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Research methodology
- 1. Research Methodology 101 Yes! You CAN Do a Research Study in Your Library
- 2. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 1. A study assessing student learning outcomes in 2 broad categories (concepts, techniques) by examining student research journals in 1 section of an elective information literacy course in fall semester.
- 3. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 2. An experimental study that proposes a fund allocation formula for academic library collections based on the following: average of overall book price + average of overall serial prices * degree level (10 for undergraduate to 30 for doctorate) / the number of students enrolled in degree program as majors + the total number of faculty in the department * three * total number of students in program. (OAB + OAS) * D/(Sn +(Fn*3))*Sn N.B. Not a standard formula
- 4. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 3. A newspaper article you read just the other day stated that in a recently published study done at a major U.S. university, researchers found that domestic violence affects 1 in every 4 women.
- 5. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 4. A 2004 article on a library use and services satisfaction study that used as its measurement tool a survey given to every nth person entering the library building on 40 randomly selected days throughout the school year.
- 6. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 5. An outcomes assessment research project of a 5 year old IL program in which all incoming freshmen must participate. Total student population on campus is divided between 32% freshmen to senior (or 4 year) and 68% transfer students.
- 7. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 6. Over a one year period, researchers studied the occurrence of turn-aways in a virtual reference service and noted that the significantly high occurrence of turn-aways indicates increased need for virtual reference service.
- 8. What question do you have about the research methodologies in these studies? 7. A survey of faculty found that the majority of those interview interacted most with librarians at the reference desk. The researchers concluded that most faculty view librarians in a servile role.
- 9. First things first 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Basics Topic ideas Typical methodologies Common pitfalls Getting started and putting it all together 6. Questions/discussion
- 10. Basic steps of a research project ►Find a topicWhat, When ►Formulate questionsWhat, Why ►Define populationWho, When ►Select design & measurementHow ►Gather evidenceHow ►Interpret evidenceWhy ►Tell about what you did and found out
- 11. Topic ideas ►Online chat reference ● Types of questions Subject? Type? # of turnaways* ● Difference in discourse In-person vs. chat ● Partnership studies Similar libraries with same software
- 12. Topic Ideas ►E-book usage ►Usability studies of ● Online tutorial(s) ● ‘My Library” portals ►Analysis of library web sites or library instruction sites or pathfinders by best practices ►Student learning outcomes in LI programs
- 13. Types of methodologies ►QuaLitative Measures ● Descriptive ● Numbers not the primary focus ● Interpretive, ethnographic, naturalistic ►QuaNtitative Measures ● N for numbers ● Statistical ● Quantifiable
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Welcome to Research Methodology 101. Today we would like to cover some basics concepts related to library research and also touch on a few practical matters such as putting research into practice into your library, your job. I believe that we all can agree—no matter what type of library we work in or what type of position we hold within that library—that accountability and assessment are two governing themes of the day. We are being asked to assess and be accountable for—our services, our programs—especially our instruction programs—our collections. At the same time, ACRL IS has recently revised the Research Agenda for Library Instruction and Information Literacy. This research agenda can serve to help guide instruction librarians in assessing what they’re doing and how well they’re doing it, and how students are and are not learning. In any sort of assessment, one does research. And research need not be a scary thing. A research project can be a lot of fun.
- Before we get started, I’d like to briefly go over your handout. After the title page with the funny little man who has lost all hairs but one to a detestable research project, is a short activity which we’ll dive into in a moment. Following that is an annotated bibliography of many research studies. We’ve noted the gist of each study, type of instrument used, groups studied, setting, etc. to help you along. We will refer to many of these studies throughout the course of this presentation. At the end of the handout is an index of specific research methodologies, such as pre and post test, usability studies, etc. Keep in mind that this bibliogrpahy is not exhaustive by any means. It’s biased towards library instruction and more toward qualitative than quantitative studies—although both are included. As a way of setting the tone for today’s session, please turn to the inside cover of your handout and look at the 7 descriptions of research methodologies in these studies. I’ll quickly show each of these on the screen, reading them aloud. Then what I would like you to do for the next several minutes is note any questions you have about these methologies, any problems or flaws that you note. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. Compare notes. READ SLIDE (Note to self: self-selection, generalizability, sampling)
- READ SLIDE (Note to self: Poorly defined (formula); Problems in measurement in that the average book and serial prices can hurt some areas and that it makes assumptions about the scholarly communication formats that may not be true. Also, if this is an elderly formula—as many of our funding formulas are then it’s a good time to take a look at whether this formula still fits and if not, why. Beware of unchanging measures)
- READ SLIDE (Note to self: Definition of “affect” of “domestic violence”!!! Perhaps this ratio is based on Guessing??? How did the researchers conduct this study? Survey? Sample? Representative? How were questions formed? How about this Q: “Have you been affected by domestic violence in your lifetime?” A: “Oh yes, I watch the Lifetime channel for women and I have seen a lot of movies on battered women. I remember that one with Farrah Fawcett—she’s a Corpus Christi native, ya know, where she burned her husband in his bed? And then she was tried for murder? But I think she got off because he beat her so bad?)
- READ SLIDE (Note to self: Definition of group? A lot of false negatives here. Folks that ought to be included but aren’t because they don’t physically enter the library. Perhaps this campus has a large distance ed program or that gate count stats are declining whereas external web activity has skyrocketed. Perhaps the library has a doc/item delivery program so heavy users of the library’s services rarely, if ever, come in the building? Random sample? How were the days selected? Hours? Sometimes Random is given a lot more attention than it deserves. Skewness? Could end up missing heavy use days of year.)
