Understanding Research (2 page)
Read Understanding Research Online
Authors: Marianne Franklin
Others took time to read various versions of the manuscript, in whole or in part; offering concrete advice and suggestions from their own point of view, contributing examples and substantive material as well. First and foremost I’d like to thank Susan Banducci for her contribution, not only for the part she played in the genesis and development of the book’s rationale but also her input on specific topics: the nuances of quantitative research, supervision, ways of coping, research design, and politics. Her unflinching eye as dispassionate reader of a substantial part of the manuscript early on and her generous sharing of teaching resources and her own research experience have been formative and inspiring. The wit, pragmatism, and perspicacity she has brought to our conversations about these matters over the years are also greatly appreciated. I hope that the book does justice to these ongoing discussions.
My gratitude also to Zeena Feldman, Zab Franklin, Zlatan Krajina, Marieke Riethof, and Yu-Kei Tse for their invaluable reading of the final draft; whose observations, editorial suggestions, and quizzings made a big difference just in time. A number of colleagues along with former and current research students provided an equally important input to the development of my thinking and writing. To James Curran, Nick Couldry, and David Morley my thanks for the institutional-level
support for the book’s approach and the spirit in which it is written. My thanks to Asad Asaduzzaman, Kath Geraghty, Jowan Mahmod, and Dong-Hyun Song for raising important issues during their Ph.D. research. Thanks as well to Keith Hubbard for all those weird and wonderful web-links, and to Marcia Pacheco and Richard Mulindwa-Kavuma (M.A. cohort 2010) for their pertinent inquiries and encouraging words along the way.
To Pierre Florac, Zab Franklin, Taka Hosoda, Jochen Jacoby, David Reynolds (my ‘let’s get writing’ pal), Pollyanna Stokoe, Belinda Watt, and Claire Young, I am very grateful for all the on-the-hoof input, positive energy, and attention to my well-being. My gratitude to Tadgh O’Sullivan for his intuition and indexing services that went beyond the call of duty. And a very special thanks to all those artists who have generously allowed reproduction of their cartoons and strips for our enjoyment.
Sections in
Chapter 3
and
Chapter 5
draw on previously published material: Franklin, M. I., 2010, ‘Media Research in the 21st Century’, in
Journalism: Cutting Edge Commentaries on the Critical Issues Facing Journalism at the Practical, Theoretical and Media Industry Level
, Paul Lashmar (ed.), London: Henry Stewart Talks Ltd,
www.hstalks.com/?t=MM107256S-Franklin
; Franklin, M. I., 2009, ‘Sex, Gender and Cyberspace’, in
Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations
, Laura Shepherd (ed.), London and New York: Routledge, 328–49.
Finally, I dedicate this book to all my students – past, present, and future.
Without their questions, crises, disappointments, challenges, relief and satisfaction on completing their various research projects, this book would never have got off the ground let alone written.
Amsterdam
26 August 2011
Thanks are due to the following copyright holders for permission to reproduce their work: Nina Paley, for
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Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future edition of this book.
Introduction
Topics covered in this chapter:
- Aims and objectives
- Who should read this book
- Using the book in context
- What is
academic
research? - On divides – real and imagined
- Key concepts and their various uses
- Chapter organization
Successfully completing a research project is a major milestone in a postgraduate, and many an undergraduate university degree. It is also the cornerstone of an academic career. Research in the round is both process and product; it has an important temporal element (starts and finishes), practical limitations (know-how and want-to) and intellectual puzzles (why), which together have cumulative benefits that reach beyond more pressing requirements to get the end-result out the door. In traditional academic terms, the objective is often the successful completion of an academic dissertation. More advanced research projects are disseminated as published and accredited research reports, conference papers, journal articles, books or, increasingly these days, in web-based formats. At various stages progress – and outcomes – also need to be communicated, formally and informally in oral or written form, to various audiences. Designing and then getting through a piece of research seldom proceeds in a tidy straight line upwards. Success is defined as much by our
completing the project (at all if not on time) as well as how others rate the outcome of our efforts.
