Grading Criterier

Overview of Individual Research (BP6955) Learning Evaluation Methods Proportion of Evaluation (%)
Outcomes

Individual research report 70%

All
Dr. Rawin Vongurai Presentation and Defense with 20%
All
Committees

Class Attendance & 10%

All Participation

Ontology
Contents

Subjective Objective  Research process and proposal

Epistemology  Literature review
 Research ethics
 Research design
Interpretivism Positivism
Reasoning

Inductive Deductive
Method

Qualitative Quantitative

RESEARCH PROPOSAL

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 Contents of a research proposal
Conclusion Contribution
• What? – Research GAP
• What? - Research question
Research Research Analysis
• Why? - Relevance of research: Academic debate, Policy and Questions Methodology Interpretation
Practice of Findings
• How? - Research design Hypotheses
• quantitative vs. qualitative
• exploratory vs. explanatory
• deductive vs. inductive
− Data collection: Primary data (e.g. interviews) vs. secondary
data (e.g. documents)
− Data analysis (e.g. multivariate analysis, narrative analysis)

Review of Literature

CONDUCTING A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Literature review: key rules

Research Design- How will I
 Reliability of sources conduct my research
 (academic journals/data bases; statistical data bases,
e.g. Bloomberg)
practically?
1. Blueprint of research: what, from whom, when, how
 Relevance of sources to research your topic 2. Foundation in research methodology
 (pay attention to search terms) • Positivism, Sample survey
• Interpritivism, Ethnographic study
 Active Reading – analysis – writing: iterative process
3. Foundation of research methods
 Example table from thesis
• Sample survey, postal questionnaire
• Ethnographic study, participant observation
4. Link between research questions and data

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 Research design: purpose
Research design
 Design answers these questions
What Question
 Which methods will be applied to answer research
question?
 What techniques will be used to gather data? Interpretivism Positivism
 What kind of sampling will be used?
 How will time and cost constraints be dealt with?
Qualitative Quantitative

Interviews Mixed Questionnaire

Observation Survey

Sampling Strategy

Types of research design

Little known about topic

Study purpose: qualitative vs. quantitative Life in Mars?

exploratory descriptive explanatory predictive

Qualitative Observations about issue

Quantitative Around 80% of millionaires are

college graduates.
Source: Blumberg et al. (2011) DESCRIPTIVE STUDIES 18% of millionaires have Master’s
degrees and 6% have PhDs.b

How and Why?

Exploratory and descriptive studies Explanatory Study
-Gravity
 Exploratory study -causal links
 Researcher knows little about a problem (Why is -Why is there an inverse
performance of health service low?) link between higher
education and earning
 Meant to discover new relationships, patterns, ideas, etc.
potential?
 Develop hypotheses or questions for further research
 Descriptive study
 Explain relationships among variables (Who? When? What?
How much? questions) What will happen in the future
Predictive Study Population growth
 Describe a subject or a problem (e.g. turnover rates in
hospitals) India 24%, China 3.9%, UK 0.6%
2005–2050
 Descriptive statistics = cross-tabulations - correlations
9 countries = half of the world's projected
population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria,
Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, United States,
Ethiopia, and China

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Explanatory and predictive studies Research ethics: definition and purpose

 Explanatory study  Ethics are norms or standards of behaviour that guide

 go beyond descriptive studies moral choices about our behaviour and our relationships
 provide answers to How- Why- questions (Why is turnover of
with others
nurses higher than turnover of clinicians?)
 The goal is to ensure that no one is harmed or suffers
 attempt to give reasons for a phenomenon by using theories or adverse consequences from research activities
hypotheses (Turnover rate of nurses is higher because of low
pay) – turnover rate (y); low pay (x). y=f(x)
 Predictive study
 Attempts to give a good estimate of what will happen in the
future
 what is likely to happen in the future?
 usually carried on through simulations or mathematical models
(If we increase nurses pay, nurses turnover rate decreases).

Research ethics: main issues (1)

Ethical Protecting  Ethical treatment of participant
Treatment Participants − Explain to the participants the purpose of research
Participants − Explain to the participants that their rights and well-being will
be adequately protected, and say how this will be done
− Interviewers should obtain the informed consent of the
Research participant
Ethics  Deception
 The participant is told only part of the truth or when the truth is
fully compromised

Deception  To protect the confidentiality of a third party (e.g. Sponsor)

Ensuring
 It violates the participants’ information rights. They might
Confidentiality participate in a study in which they would not have
participated if they would have known the sponsor or purpose

Research ethics: main issues (2) Research ethics: main issues (3)
 Issues Related to Protecting Participants  Plagiarism
 Informed consent
 Copying thoughts and sentences without referring to
 Debriefing the original author(s) and source.
 Right to Privacy/Confidentiality
 Refer properly to sources you have used.
 Data Collection in Cyberspace
 Ensuring confidentiality
 Can I copy a whole assignment as long as I refer to the
source? Yes, but you would most likely fail the
 obtaining signed non-disclosure documents
assignment as your own contribution is very marginal.
 restricting access to participant identification
 revealing participant information only with written consent
 restricting access to data instruments where the
participant is identified
 non-disclosure of data sub-sets.

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Thank you!