MA dissertation research methods class

1. Building a research
design

2. Theories
• They don’t just appear – they are built
• The basic building blocks of theory are often referred to as
concepts
• Concepts communicate ideas or particular perspectives
• Poverty is a concept
• We define it by various ways
• Define poverty for me

3. • Your concept of poverty may not be the same as somebody else’s,
or another researcher
• Which is why you need to clearly define the concepts you are
using
• (We met Operationalization last week)
• E.g. “Poverty is here defined in a UK context using the Office of
National Statistics definition of having an income of less than 55%
of the national median total available resources.”
• Then for extra points, “this is the definition previously used by X
(2015); Y (2010) and Z (1978)

4. • “Poverty” is the symbolic element
• The associated definitional element may be the one just used, or
totally different in a different context
• World Bank definition is living on less than $2 a day – so basically
nobody in the UK is defined as living in poverty
• Therefore the definition you use for the concept is important. This
one is fairly clear between the two.
• However, even this is problematic as the definition was changed in
2018 – it was defined as “60% of media income”
• Which means…X, Y and Z were using a different definition to
define poverty than you are using

5. • The reading provides a nice example – studying gangs
• How do you define a gang?
• Usually best to ask – “how has somebody else already defined a
gang – in a published article”

6. Research process – linear v spiralling

7. Defining “religious”
• Another example from my work
• I wanted to see whether Trump uses more religious language in
speeches in places where the audience is more religious
• How do you think I could have done that?

8. Writing a research design
• It should be detailed enough to allow the person reading it to head
off and do the same research as you were planning (more or less)
• What type of data will you gather?
• From where will you gather it?
• When will you gather it?
• Who will be involved in the data gathering?
• What will the data you gather look like?
• How much will you need?

9. Concept mapping
• Useful to help you visualise how your research will look
• Basically a drawing board
• Looks like a flow chart – arrows (connections), boxes (nodes)
• Some people, particularly those with a more visual sensibility find
them really useful
• The process for creating one is detailed on p46 of this week’s
reading

10. GREEN PARTY
MEDIAPOLITICAL
SYSTEM
PARTY PR
OTHER PARTIES
MINOR PARTIES Level of coverage
Tone of coverage
Type of coverage
Different
MEMBERS
Why?
VOTERS
Why?

11. Your question may determine your method
Abused women
MEDIA
REPRESENTATIONS
WHY WOMEN
STAY
WHY WOMEN
LEAVE
Interviews at
shelter
Content
analysis
Discourse analysis of
court transcripts

12. Setting your research
• Is the data I’m going to get from here appropriate to answer my
research question(s)?
• Can I get this data?
• Is it realistic?
• For a masters diss you don’t have the luxury of being able to
spend a long time in a field site
• You don’t have a huge amount of time to chase people for
interviews

13. Back to me…
• Masters diss
• Content analysis
• All data from Nexis-Lexis and
one website
• Four years of press releases and
newspaper stories
• PhD diss – Wisconsin GP chapter
• Ethnography and interviews
• 2 years going to meetings
• 3 months building trust to get
access for interviews
• >2,500 emails, 150 hours
attending meetings, 30 hours
interviewing

14. Pragmatism v Ambition
• It is good to be ambitious with the work you plan to do
• But also be realistic
• If you are interested in interviewing politicians about Fake News,
you’re not going to get an interview with the Prime Minister, or
probably even many MPs, but local councillors…
• Remember:
• A GOOD DISSERTATION IS A DONE DISSERTATION

15. Pragmatism v Ambition
• You may have to make pragmatic decisions
• You may not get the access to organisation A that you wanted
• Or data set A is suddenly not accessible, or doesn’t have what you
thought
• So with this type of research it’s always good to have a backup
plan
• However, always ask whether the new data you can access will
still work to answer your research questions
• If not – two options
• Try data source C
• Amend your research questions – remember the spiral. Research is an
iterative process. It is okay to change as you go (to an extent)

16. Common research methods - Surveys
• Set questions asked to a population of interest
• Population often from a probability sample – simple random is
most common. This gives a representative sample
• Large number of respondents
• Open or, more commonly, closed questions
• Statistical analysis
• Longitudinal data often

17. Common research methods – Experiment
• Generally smallish number of volunteer participants
• Participants should be representative of the population of interest
• Often divided into two or more groups – one group being the
“treatment” group and one the “control”
• Treatment group gets the real drug – or in social sciences some stimulus
which is an example of the thing being studies
• Control group gets the placebo – or in social sciences do not get the
stimulus
• Statistical tests to see whether there is a difference between the groups

