DEMO8082
Social Research Practice
Co-ordinator: Dr Bruce Smyth
Units: 6
Semester: 2
Compulsory for MSR
Recommended: DEMO8061 Social Research Design is recommended before taking Social Research Practice, but it is not a prerequisite.
Note: students not enrolled in the Master of Social Research or the Graduate Certificate in Social Research require permission of the Masters Coordinator, Dr Robert Ackland, to enrol in this course. Please contact him on adsri.study@anu.edu.au.
Syllabus
Close links exist between policy, practice and research. Yet data are often not available to help inform policy and/or practice. The ability to conduct high quality research in applied settings constitutes a set of skills that continue to be highly sought by government and non-government agencies, industry, and academia more generally.
This course aims to provide students with a solid understanding of each phase in the life of a research project – conception, scoping, planning, doing, finalisation – and the way in which the components within each phase fit together. The course is applied in nature, and features the use of several software applications, including flowchart and timeline software, and bibliographic referencing tools. The course seeks to complement related research methodology courses offered in the Master of Social Research. It aims to provide the conceptual framework to help students develop and manage their own research projects – for post-graduate research or for use in external applied settings.
Course Topics
1. Examples of social research; the lifecycle of a project; finding a topic.
2. Scoping: framing research questions, defining and operationalising key concepts; developing a research design.
3. Finding information and data sources; writing a literature review.
4. Costings/budgets; timelines; finding funding; commissioning research; risk analysis; dealing with stakeholders.
5. Ethical social research; writing an ethics proposal
6. Fixed research designs (eg surveys).
7. Flexible research designs (eg field interviews).
8. Mixed-methods.
9. Sampling and recruitment.
10. Unobtrusive research.
11. Assessing the quality of research.
12. Dissemination strategies; dealing with the media.
13. Finalising a research project.
Texts
Required:
W Lawrence Neuman (2006), Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (sixth edition)
Recommended:
de Vaus, D.A. (2002), Surveys in Social Research (5th edition), Allen and Unwin, Sydney
Robson, C. (2002), Real world research (2nd edition), Blackwell, London
Assessment
Attendance, reading & participation: 10% [pass essential to pass the course]
Assignment 1 – Literature review: 20%
Assignment 2 – Ethics application: 25%
Assignment 3 – Research proposal: 25%
Exam: 20%
Course Aims
This course aims to provide students with a solid understanding of each phase in the life of a research project – conception, scoping, planning, doing, finalisation – and the way in which the components within each phase fit together.
Student Skills Objectives
On successful completion of this course, students will able to:
- demonstrate an understanding of the various phases in the life of a research project, and the components within each phase
- frame research questions or testable hypotheses, and define and operationalise key concepts in their research
- propose some research designs that are appropriate for their research question(s) or hypotheses
- write a concept brief or research proposal, including a literature review
- demonstrate a capacity to evaluate their own and others’ research proposals and research
- articulate some of the most important ethical principles underpinning social research, and be able to write an ethics proposal
- understand the factors and processes that can jeopardise the successful completion of a project.
