1. Chapter 1: Why Do Research?
MAN-10
Research Methods
Instructor
Erlan Bakiev, Ph. D.
Chapter 1: Why Do Research?

2. Non-Scientific Production of Knowledge
Personal Experience and Common Sense
Overgeneralization
Selective Observation
Premature Closure
Halo Effect
False Consensus

3. Non-Scientific Production of Knowledge
Experts and Authority
Someone in power says so..
Popular and Media messages
Window into a distorted reality
Road Rage
Holiday Havoc
Ideological beliefs and values
“it’s the way things have always been”

4. What Research Involves: A Scientific Approach
Enlightenment
Industrial Revolution
Science
Natural Sciences vs. Social Sciences
Social Theory
Data
Empirical

5. What Research Involves: A Scientific Approach
Pseudoscience
Junk Science
Scientific Community
Innumeracy
Scientific Literacy

6. What Research Involves:
Norms of the Scientific Community
Universalism
Organized Skepticism
Disinterestedness
Communalism
Honesty

7. What Research Involves: A Scientific Approach
Scientific method
Scientific attitude
Scientific orientation
Journal articles
Blind review
Transformative process

8. Steps in the Research Process
Quantitative Approach

9. Quantitative Example 1 Lowery and colleagues (2007)
Select a topic
Priming and academic performance
Focus the question
Do students who are primed improve academic performance
Design the study
experiments
Collect the data
Collected data from social psychology courses
Analyze the data
Statistical analysis employed
Interpret the data
Students who were primed scored higher on exams
Inform others
Published in Applied Social Psychology

10. Steps in the Research Process
Qualitative Approach

11. Qualitative Example 1 McCammon and colleagues (2008)
Select a topic
Women gaining full citizenship
Socio-cultural context/ Adopt perspective
Women gained citizenship differently in different states
Design the study
State archives, local newspapers and magazines, legal and political documents
Collect and analyze data
Analysis of when and how women gained citizenship in each state
Interpret the data
Inform others
American Journal of Sociology

12. Varieties of Social Research
Quantitative
Objective observation
Focus on variables
Reliability
Separation between theory and data
Generalizable
Large N
Statistical analysis

13. Approaches to Social Research
Qualitative
Cultural meanings
Focus on events
Authenticity
Merging between theory and data
Situational
Small N
Thematic analysis