18. Common research methods – Content Analysis
• Large number of pieces of content
• Analysed systematically using a standard codebook
• Often multiple researchers undertaking by hand
• Increasingly commonly also using machine coding
• Findings reported numerically/statistically

19. Common research methods – Discourse
Analysis
• Small number of pieces of content
• Analysed systematically and deeply
• Findings reported qualitatively

20. Common research methods – Interviews
• Smallish number of interviewees from the population of interest
• Not necessarily that the interviewees are randomly chosen –
snowball sampling is a common method here (a convenience
sample)
• Interviewer will have an interview guide which can be more or less
closed or open
• Closed interviews – interviewees all asked the same questions in
the same order
• Open interviews – a totally open chat
Closed OpenMy Wi GP

21. Common research methods – Focus groups
• Similar to interviews but involve talking to a group of people at
the same time
• Group composition is an important consideration – homogenous or
heterogenous is the usual thing to consider
• Good moderation is essential

22. Common research methods – Ethnography
• Visiting a field site regularly and observing what goes on
• Field sites can be digital
• Researchers observe and reflect on what is happening – often
write up field notes in a journal while in the field or just after
leaving
• Notes are then analysed for common themes or things of interest
to investigate further (in future field entries or maybe with
interviews)

23. Sampling
• All of the research methods require some sort of sampling to be
undertaken
• This is more or less thorough or systematic dependent on the
method and what is being studies
• Probability sampling requires knowing what the full population of
interest is – e.g. election polls pick a selection of people based on
the entire voting population which is known
• Commonly in social sciences, non-probability sampling is used

24. Non-probability sampling
• Convenience – subjects which are available/easy to find.
• Downside is that this sample may not be fit for purpose. College students
are often used as subjects because they are easy to find and cheap, but
they are not always appropriate
• Purposive – researcher picks the subjects to include based on them
having some criteria important to the research
• Snowball – interviewees may suggest somebody else to talk to
• Quota – picking people to include on certain characteristics, e.g
age, gender

25. Data collection and organisation
• Think about this during the planning
• What will your data look like?
• How will you keep it? How will you analyse it? How will you
include it in your final dissertation?
• Is there anything you need to start doing now to enable you to do
this?
• Improve Excel skills? Learn a data analysis program? Buy some
notebooks? Refresh shorthand skills? Transcribing software?

26. Be organised
•Future you will love past you if present
you is very organised with your data
•Future you will hate past you if present
you is not

27. Case Studies
• A case may mean many different things
• When we concentrate on one things we are engaged in case study
• We need to be able to bound something to identify it as a case
• It is useful to think of a specific, unique, bounded system
• Sometimes the case is all chosen to be examined – the case is the only
thing of interest – an intrinsic case study
• Sometime (more commonly) the case is used to understand a wider issue
or draw a generalization – I studied the Wisconsin Green Party as an
example of green parties as a part of minor parties. This is an
instrumental case study.

28. Case Studies
• I looked at the case of newspaper reporting on the green party as
a case to illustrate the deficiencies of media in a democracy
• Essentially my main area of research is a series of case
examinations of the issue of minor political parties and media:
• Newspaper coverage of UK Green Party
• Internal workings of Wisconsin Green Party
• The 2015 UK General Election Leaders’ debate
• Newspaper coverage of UKIP
• The “Euro Animal 7” political parties

29. e.g. choosing media to study
• You are studying phenomenon X in media. How do you choose
different media?
• You might consider different attributes and hope to have cases
across these attributes
• Possibly:
• Type – broadcast, print, digital
• Size – national, local, regional
• Size of audience – large, medium, small
• already trying to have one case which fits all possible (27)
permutations is too much

30. • You may want to choose cases which give balance and variety, but
it is also fine to pick based on what you believe you might learn
the most from
• E.g. sampling newspapers.
• Attributes –
• Type: broadsheet, mid-market, tabloid
• Size: national, local, regional
• Frequency: daily, Sunday, weekly
• You could make a good argument (as have previous authors) that
you are just choosing to study national daily tabloids only

31. Exercise
• Let’s research the Flat Earth Society!
• https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Flat_Earth_Wiki
• Your research question is – “How does the Flat Earth Society wiki
try to convince readers that the Earth is flat”?
• Design some research to try to answer this question (in like 20
mins)