- READ SLIDE (handout is a bit different, doesn’t include the terms “freshmen to senior”) (Note to self: Whoa! Sample is not consistent with the aims of the program. And perhaps the program itself needs some work. Maybe this study needs to address it)
- READ SLIDE (Note to self: Definition problems. Significantly high compared to what? Is one significant? How about in person turnaways? Phone turnaways? E-mail? Software problem? Networking problems? Benchmarks please? Hasty conclusions)
- READ SLIDE (Note to self: When did the reference desk ever mean servility? This is a good example of the problem of Transformation where researchers and/or those interpreting the data make a quantum leap in conclusions. Similar to that children’s rhyme: Drip is a drop, drop is nature, nature is beautiful, thanks for the compliment. Or the six degrees of separation motif.
- Note to self use timer for activity. 2?3? minutes after reading the slide. Good. I can see that you all have some questions about these methodologies and that now you are all warmed up for this session. Let me give you our session overview. Right now we’re going to map out some research basics and then quickly list a few topic ideas that could work into a research project within your library. After that we’ll talk a bit about the technical stuff—the research methodologies themselves. We’ll give you definitions and examples of studies that have used these methodologies. Most, if not all, of these are mentioned in the bibliography. Next. we will discuss common pitfalls found in any research study. Then we want to talk about how you can get started on your research agenda, how you can put it all together in your library setting.
- Hey there, does this list of steps sound familiar with all you instruction folk out there? Or any of you who have conducted a class session on research basics? Yes! It’s the same basic plan. It was when you were writing your first research paper in high school and college and it’s the same plan now. Finding the right topic can seem like a daunting task but we’ll show you some ways to make that step easier. After that you need to figure out just what your research focus really is, and that’s often done in the form of a question. Next, or even simultaneously, you should define your population of study. Students? Faculty? Users in your library? Which users? On to the next step of deciding your research design as well as deciding on your research instrument. You might ask yourself, “Am I going to conduct a survey? Via the web? E-mail? In person? Mail in? Will I interview people? Will I use a published measurement or scale? Will I do a pre and post test study?” Next you need to put your research plan into action by gathering your data set. Maybe you are collecting transaction logs from your web site or from your catalog or maybe you are doing classroom research so you are collecting data from your students over many semesters to do a learning outcomes assessment study. Next, you need to interpret what you have found. This step takes a little time and more than a lot of thought. Finally, you should write up your findings. Think of it as telling a story about what you did and what you found out. Simple? No? Fun? Sometimes~ Long term rewards? Priceless!
- Since grade school many of us are familiar with the 5 W’s as a way to frame topics, situations, studies. So here’s another way to look at a research project or to figure out the boundaries of your study. What exactly are you studying? Defining your problem or your focus is extremely important. For instance, I want to study how faculty value library instruction. I want to look at their attitudes towards not only library instruction but also towards librarians and libraries. But who exactly am I going to study? All faculty? Maybe only faculty who really value library instruction by their using our LI program over several semesters. What time period are you looking at? Most importantly, Why—what’s your point? What could someone generalize from your findings? But what does it mean to the larger community? What can we all learn from this? Finally, how are you going to put this project, this study in place?
- Let’s take a look at a variety of research topics that could easily turn into a research project. Online chat reference or virtual reference is a good example. Maybe you are interested in looking at the nature of questions you’re getting via your new service and you want to examine these by subject or by type or perhaps by transaction length. Maybe you are interested in the number of turnaways to the service because it’s busy or not staffed. Perhaps you want to analyze the differences and similarities in discourse between in-person reference and chat or virtual reference. And when I say discourse I mean the structure and the nature of the conversation or the communication exchange between the user and the librarian. Let’s say that one or more libraries similar to yours are all using the same virtual reference package—question point, LSSI, etc. and you want to construct a study that encompasses all those libraries VRef services.
- Here’s some more opportunities for studies. Let’s say you have e-book collections from NetLibrary or Ebrary and wish to look at usage of those collections. Or you have a rough draft of one or more online tutorials or a My Library portal that you would like to test out. Let’s say that you want to apply best practices characteristics to a set of library instruction sites or library web sites or online pathfinders. Perhaps you are interested in measuring student learning outcomes in your library instruction program. A lot of these types of projecta occur normally in libraries. It’s part of what we do. We implement and maintain services and then we want to see how those services are doing. So we measure them. So you see, almost everything you are doing in lib in job could become the basis for a study. It’s worth emphasizing the synergy and efficiency to make your work project into a research project.
- When we talk about methodologies within the context of library research, we would like to divide these measures into two different areas: Qualitative and Quantitative. Briefly Qualitative measures is more descriptive in nature, examining in detail people and things. While numbers are not the primary focus of a qualitative study, you will find statistics within these studies. Essentially qualitative research is more interpretive and ethnographic. An ethnography describes and inteprets characteristics or behaviors of a culture or a group. On the other hand, quantitative measures are numerically based. They include statistics and statistical measures. Quantitative measures compare, assess and quantify. These types of studies are those that frequently use those mathematical symbols and have their own language with words and phrases such as analysis of variance and statistically significant and central tendency and regression and correlation and chi square. Typically quantitative analyses or studies look at the big picture whereas qualitative studies examine groups or things in detail. Think of one as the telescope and the other as the microscope.