1. Types of Research: General categories

2. The general types: 1. Analytical –Historical –Philosophical –Research synthesis (meta-analysis) 2. Descriptive 3. Experimental / Quasi-Experimental 4. Qualitative 5. Creative

3. Why study history? Why conduct historical research?

4. Historical: Research that deals with events that have already occurred. An attempt to explain change and continuity in human experience.

5. Each book, article, piece is shaped by the historian’s assumption’s beliefs, and cultural influences --his/her unstated paradigm.

6. Has similarities to “science” Carefully derived questions thoroughly gather and translate evidence (data) Test inferences Work to disprove rather than prove findings

7. Major difference to “science” Traditional science: –laws describe what some “thing” is. Relationship among components often expressed mathematically – Theory builds upon the description, also proposes to explain a phenomenon –If scientific theory is adequate it will be predictive [it will account for future or further occurrences]

8. Historical view: Humans as rational beings make and give meaning to social phenomena. Thoughts, actions, individual character of experience & meaning are neither predetermined nor predictable.

9. Theory in history Limited to accounting for meaning to both describe and explain particular events and processes. Generalizations are large synthetic statements that offer the historian’s sense of multiple pieces of evidence or data.

10. Uses paradigms: A scientific model and the approaches used to test that model. also called: perspective, tradition, & approach.

11. Needed areas of research: Health, leisure, public recreation Education histories Use of drugs to enhance performance Women & minorities Violence and the schools

12. Needed areas continued: Health interests & programs European ethnic groups experiences both inside and outside education and so forth…..

13. How to start: Topic of interest: read secondary sources to know what historians do and do not know. –Monographs –Anthologies –Journal articles –films, newspapers, and so forth...

14. 2. Level 1: Read as much as possible on topic Level 2: Read to understand the broader society that affected the subject and conceptual frameworks and social theories that bear on any interpretations & conclusions

15. Level 3: Read to uncover sources of evidence. –In history generally listed as notes pages rather than in the text itself.

16. Descriptive History Method of constructing a map of past experience that locates in time and place a person, trend, an event, or an organization by providing answers to particular questions.

17. Different from: Antiquarianism: collecting of old things Chronicle: listing of happenings in time.

18. Analytical Focuses on how something occurred and why someone did something.

19. Primary sources Archives oral histories government records, indexes first hand accounts

20. Criticizing sources: External criticism: research process that established the authenticity of the source. Internal Criticism: research process that establishes the credibility of a genuine artifact or document.