This book treats these at times conflicting demands in four respects. First, it looks at those decisions we all need to make along a certain path that has a point of destination in mind and the implications of these decisions in the longer term where apposite. Second, it unpacks these issues as they emerge at key points in the execution and production of a research project; specific techniques and tools for gathering and then analysing the ‘data’, broadly defined, and how bringing these two aspects together in some sort of coherent way relate to philosophical and practical issues; the ‘theory–method relationship’; intellectual allegiances; and shifts in our own research identities for instance.
Third, the book identifies key moments of disagreement, overlap, and potentially mutual benefit for students working at different vantage-points along the
quantitative–qualitative divide
underscoring popular and scholarly debates about the social relevance of academic research. This dividing line weaves its way through and between departments, disciplines, and institutional geographies in various ways. What counts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ science, the right way of conducting a research project, and the best way to communicate the outcomes frequently pivot on conflicting ideas about the role played by ways of gathering and presenting quantifiable (the ‘power of numbers’) or qualitative (the ‘power of ideas’) sorts of knowledge.
These disagreements also pepper methods textbooks, fuel ongoing theoretical debates, inflect employment and funding opportunities, and underscore reiterations of the ‘war of the worlds’ and related
paradigm shifts
in the history of western science.
1
The corollary division made between qualitative and quantitative modes of research lies at the heart of much confusion and frustration for researchers, experienced and starting-out, during the life-cycle of a research project. Talking about
understanding
research encompasses ways of thinking, general skills, and specialized techniques for gathering and analysing material, the formative role played by worldviews, and academic idioms. It means coming to terms with such divides; in their stricter and more flexible formulations as well as their interdisciplinary and
intra
disciplinary contours.
What all approaches have in common nevertheless is an awareness of the varying pressures of time factors (all those deadlines), practical obligations (‘do I
have
to?!’), and intellectual genealogies (whose ideas count, and why) confronting any researcher in any setting. Completing small and larger research projects, as a novice or experienced researcher, seldom proceeds snag-free. Progress is more often measured in fits and starts, clarity of thought and precision of the knowledge produced looking more like a spiral that is, hopefully, not a downward one. Onlookers and new arrivals to academic research often assume that on the other side of this entry-threshold all research unfolds in the same way; once you complete the first project, theory or methods course to good effect, all subsequent ones will fall into place. Working realities soon prove this assumption to be wrong, particularly for those looking to advance up a degree level.
So, in a fourth respect this book is about developing ways of
coping
with a divide that is both real and imagined; its experiential, institutional, and conceptual variations. And, where possible, finding sustainable ways of building bridges along the way
by treating research in a holistic and not simply compartmentalized way; understanding the professional and personal dimensions in a wider context whilst working to complete a project in the immediate term in a satisfactory way and with a sense of achievement.
A key premise of this book is that no matter what your educational background, intellectual identity, or hands-on skill-base may be (e.g. in market research), the way this divide works for and against effectively completing an academic piece of independent research is useful to consider from both sides. A second premise is that all research undertakings entail a degree of adaptation, adoption, flexibility, and pragmatism in actual practice. The book has been conceived as a real-time ‘rough guide’ to academic research. Both theoretically informed and consciously pragmatic, it is a companion volume to the diverse generalist and specialist literature on ways to conduct research in contemporary academic settings. To this end, it provides research students – and their supervisors – both commentary and practical advice on how to deal with seemingly intractable differences about the best way to begin, execute, and communicate the outcome of a research project at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and social sciences; differences that can be passionately defended on a personal and institutional level in everyday research practice.
With
coping
the keyword for these broad aims, the main goal of the book is to enable you to complete a research project in good time and in such a way that you can do so to the best of your abilities and as far as your own personal ambitions allow. This breaks down into the following objectives:
- Describe, contextualize, and update key distinctions and overlaps between
qualitative
and
quantitative
approaches to academic research in historical context. - Unpack and analyse these distinctions, and intersections with respect to the tightrope that spans theoretical debates, everyday research practicalities, and the milestones you need to get through to complete a research project; e.g. choosing a topic, constructing a research question, doing the ‘empirical’ part, analysing, and presenting the findings.
- Develop a holistic and pragmatic approach to creative thinking and puzzle-solving when faced with the diversity of methods – ways of gathering and analysing your ‘data’; as self-contained or consciously combined methods.
- Provide explanations of specific research skills (how to) with the analytical tools (understanding why) necessary for scenarios where competing approaches can have consequences for seminar presentations, job placements, research funding, and publication.
