Читать книгу The Research Experience - Ann Sloan Devlin - Страница 114

Good research involves asking worthwhile questions that combine tradition and innovation, as illustrated in Chapter 2. Good research also involves selecting an approach that is appropriate for the question(s) you want to answer. Some research questions can be answered with a high degree of certainty; others cannot. In some instances, researchers are interested in what might be called exploratory research; they want to gain a preliminary understanding of a topic and may not formulate specific hypotheses. Often, researchers use interviews, focus groups, and case studies in such research. These approaches are usually described as qualitative and will be discussed more fully in Chapter 8.

Experimental design: Research approach with manipulated variables and random assignment.

Quasi-experimental design: Research approach that resembles experimental research but is based on the use of preexisting groups (quasi-independent variables [IVs]).

Internal validity: Extent to which a research design allows you to test the hypothesis adequately.

Type I error: Incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true.

Whatever your goal and approach, the manner in which you conduct the research affects its quality. As a number of authors have pointed out, simply doing a large and well-funded study does not guarantee that the research questions will be appropriately framed (see R. Kaplan, 1996). Even in exploratory qualitative research where you are trying to get a sense of the issues that matter to people (e.g., reactions to building high-rise, high-density housing near a neighborhood park), many aspects of your approach, such as the facility where the questions are asked and who is included in the interviews, can affect how people respond. This chapter will emphasize quantitative approaches, but many of the same issues dealing with the internal validity of your research (whether the design enables you to answer the research questions) apply to qualitative research as well.