The App is Available!

It is finally here! The app that will help walk you through the decision-making process of creating an original research project is now available for the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch! You can find it in the App Store by looking for (what else?) WTF Research!

Variables

Variables are things that vary.  That means that they will appear in different values when measured.  If your study is only on women, then gender is not a variable, right?  It's a constant because it does not vary, meaning it appears in only one value.  If you were to study both males and females, then gender (or actually sex) becomes a variable.

When testing a hypothesis, if you are making a nomothetic causal explanation (one that you hope to generalize to others), you will have an independent (cause) and a dependent (effect) variable.  What you are saying is that this variable, the IV, has created the change we have noted in the DV.  Sounds simple, right?  We measure those two variables and we have our answer!  So why do surveys have more than just two questions on them?

Questions asked on a quantitative survey are typically assessing a variable.  I mentioned gender, but other variables could be income, age, occupation, ethnicity, and so on.  None of those may be your IV or your DV.  So why bother measuring?  The reason that you may be asking about those items is that you want to make sure that those variables, which we call extraneous variables, aren't the ones that are causing the change that you are measuring.  By measuring them, you can hold them constant (control for) when conducting your statistical analysis.

Let's break this down further.  You want to know if adolescent females have more issues with body image than male adolescents.  You measure gender and then you measure attitudes towards his or her own body (you would probably do that using a scale, which is a series of questions that are tallied to provide a score.  I'll save those details for a later blog).  Using an independent t-test, you can tell if the scores on body image for females differ significantly from the males' scores.  However, is there anything else that could possibly cause this difference?  Could weight be a factor?  Age?  How about activities the person is involved with?  If you think that any of those could be causing the difference, then you ask those on your survey as well.  Then, we can hold those variables constant in our analysis to make sure that the difference still exists.

So, when planning a survey, consider not only those variables that comprise the hypothesis statement, but also add any extraneous variables that may be interfering.

The Educated Guess

Most of us have had it pounded into our heads that a hypothesis is an educated guess. What may not have been conveyed to you is where that education comes from. It shouldn't be from something your Uncle Ed told you when you were eight, or from that time when you dared your friend Jeff to try doing it in high school. Your personal experiences mean nothing to someone who is reading a quantitative research report. By the way, that means it is research that uses numerical values to measure.

So, in order to develop the educated guess, you must educate yourself. No one is going to just pour this information in your head. You have to find it by reading. Reading blogs (as brilliant as some may be!), websites and the infamous and omnipresent Wikipedia are NOT the places to start.

You must read the current literature on your topic. This does not mean Emily Dickinson or Mark Twain. The literature in this case are the scholarly articles and research reports that are published in peer reviewed journals (not your peers, mine). Journals are academic publications (Ladies Home Journal is not a journal)that differ from magazines in that other scholars must approve the articles, they are not published as frequently, and they don't pay you anything for writing the articles. Isn't that the greatest gig, to be a journal editor? Everyone wants to write for you, and you don't have to pay them! But, I digress.

So read. Stay current because most things in the social sciences change rapidly, so try to Stay within the past five years within your discipline if possible. Sometimes you may branch into a related field if your topic overlaps with other specialties. It also may be essential to read some classic works (e.g., Kubler-Ross for death and dying). It is best to go to the original source. No one wants to see you citing Smith, who quoted Jones, who referred to Freud. Read Freud so nothing gets lost in this little "telephone game."

Two more quick tips: paraphrase and document! If your paper is large quote after large quote from others, I will quickly get bored. If the source is so great that you can't say it as well as they do, then I might as well be reading the other person's work instead of yours!
Put it in your own words. Take the ideas from the things you read, group them together, then document what informed your thinking. Remember, it's not what you know as much as how you know it.

Ever since the cold fusion fiasco, people are a bit skeptical about the source of information. If you tell me that crime rates are on the rise, I want proof that you aren't just pulling that tidbit out of your ass. Show evidence of that statistic by placing a parenthetical citation (if following APA style) at the end of the sentence. Then, if I want to verify your facts, I can look it up. Also, stick with just the facts. In a research paper, I don't care about your opinions or your emotional pleas. Don't say that society "must" do this or that. Give me proof.

You must start at the beginning

Sometimes the hardest part of conducting original research is knowing where to start. You've got to start with the burning question in your head. Finish this sentence: "I've always wondered why..."

Now, think about this question. Do you think you know what the answer is? If so, write it down as a complete sentence. Congratulations! You have just developed your first hypothesis!

It really is that easy to get started. Often students in the social sciences (e.g. psych, soc, social work, criminal justice) are so intimidated by the thought of research that they make it seem much more complicated than it really is. I'll try not to sound like an old timer here, but honestly conducting student research now is SO much easier than it was when I was a student. Computer programs like SPSS make calculating stats so much easier (btw, SPSS did exist when I was a student - it was just on a mainframe and we had to write syntax - yuck). Online survey sites like Survey Monkey have made obtaining large samples quick, easy and cheap. By posting links to surveys on websites, social networking sites and in emails, it is possible to have hundreds of responses to a survey in just a few short weeks for around $20.00. No longer do you have to kill a forest's worth of trees and ingest tons of envelope glue mailing surveys that will never be returned. You've got it easy!

So, even if you aren't excited about conducting a research project, chances are you are here because you don't have a choice. If you want to finish your degree, you have to do it. I am hoping that this blog will help. I'm also working on developing some interactive apps that can be used to help in the process as well, so keep checking this blog for details. Who knows, you may end up enjoying research. I never thought I would, but look at me now...I've become a total research nerd!