Understanding Research (46 page)

Informed consent
  This is the means by which, usually based on a signed form, a researcher makes clear to anyone they wish to interview, survey, or perform and experiment on, what the purpose of the research is; a cornerstone of codes of ethics in all areas of social research and the medical sciences.

Margin of error
  When ascertaining whether the outcome of a set of measurements is statistically significant (see M. Davies 2007: 246
passim
), an acceptable margin of error needs to be taken into account in your analysis. Conventionally this is set at 5 per cent. In other words, this indicates that only 1 in 20 instances has arisen by chance. This is the baseline for ascertaining whether the relationship or finding (e.g. survey result) is indeed significant and not a random occurrence.

Minitel
  A videotext precursor to the world-wide web designed in France and made available in the late 1980s and early 1990s through the French public telephone network.

Mixed methods
  This term, currently popular in social research, refers to methodologies where more than one sort of data-gathering and analysis is used; e.g. surveys and content analysis. They usually include both quantitative and qualitative modes, with one or the other predominating according to the underlying worldview and theoretical influences of the project’s rationale. See
hybrid research
.

Narrative research
  This approach investigates how people make sense of their world through stories – narratives. It draws on the oral history tradition as well as
hermeneutic understandings of meaning-making as a personal and intersubjective activity; e.g. narrative interview work lays the stress on the interviewee being allowed to ‘tell their story’, with little input from the researcher.

Nearest neighbour
  An algorithm for calculating and classifying patterns of relationships. The term is also found in content analysis coding looking to examine the occurrence of target collocations (word pairs). For instance, word pairs in which a term, such as ‘boys’ or ‘homeless’, is linked to a negative reference, such as ‘anti-social behaviour’ or ‘disgusting’, respectively.

Paradigm shift
  See also
incommensurability
. According to Thomas Kuhn (1962), major changes in the history of science come about when scholars as a community undergo a major change in their way of thinking – when the ‘disciplinary matrix’ by which they observe phenomena alters in such a way as to transform the enterprise. Such changes are incremental in Kuhn’s view: they occur over time and through debate, although they can come about through a major discovery. The term has been adopted in the humanities and social sciences to denote more localized moments when mindsets, ways of doing research or articulating key issues, undergo change or are subject to fundamental criticism.

Parsimoniousness
  A particular view of theory-building in which ‘less is more’. In political science and international relations theory, this school of thought sees theory as hypothesis-testing – a quantitative rather than an interpretative, language-based undertaking.

Participatory action research
  This approach, part of
action research
modes of research, puts the emphasis on research subjects also participating in the investigation; to what extent depends on prior as well as ongoing agreements made with the principle researcher or team during the project. In these projects ethical considerations and implications are central to the design, execution and discussion of the findings.

Peer-to-peer sharing
  (
P2P
) A term that refers to the sharing of information online within a community of like-minded participants, pioneered by tools that enable the easy downloading and sharing of music, and nowadays films, television and other media. P2P practices and their legal implications for intellectual property rights have come to characterize debates about the social and economic impact of ‘social media’ since the first decade of the century. See also
Web 2.0
.

Postcolonial research
  The decolonisation period of the mid-twentieth century, together with the civil rights and women’s movements, brought to the fore a range of new themes and critiques of western academe as part of the legacy of previous colonial empires. Postcolonial studies in literature departments brought non-western writers and thinkers onto the curriculum and discussed racialized tropes and stereotypes in the literary and academic canon. Postcolonial research across the disciplinary spectrum continues in this spirit by studying communities, individuals and events in former colonies and their postcolonial populations. It also looks at how race, gender, and class differentials affect the demography and substance of scholarly knowledge and scientific inquiry in academic institutions largely based on the Anglo-Euro-American model. See also
feminist research, deconstruction
.

Probability sampling
  See
random sampling
.

Psychoanalysis
  Founded by Sigmund Freud a century ago, this school of thought
and clinical practice considers human behaviour and actions through the workings of the unconscious. It is diametrically opposed to
behavioural
models in that it considers that human actions require decoding, interpretation. Psychoanalysis as a research tradition, theoretical pursuit, and profession has had a long history and has led to a wide variety of offshoots (e.g. Jungian or Kleinian psychoanalysis) and competing schools (e.g. ‘neo-Freudian’, ‘post-Freudian’).

Random sampling
  Also known as probability sampling. Large-scale survey research is based on the principle that participants are selected randomly, i.e. that each member of that population has an equal chance of being selected (at least at the start in the event of multi-stage sampling), to ensure that a sample is as representative as possible in order to be able to generalize. If a survey is carried out on a sample in which participants are selected by non-random means, then claims based on statistical probability outcomes do not make sense. Only when probability samples have been established can probability theory be applied to estimations of the population’s parameters and statistical analysis of the findings (see
margin of error
).

Reliability
  This term applies to consistency in the administration, calculating, and internal scoring of a research instrument, e.g. a survey questionnaire or coding scheme. Reliable instruments need to be internally consistent (e.g. a coding scheme yields the same results for different coders most of the time), reliable for different time periods (e.g. a survey from one year to the next) and not susceptible to ambiguity or errors of measurement. Reliability in qualitative research refers to the relative transparency and attention to detail the researcher pays to articulating and outlining their methodological design, as well as the way they approach their analysis of the material. See also
replicability
.

