Research Methods in Social Sciences

- Common ASB Postgraduate Research Course -

Course Overview Building on Intellectual Foundations of Social Sciences course, this course aims to extend and deepen the understanding of different research approaches and methodologies in the social sciences and to develop skills for applying different research methods in the broad range of business and management disciplines. This course will prepare students to develop their research proposals and guide them through the process of identifying and formulating research problems, conducting literature review, choosing a theoretical perspective that will inform the methodology, selection of research strategy and design and the application of particular research methods of data gathering and analysis.

Objectives This course aims to:

1. Achieve deeper understanding of theoretical perspectives and epistemological assumptions underpinning different research approaches and methodologies in social sciences research;

2. Advance knowledge in different research methodologies, and specific research methods and techniques of data collection and analysis, theory building or testing, etc.;

3. Develop research skills required for planning and executing research projects, including conducting literature review, articulating research questions, justifying a research approach and methodology, designing a study and selecting specific methods and techniques appropriate for answering the questions; conducting data collection, analysing data and presenting research results.

Teaching Methods and Assessment This course combines lectures, seminars, debates, group work, workshops, and student presentations. It assumes active students’ participation in and contribution to class activities. Therefore, participants are expected to have read the assigned chapters and papers as well as other related materials of their choice, to prepare for class each week. ‘Reading’ means a thorough study that enables discussion and active participation during class time. Students are expected to contribute to class discussion on a regular basis. There will be four assessment items: 1) preparation for class sheets (10%), 2) a research paper critique (10%), 3) mid term exam in week 8 (50%) and a research proposal assignment (20%).

Required Texts Neuman, W.L. (2006) Social Research Methods—Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, 6th ed., Allyn and Bacon, Boston. Crotty, M. (1998) The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, Allen & Unwin. In addition to the textbooks selected papers (covering different disciplines) will be provided for each topic. Content: 1. Introduction to research methods in social sciences The nature of research Types of research with examples from organisation studies, management, accounting,

marketing, finance, information systems, etc. Why conduct research? Research journals and conferences How to read and critique a research paper?

2. Research problems and how to explore them Examples of research problems examined by papers in different business/management

disciplines Literature review and how to conduct it Theory and research; types of theories Research process, research designs What is research methodology?

Tutorial on conducting literature search Workshop on writing a literature review 3. Research paradigms and approaches – assumptions of positivist, interpretivist and

critical approach Notion of paradigms (Kuhn 1970; Burrell and Morgan 1979); paradigm wars; critique

of paradigms Research approaches – an overview Eight questions answered differently by different research approaches (Neuman,

2006): o Why should one conduct social scientific research? o What is the fundamental nature of social reality? (the ontological question) o What is the basic nature of human beings? o What is the relationship between science and common sense? o What constitutes an explanation or theory of social reality?

o How does one determine whether an explanation is true or false? o What does good evidence or factual information look like? o Where do sociopolitical values enter into science?

Paradigm debates in business disciplines (e.g. accounting: Chua, 1984; IS: Orlikowski, 1991; social sciences: Deetz, 1996)

4. Quantitative research methods Philosophical foundation of positivism and neo-positivism How to conduct a positivist research study? Survey based research Experimental research Positivist case study

5. Survey based research Logic of survey research, types of surveys Defining variables and developing a model Measuring variable and developing hypothesis Constructing and testing survey instruments Sampling and its implications Administering survey, response rate issues

6. Statistical modelling techniques Research model and hypothesis testing Descriptive statistics Statistical association Inferential statistics Statistical packages (overview) Selected statistical packages tutorials (SPSS, PLS, etc.) Experimental research workshop Survey research workshop

7. Qualitative research methods Philosophical foundations of interpretivism, hermeneutics, phenomenology,

ethnomethodology, social constructivism, and linguistic approaches Case and field studies Ethnographies Action research Principles for conducting and evaluating qualitative research

8. Ethnographic research Characteristics and types of ethnographies in organisational research Reflexivity and emic and etic perspectives Conducting ethnographic research Ethnographic analysis Presenting ethnographic research

9. Grounded theory Assumptions and approaches in Grounded theory (GT) Collection of rich data Coding in GT Theoretical sampling, saturation and theory building GT studies in organization, management, marketing, accounting, IS etc. literature Workshop on qualitative data analysis – grounded theory and thematic coding Workshop on interviewing techniques Workshop on computer assisted qualitative data analysis

10. Critical research Critical Theory informed research Critical Management Studies (CMS) Theoretical developments in CMS

11. Cross-paradigm and multi method research Theoretical and practical issues in cross-paradigm and multi method research Multi-disciplinary research New developments in organization/management/marketing/accounting/IS etc research

12. Writing the research report From research question to research design – justifying your methodology Research report structure Writing strategies

Positivist approaches

Interpretiveapproaches

Critical researchapproaches

QUANTITATIVE METHODS

QUALITATIVE METHODS

Survey techniques

Experimentalresearch

Interviewtechniques

Survey based

research

Positivist case study

Field studyInterpretivistcase study

Philosophical assumptions and paradigms

Documentanalysis

DiscourseanalysisText

analysisFocusgroups

Grounded theory

EthnographyAction

research

Research techniques

The nature of data and data processing methods

Updated proposal drafted by Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic Update: 30 Sept 2008