to, to cover, to compare, to contrast, to trace, to develop an argument, to disagree with, to summarize, to mention, to touch upon, to sum up, to explain, to understand, to design (a survey/study), to conduct (research/study/survey)...

· Use present tense!

~~Smith (2009) found that…~~

~~Smith (2009) has found that …~~

Smith (2009) finds that …

· Use simple sentences!

Simple is good. Simple is beautiful. Keep it simple!

· Use paragraphs!

On average, one page should have about 3 paragraphs. Each paragraphs has one central idea or topic. The most important sentence in a paragraph should usually be the beginning sentence.

STYLE

· Do not use passive voice. Always use active voice.

~~It is argued that…~~

Smith (2009) argues that ….

In this paper, I argue that…

I put forth the hypothesis that…

· Do not write unecessary things!

~~It is important to discuss this topic.~~

Yes, it is important. That is why you are writing about it.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ADVANCED HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. YOU CREATED A HYPOTHESIS. YOU TESTED IT. YOU REPORTED IT.

THIS IS SCIENCE!!!! J

RULES