Deck 2

Question 1

What are the components of a research proposal? Describe briefly.

Answer 1

Conceptual:

• Objective: Why do we do this research? What are our goals?
• Questions: Which questions do we try to answer in order to reach those goals?
• Conceptual framework: How do we make sense of the relevant relationships between concepts in our research domain? Which (theoretical) notions do we use to inform our research?
• Conceptual operationalization, population and context: How do we conceptually classify and decompose our key constructs for measurement so we can eventually end up with things we can actually measure? What is the target population and context we want to study and make inferences about?

Technical:

• Strategy/Study Design: What is our general strategy for conducting the research in terms of study design? - - Experimental research, cross-sectional research, a longitudinal design, a case study design?
• Sampling: On which units will I conduct my measurements? How will I sample them?
• Data collection methods and instrumentation (technical operationalization): Given that we have followed a certain logic to decompose our key constructs for measurement into dimensions and indicators, how do we measure these indicators? I.e. which measurement scale and instrumentation do we use? What are my procedures and methods for extracting data from my sampled units?
• Planning: What is the budget, time and other requirements for each step of my research?

Question 2

What are the steps in formulating a research problem? Describe briefly.

Answer 2

1. Identify a broad field or subject area.
2. Familiarize and Scope (familiarize yourself with the topic and segment/disect the topic into a more narrow one)
3. Segment and identify a knowledge gap ( take your narrowed down research problem through a regulative cycle; For each phase, see whats already known; Identify a knowledge gap within a certain phase that you are interested to explore further.
4. Formulate a reseearch objective
5. Formulate a general research question.
6. Make sure and double check: whether it is feasible in terms of time, relevance, resources, expertise

Question 3

What does the research objective consist of in fundamental research and in applied research?

Answer 3

In fundamental research research objective consists of internal objective ( i.e. to produce knowledge)
In applied research research objective consists of external + internal objectives ( i.e. to produce knowledge to help solve a problem)

Question 4

What should the research questions be about and how to formulate them?

Answer 4

Research questions should state the knowledge needed to achieve your goals. The easiest way to come up with the research question is to reformulate the internal objective

Question 5

How to find knowledge gaps?

Answer 5

For knowledge gaps, you can use not only the cycles, but also look for:

• Untested theoretical propositions/ Are there mechanisms that haven’t been explored yet?
• Does a relationship hold in different contexts or populations? -> Previous research established X, but always in populations of type A. Does it also hold in a population of type B? [External validity]
• Have crucial aspects of your constructs of interest not been adequately measured before? -> Previously, an effect of X on Y was established, but dimensions p1 and p2 of X were never actually measured [Measurement validity]
• Has previous research suffered from poor design and do you have a better idea of how to properly test for an effect or correlation? -> Previous research has shown an effect of X on Y, but without proper control for confounders Z1 and Z2 [Internal validity]
• Interesting moderators -> Previous research established a relationship between X and Y: different in strength/direction depending on Z? [Moderators]
• Interesting mediators -> Previous research established an effect of X on Y: what are the relevant mechanisms? [Mediators]

Question 6

What are the common mistakes in research questions?

Answer 6

• Question broaden the objective: e.g. my internal objective is about effect of awareness campaign on attitudes toward eco-tourism and my RQ’s is about how these attitudes impact actual behaviour. In that case, my RQs goes outside of the bounds of my objective
• Question that restrict: If my internal objective is about sustainability and I use a model that says that sustainability is the sum of economic, ecological and social sustainability, I should not only have an RQ about economic sustainability.
• ‘How can’-questions are ill-specified and they tend to be tied to the external rather than the internal objective (they simply ask how to solve the practical problem instead of asking an actual scientific question that provides helpful knowledge in order to solve to problem.
• Matters of definitions or which instruments you’re going to use for measurement are procedural questions, but not research questions.