Research Method Books

[Tony Phan]

HistoricalAnalysis: We employ a historical method, studying each company from its founding up to the end point of our investigation, focusing on specific eras of performance. We gather a range of historical materials, such as financial and annual reports, major articles published on the company, books, academic case studies, analyst reports, and industry reference materials. This is important because drawing solely upon backward-looking commentary or retrospective interviews increases the chances of fallacious conclusions.

Using a well-known success story to illustrate, some retrospective accounts attribute Southwest Airlines success to pioneering a unique and innovative airline model (in part because the authors writing today believe the winners must be the innovators); but in fact, a careful reading of historical documents shows that Southwest largely copied its model from Pacific Southwest Airlines in the late 1960s. If we were to rely on only retrospective accounts, we would be led astray about why Southwest became a great company.

I have always been interested in creative research methods: not at the expense of traditional methods, but to augment them. I have used a variety of creative methods, when appropriate, such as storytelling and photo-elicitation for gathering data, fictionalisation and photo-essays for writing research, and drama for presenting findings. I have also combined methods where necessary, used technology in research, and worked within a participatory framework where possible.

Jennifer Clary-Lemon is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo. She is the author of Planting the Anthropocene: Rhetorics of Natureculture, Cross Border Networks in Writing Studies (with Mueller, Williams, and Phelps), and co-editor of Decolonial Conversations in Posthuman and New Material Rhetorics (with Grant) and Relations, Locations, Positions: Composition Theory for Writing Teachers (with Vandenberg and Hum). Her research interests include rhetorics of the environment, theories of affect, writing and location, material rhetorics, critical discourse studies, and research methodologies. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Review, Discourse and Society, The American Review of Canadian Studies, Composition Forum, Oral History Forum d'histoire orale, enculturation, and College Composition and Communication.

Derek N. Mueller is Professor of Rhetoric and Writing and Director of the University Writing Program at Virginia Tech. His teaching and research attends to the interplay among writing, rhetorics, and technologies. Mueller regularly teaches courses in visual rhetorics, writing pedagogy, first-year writing, and digital media. He continues to be motivated professionally and intellectually by questions concerning digital writing platforms, networked writing practices, theories of composing, and discipliniographies or field narratives related to writing studies/rhetoric and composition. Along with Andrea Williams, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, and Jen Clary-Lemon, he is co-author of Cross-Border Networks in Writing Studies (Inkshed/Parlor, 2017). His 2018 monograph, Network Sense: Methods for Visualizing a Discipline (in the WAC Clearinghouse #writing series) argues for thin and distant approaches to discerning disciplinary patterns. His other work has been published in College Composition and Communication, Kairos, Enculturation, Present Tense, Computers and Composition, Composition Forum, and JAC.

Kate Lisbeth Pantelides is Associate Professor of English and Director of General Education English at Middle Tennessee State University. Kate's research examines workplace documents to better understand how to improve written and professional processes, particularly as they relate to equity and inclusion. In the context of teaching, Kate applies this approach to iterative methods of teaching writing to students and teachers, which informs her recent co-authored project, A Theory of Public Higher Education (with Blum, Fernandez, Imad, Korstange, and Laird). Her work has been recognized in The Best of Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals and circulates in venues such as College Composition and Communication, Composition Studies, Computers and Composition, Inside Higher Ed, Journal of Technical and Professional Writing, and Review of Communication.

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Margaret Kovach is a Plains Cree and Salteaux researcher from Canada, whose Indigenous Methodologies came out in 2009. Her book covers epistemologies, methods and ethics. It is a work of considerable scholarship that is also accessible and full of wisdom.

Bagele Chilisa is a Professor at the University of Botswana. Indigenous Research Methodologies gives an uncompromising and international account of some of the theories, epistemologies, ontologies and methods used by Indigenous researchers. While no book on this subject could be completely comprehensive, Chilisa makes a good job of showing the diversity, as well as some of the commonalities, of Indigenous methodology. Read the review on LSE Review of Books.

Qualitative research is a type of research that explores and provides deeper insights into real-world problems.[1] Instead of collecting numerical data points or intervening or introducing treatments just like in quantitative research, qualitative research helps generate hypothenar to further investigate and understand quantitative data. Qualitative research gathers participants' experiences, perceptions, and behavior. It answers the hows and whys instead of how many or how much. It could be structured as a standalone study, purely relying on qualitative data, or part of mixed-methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative data. This review introduces the readers to some basic concepts, definitions, terminology, and applications of qualitative research.

Qualitative research, at its core, asks open-ended questions whose answers are not easily put into numbers, such as "how" and "why."[2] Due to the open-ended nature of the research questions, qualitative research design is often not linear like quantitative design.[2] One of the strengths of qualitative research is its ability to explain processes and patterns of human behavior that can be difficult to quantify.[3] Phenomena such as experiences, attitudes, and behaviors can be complex to capture accurately and quantitatively. In contrast, a qualitative approach allows participants themselves to explain how, why, or what they were thinking, feeling, and experiencing at a particular time or during an event of interest. Quantifying qualitative data certainly is possible, but at its core, qualitative data is looking for themes and patterns that can be difficult to quantify, and it is essential to ensure that the context and narrative of qualitative work are not lost by trying to quantify something that is not meant to be quantified.

However, while qualitative research is sometimes placed in opposition to quantitative research, where they are necessarily opposites and therefore "compete" against each other and the philosophical paradigms associated with each other, qualitative and quantitative work are neither necessarily opposites, nor are they incompatible.[4] While qualitative and quantitative approaches are different, they are not necessarily opposites and certainly not mutually exclusive. For instance, qualitative research can help expand and deepen understanding of data or results obtained from quantitative analysis. For example, say a quantitative analysis has determined a correlation between length of stay and level of patient satisfaction, but why does this correlation exist? This dual-focus scenario shows one way in which qualitative and quantitative research could be integrated.

To further understand qualitative research, we must discuss positivist and postpositivist frameworks. Positivism is a philosophy that the scientific method can and should be applied to social and natural sciences.[4] Essentially, positivist thinking insists that the social sciences should use natural science methods in their research. It stems from positivist ontology, that there is an objective reality that exists that is wholly independent of our perception of the world as individuals. Quantitative research is rooted in positivist philosophy, which can be seen in the value it places on concepts such as causality, generalizability, and replicability.

So why is it important to understand the differences in assumptions that different philosophies and approaches to research have? Fundamentally, the assumptions underpinning the research tools a researcher selects provide an overall base for the assumptions the rest of the research will have. It can even change the role of the researchers.[2] For example, is the researcher an "objective" observer, such as in positivist quantitative work? Or is the researcher an active participant in the research, as in postpositivist qualitative work? Understanding the philosophical base of the study undertaken allows researchers to fully understand the implications of their work and their role within the research and reflect on their positionality and bias as it pertains to the research they are conducting.

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