Lecture 2 Flashcards
What are 4 ways that research has effected society?
• Physical Activity
– Surgeon General’s report “Physical Activity and Health”
• Nutrition
– Folic acid in pregnancy to prevent NTD
• Smoking
– High rates of lung cancer, increased risk of cardiovascular
disease
• Seat belts
– Can prevent unnecessary death in motor vehicle accidents
What is the primary purpose of research?
• Research is a way to gather information and make a sound decision or judgment or develop new knowledge
– systematic in nature; A structured way of answering questions, a systematic method of inquiry
– Finding answers to a question in a logical, orderly, and systematic fashion
What are the 5 characteristics of research with a brief explanation?
- Systematic: plan, identify, design, collect data, evaluate
- Logical: examine procedures to evaluate conclusions
- Empirical: decisions are based on data
- Reductive: general relationships are established from data
- Replicable: actions are recorded for others
What is the scientific method?
- Time-honoured procedure used by scientists and researchers to solve problems and discover new knowledge
- Logical basis for answering questions and interpreting data
- Foundation of the research process
Question, research, hypothesis, experiment, facts/observations, analysis, conclusion
How are theories developed from facts?
• Through scientific inquiry (research), facts are discovered
– Consistently observed events
• The interpretation or explanation of facts is the basis for theory
– A belief about how things relate to each other
• A theory establishes a cause and effectrelationship between variables for the purpose of
explaining and predicting phenomen
What are 5 examples of unscientific problem solving?
• Tenacity
– Cling to beliefs regardless of a lack of supporting evidence
• Intuition
– May not be wrong, but need to back up with evidence
• Authority
– May not be wrong, but need to back up with evidence
• The rationalistic method
– The derivation of knowledge through reasoning
• The empirical method
– Collecting data; but we need to do so free of bias
Inductive vs. deductive reasoning(4 steps)?
Inductive:
observation-pattern-hypothesis-theory
Deductive:
theory-hypothesis-observation-confirmation
What is the first step of the research process?
• Define the question/state the problem
– Selecting the question and precisely defining the problem
– Identified from various sources; what do we know already?
– Usually broad initially
– Is the focus of the research
– Most important stage
what is step 1A of the research process?
• A single sentence(statement) that describes the problem
– Usually identifies key variables
– Gives some information about the scope of the study
• May be in either question (what is) or declarative
(the purpose is) form
• May include inherent sub-problems, if
appropriate
– The purposes of the study were to (1) and (2) …
• KEY POINT: The introduction should make the
problem statement obvious!
What are the 2 types of variables?
- Independent variable: manipulated or controlled by the researcher
- Dependent variable: the effect or outcome
How do you identify a research problem?
– Keeping focus broad rather than narrow
– Reading a review paper or textbook
– Reading the research literature
8 criteria for selecting a research problem?
• Is the problem in the realm of research?
• Does it interest you?
• Does it possess unity?
• Is it worthwhile?
• Is it feasible?
• Is it timely?
• Can you attack the problem without prejudice?
• Are you prepared in the techniques to address the
problem?
4 criteria of a good research problem?
- Worth solving
- Focused
- Answer is not immediately obvious
- Researchable
What is step 1b of the research process? what are 6 mini-steps?
1b: Six step literature review summary
1. Write the problem statement
2. Consult secondary sources
- Research reviews and textbooks
3. Determine descriptors (keywords)
4. Find primary sources using
- Indexes and bibliographies
- Computer searches
5. Read and record the literature
6. Write the literature review
What is the purpose of a literature review?
- Gain an understanding of previous research work
- Develop a theoretical understanding of the topic
- Identify a question
- Refine the question into a specific problem
- Serves as the basis for hypothesis development
- Provides valuable information for study design
- Participants (e.g., how many, population?)
- Methodology (e.g., duration of the study)
- Tools (e.g., surveys, direct measures, etc.)
- Analyses
- Limitations
- Future directions
What is step 2 of the research process?
• State hypothesis
– In most cases you will need to provide a prediction of what you think the outcome will be
– Based on literature review
• Also provides rationale
– Not all studies have hypotheses
• Tentative explanation of the outcome of a
research problem
– May use inductive or deductive reasoning
• Important to most research studies
– Exceptions:
• Descriptive studies – listing objectives may be more
appropriate
• Qualitative studies – may exclude hypotheses
What is step 3 of the research process?
• Plan the research – How are you going to answer the question? • Methodology – E.g. quantitative, qualitative, descriptive, experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal…… • Data collection – Tools – Participants – Recruitment • Data analyses • Parts of the method section – Participants – Instruments or apparatuses – Procedures – Design and analysis • Two principles of planning – Less is more – Simple is better
Internal vs External research validity?
• Internal validity
– Validity of findings within the research study
• The extent to which the results (what you see) can be
attributed to the treatment (what you do) in the study
– Concerned with the control of extraneous variables that
might effect the outcome
• External Validity
– The degree to which the findings can be inferred to
the population of interest or to other populations or
settings
– The generalizability of the results
What is step 4 of the research process?
• Collect the data – Execute the research plan • Recruit, test, measure, or observe the phenomena in question in order to gather data • Organize the data – Enter quantitative data – Code qualitative data
What is step 5 of the research process?
• Analyze the results
– Appropriate statistical analyses applied to the
collected data
– Provides ability to accept (confirm) or reject (refute)
the hypotheses
• New questions often arise
What is step 6 of the research process?
• State conclusions
– Interpret the findings based on data analysis and
previous research findings
• Should not be a reiteration of the results
– Should provide an answer to the original question
What is step 7 of the research process?
• Dissemination – Knowledge transfer – Distinguishes scientific inquiry from other knowledge sources • Peer review
6 criteria for organizing research?
Objective: Fundamental or Applied
Nature of the data: Quantitative or Qualitative
Nature of the findings: Explanatory or Exploratory or Descriptive
Where data collection is taking place: Field or Laboratory
Experimental manipulations? Experimental or Non-experimental
Approached involved? Longitudinal or Cross-sectional