- Outline existing and emerging ethical issues around the research process, formal and unwritten codes of conduct. Understanding methods, along and despite this divide requires a greater awareness of ethical considerations for doing research in increasingly computer-mediated and international – viz.
globalized
– research settings.
A caveat: this book is not setting out to trivialize what are diverging research paths in many oter respects or provide a comforting drop-down menu of methods, as if these decisions can be made in a vacuum, de-linked from institutional as well as sociocultural, political or economic considerations. Rigorous scholarship, by any standards, and supermarket-shopping are not one and the same thing. What it does provide is a focused and open-ended approach to understanding research as both process and product.
Even when both feet are firmly in one disciplinary or methodological camp or another, where their respective ways of doing things and value hierarchies set the priorities, this book can help student researchers keep a sense of perspective. It will help you articulate what your research is about in ways that make sense to you and your supervisor or examiners, adhering to mandatory assessment criteria yet resonating with more philosophical conversations accordingly. The point is to provide ways of working through rather than be stumped by entrenched positions on divisions that can and do matter to the successful completion of an original piece of research.
Students undertaking independent research projects as part of a degree programme, from undergraduate through to Ph.D. level, bring to this task previous education and even work experience based on a variety of approaches to gaining knowledge. Some have had technical training or experience in statistical (i.e. purely quantitative) analysis whilst others may come with characteristically qualitative educational backgrounds in literature, the performing arts, and anthropology for instance. Others, particularly from the US, have received exclusively, or a combination of, liberal arts and social science education; others again arrive well versed in western and non-western philosophical thought.
Primarily this book is tailored for any student undertaking an original research project, from final year bachelor, through master-level dissertation students, through to Ph.D. students, with various degrees of previous knowledge, experience, and confidence levels.
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There is a second readership in mind: research supervisors and tutors, some of whom may also be students completing research for advanced qualifications, or teaching staff striking out in new research directions of their own.
To students
: The book speaks to you in two respects, whether or not you classify yourself as an ‘absolute beginner’, ‘dummy’, or ‘advanced postgraduate’. It provides practical clues for those of you who may be well versed in broader, more abstract philosophical or theoretical frameworks but who are struggling with practical decisions about how to get these off the ground in terms of the ‘what’ of research let alone
how
to go about it. Second, it is aimed at those of you who, whilst you have a clear object of inquiry, case-study, issue-area and even ‘method’ of choice, start to come unstuck when you need to communicate, make sense of your choices for others in practical and, by association, conceptual terms.
At the same time I will be alerting you to some of the tough debates residing between the lines, particularly in light of how quickly student researchers identify with one approach, over-hastily putting unfamiliar techniques or ideas into the ‘not
my
thing –
your
thing’ or ‘no-can-do’ box; staking claims for ‘newness’ or transcendental critiques of the ‘mainstream’ by recourse to
ad hominem
or
strawman
arguments.
3
The book provides a way forward in what is a competitive context for obtaining university degrees in such a way that enhances your ability to remain intellectually curious and not afraid of collaboration; both of these tend to be penalized if they are recognized at all.
To supervisors
: The aim here is to provide support, and additional pointers for getting around the daily impasses, misunderstandings, and frustrations that can arise when advising students in mixed departments, those where references to research skills or methods is either a highly contentious issue or a deceptively non-existent one. The book articulates some of the often unspoken conundrums of the supervision process itself and our role as working researchers, supervisors, and teachers looking to enable students to get on with their research, and ways to get on with our own work. It provides a handy reference to familiar key issues, the latest literature, and intellectual support that affirms as well as informs you in your own research or when supervising others.
Based on a ‘dialogic’ understanding of teaching and learning (see Franklin and Wilkinson 2011), the discussions and puzzles presented here do tend to assume a certain ‘ideal type’ of research project and model research student. However, it would not be unfair to note that many students completing university-level research projects today simply want to tick the boxes, and get the project over and done with. Likewise that many supervisors want their research students to think for themselves and indeed ‘get on with it’. For both readerships, this book provides you with the basis for ticking those boxes and getting on as well as a look into some of the rich debates, challenging ideas and specific challenges that are also an integral part of effective and satisfying academic research work.