Summary: Research Methods

Read the summary and the most important questions on Research Methods

• 1 Week 1

• 1.1 Lecture 1: Understand positivism (objectivism), understand interpretavism (constructivism), inductive and deductive research, get acquainted with different research methods

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• What is positivism / objectivism

  • Reality can be observed, presenting facts as truth, knowledge can be formulated into laws
    
  • Single reality, external, waiting to be found
  • Value free

• What is constructivism / interpretivism

  • Truth and meaning are constructed by the person / researchers (subjects)
  • Interpretations of the world (object)
  • Multiple realities (are experienced) and meaning is not stable
  • Iedereen kijkt door zijn eigen bril

• What is deductive research

  • Begins with hypothesis and theories
    
  • Manipulation and control
  • Experimentation/survey/structured interviews
  • Theory -> hypothesis -> observation -> confirmation/ rejection
  • Confirm/reject theory

• What is (quasi) experimental design

  • Determine causality
    
  • Manipulate independent variable to determine effect on the dependent variable
  • Randomly assign participants to groups (RCT)
  • Use existing groups (quasi)

  
  
  

  • Clear indicators to determine outcome
  • Associated w/ deductive/ positivism approaches

• What is an analytical survey design

  • To explore and these proportions /associations / predictors between variables
    
  • Observational studies
  • Structured questions/ units and limited options for respondents
  • Highly deductive

• What is phenomenological studies

  • Aims for contextual description and analysis of phenomena
    
  • Inductive
  • Relies on qualitative analysis of data
  • Not much concerned w/ generalisations to larger populations

• What is Participatory Action Research (PAR)

  • Aims to change practice in real life
    
  • Collaborations between researchers and practitioners and users (e.g. Patients, community members)
  • Iterative design
  • Mixed methods
  • Deductive and inductive reasoning 

• Identifying a research topic

  1. Through literature
     
  2. Directly from the workplace or community setting 

• Steps of selecting a research topic

  1. What is the big problem/issue
     
  2. What is known/done about it
  3. What is not known /done about it
  4. What am I going to make known about it
  1. Objective/ RQ 

  
  
  
  Format for an introduction

• Formulate research objective

  • Useful (relevant according to parties involved)
    
  • Realistic (likelihood of contributing solving the problem)
  • Feasible (time and resources)
  • Clear (specify contribution)
  • Informative (indication of knowledge to be gathered)