Week 6: Reading and Evaluating Research
February 23rd, 2009 Coye
It often seems that there are as many research methodologies as there are disciplines. When you are in an interdisciplinary field such as ours, this can be very frustrating. This week we aim to cut through all the assumptions about what quantitative and qualitative methods are “used for” or “not used for” and instead ask a simple question: what kind of research problems can be addressed with different research methodologies? On Tuesday we will devote half of our time to talking about research problems and justifications, and the other half to interpreting and using qualitative research. We have an especially good reading as an example this week (Beamtimes and Lifetimes is an excellent ethnography of particle physicists), so we hope you will come armed with questions and comments. On Thursday we shift to research problems that make use of quantitative methodologies. We have a short introductory reading about inferential statistical methods (for context), and then a recent article that uses survey methods and statistics to examine the relationship between Internet use and earnings in the U.S.
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