Alternatives to SocialResearch

AuthorityTradition

‘Common sense’Media Myths

PersonalExperience

Why do women tend to dothe laundry?

Authority: Experts say that female children aretaught to care for others.

Tradition: Women have always done thehousework in society.

Commonsense: Men aren’t so concerned about their appearance as women so it makes sense

Media myth: TV ads often show women enjoyingdoing the laundry so they must think it’s fun.

Personal experience: "My mother, and all my friends’ mothers have always done it."

Uses of Research

• Justify current practice• Demonstrate ‘need’ for resource claims

• Evaluation of practice• Describe dimension of issue• Identify Causal connections

• Understand patterns of people’s thinking,• opinions, values, attitudes and behaviour• Develop new explanatory frameworks or

• concepts.

First Steps

• An “out of the ordinary” observation• An “aha” observation.

• A gut feeling of unease.• A feeling of confusion about an issue.

• A critical, challenging moment.• Simple curiosity.

Examples of Research Prompts

• We’ve had complaints about youth hanging around the shopping mall. Maybe

we need to build a skate park?• We’ve had some complaints of bullying at

school. How can we encourage teachers to be more rigorous in applying the

discipline policy?

Question the question

• What assumptions underlie the initial question?

• Are the assumptions influence by your values?

• Are the assumptions valid?• Are the assumptions based on some

broader theoretical framework or potentially unrecognised world outlook?

Types of Explanations

• Causal - cause and effect• Structural - how does this fit with that• Interpretive – understanding meanings

and subjective worldviews• Dialectical - understanding things as

they change

Importance of Literature Review

A literature review must do these things:

1. be organized around and related directly to the thesis or research question you are developing2. synthesize results into a summary of what is

and is not known3. identify areas of controversy in the literature

4. formulate questions that need further research

Basic Research Design & Implementation Process

1. Identify initial Research Question/Issue2. Question assumptions

3. Undertake Literature Review of Area4. Redesign research questions

5. Choose research Methodology6. Identify sources of information & collect data.

7. Analyse data8. Interpret data

9. Inform and act.