Replicability
  The principle by which a research project should be designed in order that it can be executed in the same way by someone else, thus enabling an experiment to be replicated in order to test the original findings, or a survey to be administered in another place or later date for comparison or evaluation.

Rich description
  A term, synonymous with ‘thick description’, that characterizes anthropological research reports, or those based on ethnographic fieldwork. Close attention to detail governs the narrative account of the research and findings: personalities, sensations, sounds, relationships, rituals. This term designates the form of observation and engagement during the research as well as a genre of writing within the anthropological tradition.

Sample
  A selection, whether produced randomly or by other means (e.g.
snowballing
samples), of a population of individuals, objects, or occurrences (e.g. phrases) for the purposes of the study.

Semiotics
  A tradition of linguistic research that concentrates on the way language is structured in order to ascertain how meaning is generated and conveyed through these linguistic structures. The various schools of semiotic method see all human-generated language (speech and written) as made up of patterns, e.g. signs and symbol systems, or codes, which can be broken down for analytical purposes. See
structuralism
.

Snowballing
  A sampling technique, useful for smaller-scale surveys or semi-structured interview designs, by which the researcher generates a sample from a
population generated by personal or professional contacts, e.g. friends or classmates, who then provide their contacts, and so on.

Statistical significance
  See
random sampling, correlation coefficient
.

Structuralism
  This is an analytical approach as well as a disciplinary tradition in sociology and other social sciences in which social, cultural, political and economic phenomena are explained by reference to larger (macro) structures on the one hand and, on the other, underlying (micro) ones. Microbiology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, sociology and psychology have all been heavily influenced by structuralist accounts of human morphologies, meaning-making, culture, society, and human behaviour. Explaining the social and physical as the result of large-scale, linguistic, or microscopic structures alone has been consistently critiqued by post-structuralist approaches across academia which contend the determinism of structuralist accounts.

Terms of use
  The
end-user license agreement
includes the terms of use – part of the contractual conditions a manufacturer or software owner sets, and needing a user’s agreement before downloading or play can begin.

Triangulation
  Borrowed from trigonometry and land surveying, this term in social research refers to a researcher using more than one data source or data-gathering approach in order to check a claim or strengthen the findings, from checking the robustness of a conceptual definition or statistical reference from multiple sources (e.g. not relying entirely on Wikipedia) to consciously combining data-gathering methods in order to gain a more rounded picture of the object of study.

Usenet
  One of the earliest forms of social networking – online forums, still in existence today. News lists for interest-based communities of users are based on Usenet’s network of computer servers.

Validity
  In quantitative research, ‘measurement validity’ refers to whether the indicator being used actually measures what it is intended to measure. This is distinct from reliability, in that whilst the indicator in question could be reliable (consistent and thus replicable) it is not actually the appropriate form of measurement. ‘Internal validity’ refers to ascertaining whether a research design can establish causation as it intends to do.

Variable
  A measurable characteristic or category. See
dependent variable, independent variable
.

Variance
  When repeating a procedure, variance is the calculation of any differences recorded.

VOIP
  ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’ is the means by which people can telephone each other over the internet, as opposed to using traditional telecommunications networks. At present much cheaper than using the telephone for long distance phone calls. At time of writing, Skype is the world leader in offering free, if not very cheap VOIP services.

Web 2.0
  This term designates the current generation of largely commercially maintained platforms – goods and services – that combine previously separately delivered and accessed services under one rubric or entry point. The convergence of these online media, offers users a level of interactivity combining services such as email, live chat, professional and personal contacts, and personal archives within a single integrated platform.

Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y. M., Johnston, A. I. and McDermott, R. (eds), 2009,
Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Adorno, T. W. (ed.), 1976,
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology
. London: Harper and Row.

Anderson, Benedict, 1991,
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
. Revised edition. London and New York: Verso.

Appadurai, Arjun, 2002, ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’,
Public Culture
2(2): 1–24.

Arendt, Hannah, 1953, ‘Understanding and Politics’,
Partisan Review
20(4): 377–92.

Baehr, Peter R., 1980, ‘The Dutch Foreign Policy Elite: A Descriptive Study of Perceptions and Attitudes’,
International Studies Quarterly
24(2): 223–61.

Barber, Benjamin R., 2006, ‘The Politics of Political Science: “Value-Free” Theory and the Wolin-Strauss Dust-Up of 1963’,
American Political Science Review
100(4): 539–45.

Barrass, Robert, 1982,
Students Must Write
. London: Methuen.

Barthes, Roland, 1981,
Camera Lucida
. New York: Hill and Wang.

Beauvoir, Simone de, 1949,
Le deuxième sexe
[The Second Sex]. Paris: Gallimard.

Becker, H. S., 1986,
Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book or Article
. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Benjamin, Walter, 1973 [1931], ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in
Walter Benjamin, Illuminations
, Hannah Arendt (ed.), London: Fontana Press, 211–44.

Berg, Bruce L., 2007,
Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences
. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.