This course is intended as a first step for learners who seek to become producers of social science research. It is organized as an introduction to the design and execution of a research study. It introduces the key elements of a proposal for a research study, and explains the role of each. It reviews the major types of qualitative and quantitative data used in social science research, and then introduces some of the most important sources of existing data available freely or by application, worldwide and for China. The course offers an overview of basic principles in the design of surveys, including a brief introduction to sampling. Basic techniques for quantitative analysis are also introduced, along with a review of common challenges that arise in the interpretation of results. Professional and ethical issues that often arise in the conduct of research are also discussed. The course concludes with an introduction to the options for further study available to the interested student, and an overview of the key steps involved in selecting postgraduate programs and applying for admission. Learners who complete the course will be able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue advanced studies, and should be adequately prepared to write an application for postgraduate study that exhibits basic understanding of key aspects of social science research paradigms and methodologies. Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a producer of social science research. Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU Part 1 should be completed before taking this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-study-chinese-society
1.6 Methodology
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From the course by The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 2
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The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 2
ratings
From the lesson
Designing a Study
Welcome to Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 2! Part 2 focuses on being a PRODUCER of Social Science Research. Take some time to review the course overview, assignments for this course and say hello in the discussion forum.
Meet the Instructors
Cameron CampbellProfessor of Social Science
Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Science
[MUSIC] Hi, in this module I'm going to introduce the methodology or methods section of a research proposal. Every research proposal must describe the methodology that is to be employed in the study.
And, in particular, the discussion should focus on how challenges of the sort that we talked about in part one of this class will be addressed by the methods. Remember that in part one we talked about a lot of the challenges to drawing conclusions in a social science study. Problems with omitted variables, problems with reverse causality. And we have to convince our audience that we can actually address these problems by whatever methodology we are going to employ. This is also where by referring back to the literature or background section we will highlight any differences between the methods that we propose to employ and the ones that have been proposed or used in other studies.
We may often provide examples of successful studies that use the methodologies that we propose to employ. Studies that perhaps were carried out in other contexts, this is a way of showcasing the usefulness of the methods that we proposed to employ.
Now this basic goals for the methodology section hold, regardless of whether the study is qualitative or quantitative.
So a few basic questions for the methodology section to address. One is how well the methods in the propose study
improve on those in previous studies? What are the known limitations of the methods, and why are they not issues in the specific case at hand. Almost any research methodology that we can imagine qualitative or quantitative has known limitations. And we have to explain why we think that it's safe to not worry about them in the study that we're about to conduct.
And then we have to talk about how the methods that we are going to use address or deal with known limitations of the data. So when we talking about the data, we maybe noting again we'll come back to this in the next module. But our discussion of the data may actually identify problems with the data certain kind of people omitted, certain kinds of events or information left out.
And here is where we have to anticipate those problems, and talk about how the methods that we're going to employ will overcome those problems or at least not be affected by them. And most of the time we would like to talk in our section on methodology about how the methods that we hope to employ will help us make some claims about cause and effect. As we learned about in part one there are specific methods that source of science researches are often use to try to come with decisive or conclusive findings of cause and effect relationships. And we may talk about those in this section.
And finally, we have to justify our choice of methods over other possible choices of methods. So it's not typically sufficient in a discussion of methodology simply to lay out exactly what we plan to do. But we have to again explain why we chose to use that particular approach as opposed to other possible approaches. For any problem that we might be interested in, there are probably multiple approaches, qualitative or quantitative, that could be used to study the problem. And we have to convince our audience that whatever we have chosen to do Is the best fit for the task at hand.
Now if we're talking about quantitative methods there's a few specific things we have to keep in mind when we write our methodology section. We have to talk about what our outcome variable is. Again, the earlier parts of the proposal, especially the discussion of theory may have talked in very general terms about relationships. And the statement of the hypothesis may have suggested what the indicators or what variables would be used to measure the concepts that we were trying to relate to each other. But here is where we might go into detail On the outcome variable. So when a study of education, and health we might describe now in considerable detail the measure that we are going to use in our, later when we get to our data. The measure that we're going to use to describe health.
We may also here discuss the control variables that we are going to include in our analysis if we are running what is referred to as a regression analysis. So if you take an introductory statistics course, you'll almost certainly be exposed to regression and you'll know that you have to choose control variables. We talked about this in part one. To be included on the right-hand side of your estimation. This is where, in general terms, you'll talk about the variables that you want to control for in your model. You'll justify your choice of control variables.
And then, having laid out our outcome variables and our control variables, we have to explain why they comply with basic assumptions that are required by the statistical models that we may be implying. Again, if you take a basic or advanced course on statistical regression you'll know that for the regression to work for the models to be estimated reliably, certain assumptions have to hold about the distributions and other characteristics of the outcome and the right hand side variables. And this is where we have to acknowledge any problems that might be there and essentially argue that they are not a problem.
So if the variables don't appear to comply with our restrictions or our restrictions or assumptions, then we have to convince the audience that this is not a concern.
And finally this is where we will talk about how different possible patterns of results might be consistent with different possible hypothesis. So this is where we lay out, in terms of out actual indicators, our actual measures, what relationships we expect to see in the real world, in our data, in detail if our hypothesis are actually correct. For qualitative research, the method searching for the research proposal is just as important. There are several goals of the method section when we're talking about qualitative research. One is to introduce the criteria for the selection of the cases. Now remember back in literature or background section, we talked about whether not the cases were representative. But here is actually were you try justify the selection of those cases. By referring back to the literature and background section, and try to talk about how these particular cases will give us some insights into perhaps broader or wider diversity of contexts. So for example if we've selected a village or a set of villages or perhaps neighborhoods in which to conduct our qualitative research. And in the literature in the background section we've already talked about the issue of representativeness and we've identified distinguishing feature of these settings. Here is where we actually try to argue that by studying these particular settings these villages, these neighborhoods, etc. We can actually learn something about. Other context beyond again specific ones that we're studying.
Another important feature of the method section in a proposal for qualitative research. If multiple cases are to be considered is the discussion of how the cases are similar, and how they are different. Because in qualitative research, quite often the approach is to compare cases, and look for similarities and differences. Qualitative resources that involves the comparison of cases quite often seeks cases that are as similar as possible on dimensions not relevant to the focus of the study but differ on the dimensions that are of interest for the purposes of testing our theory. So, for example, if we are conducting studies of villages in order to try to understand the implications of particular forms of family organization, particular marriage customs. We might want to select a variety of villages that are broadly similar in terms of other dimensions. Their geographic context, climate crops and so forth and try to pick some villages that differ primarily in terms of their marriage customs. And then through our field work, we compare these villages and then try to elucidate the implications for the differences in marriage customs for other features of village social organization that we're interested in. Hopefully, that gives us some insight into the implications of marriage customs more generally for social or economic organization.
We'll also in this section talk about what the criteria are for comparing cases and reaching conclusions.
When it comes to qualitative research, there is a great diversity of methodologies that scholars employ for conducting research just as there is for quantitative research. So here is where you need to identify the Specific type of qualitative methodology that you plan to employ and justify that choice of methodology over other possible choices.
So here I've tried to sketch out a list of very broad terms what the key goals of the methodology section of a research proposal are. Basically the most important goal is to convince the audience that you have thought very carefully about your choice of method and that it is the best possible method, the best fit for the particular task at hand.
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