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.