scholarly research & resulting products

1. scholarly research & resulting products monjan 25, 2016

2. schedule updates… • Last Wednesday’s class [power outage] • moved “info organization” content to Feb 3 • SPSS Lab on Mon, Feb 1 in Davis Library / Odum Institute • we’ll prep on Wednesday

3. rationale for today’s class… • The more you understand the processes, structures, measures, intricacies, possibilities and limitations of scientific research, the more sophisticated and informed you become in evaluating the products of research • Understanding the vocabulary of research allows you to talk about research products in a more sophisticated, critical, and informed manner Side note: consider taking research methods!

4. learning outcomes for today • track down the full-text of a specific article (known citation search) • delineate between 3 basic types of research studies (exploratory, descriptive, explanatory) • be able to identify specific components in a scholarly research article

5. LA Times article exercise • Read the piece on food labeling • Where does the journalist get her information? Try to identify specific studies that she draws from – write down any clues • With your neighbor, use the library’s “E-JOURNALS” tool, the database “Academic Search Premier” or Google to track down one of the original research studies [get the PDF] • Read the abstract of the article

7. What year?

9. What year? What year?

10. Write on whiteboard

12. Tandon, P.S., Wright, J., Zhou, C., Rogers, C.B., & Christakis, D.A. (2010). Nutrition menu labeling may lead to lower-calorie restaurant meal choices for children. Pediatrics, 125, 244-248.

20. one way to think about research approaches is to consider specific goals of the research: • exploration • description • explanation See reading for today, bottom of page 17 (Neuman, W.L. (2009). Understanding research. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon.)

21. exploratory studies • research into a new topic to develop a general understanding and refining ideas for future research • typically conducted when little is known about a particular phenomenon • often employ a variety of research methods with the goal of learning more about a phenomenon, rather than making specific predictions • often have less structured methods • research questions are typically broad and open-ended and hypotheses are uncommon

22. descriptive studies • focus on documenting and describing a particular phenomenon • main purpose is to provide benchmark descriptions and classifications • often used to inform other studies • may describe variables and correlations • may aim to build some sort of model or mid-range theory describing phenomenon

23. explanatory studies • research that attempts to test theory or develop a new accounting of why activities, events or relations occur as they do • examine the relationship between two or more variables with the goal of prediction and/or explanation • often concerned with establishing causality and because of this require variables of interest to be isolated and studied systematically

24. prediction vs. explanation • it is possible to build predictive models of events without actually understanding anything about WHY such event occur • very often researchers stop at prediction and do not pursue explanation

26. Neuman, W.L. (2009). Understanding research. Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon

27. Finding “known citations” • Select one of the citations on handout with your neighbor (these are all citations to journal articles) • Identify which journal the article is from • Using Google and/or the “E-JOURNALS” link from the library homepage, track down the full-text PDF of the article • Read through the abstract of the article • Note the components (purpose, research question, data collection & analysis method, findings) Pass out citations list

28. Will research always lead to accurate findings? Issue of reproducibility: “an analysis can be fully reproducible and still be wrong” “We have found that the most frequent failure in data analysis is mistaking the type of question being considered” (p. 1314) Measures of Quality

29. Validity Reliability is the study actually doing what it says it does internal validity, flaws within the study itself such as design problems or data collection problems external validity, extent to which you can generalize to a larger group or other contexts repeatability reliable across time, that is, wouldthe same researcher get the same results if he or she did the same study at a different time reliable across samples or across groups of people who are participating in the study

30. Pass out homework assignment Pass out “Analyzing a Research Article” handout Homework Assignment #1 • 5 throughout the semester – worth up to 3 points each (15% of grade) • 1st homework is “Analysis of Research Article” • select one of the research articles listed Jan 25 • access the PDF and read entire piece • analyze the study using “Analyzing Research Articles” handout, also listed on Jan 25 • address some not necessarily all of the criteria • product: 2-3 page evaluation; paragraph and/or bullets; email or print; due class time Mon, Feb 8