Transcript Dissertation briefing

Dissertation Briefing
What is research in a nutshell?
A sustained activity for the purpose of finding
answers to questions
• Is it a worthwhile question (so what?) -- …
• A planned, systematic investigation
• but to what purpose?
• So that the answer is as valid and reliable as possibly
• Control for potential sources of error (bias)
• Eliminate alternative explanations/answers
• Examine the theoretical basis for drawing the conclusion
• The answer is generalizable
• but to what context
• Assumptions and theoretical basis of the study are
examined
• Builds on previous work
• Limitations of the study are examined
Different Research Approaches
Quantitative
Qualitative
Purpose
To explain & predict
To confirm & validate
To test theory
To describe & explain
To explore & interpret
To build theory
Nature
Focused
Known variables
Predetermined methods
Context free
Detached view
Holistic
Unknown variables
Emergent methods
Context bound
Personal view
Data
Numeric
Representative (large)
Standard instruments
Textual/image-based
Informative (small)
Loosely structured
Structure of a Research
Report
•
Abstract
•
Introduction
•
Literature review
•
Research method
•
Findings
•
Discussion
•
Conclusion
•
References
•
Appendices
Abstract
• A summary of the report
• Usually does not exceed 1 page (double-spaced)
• Emphasis placed on objectives of study,
methodology, significant findings, and
recommendations
• Usually written upon completion of the entire report
• Informative vs. indicative abstract
• Indicative abstract: gives an indication of what
information can be found in the paper
• Informative abstract: includes a summary of the
research results/findings
Research proposal
Introduction section
• Background: Context (local & international), subject
area of your study, perspective from which the topic
is addressed
• Problem statement: what’s the problem and why is
it important to study it
• Research objectives
• The research objectives are
1. to find out …
• The research questions are
1. What
2. Why
3. How
• Explain, clarify the research objectives
• Specify the scope of the study
• Briefly state the data collection method
Literature review
• Overview of lit review
• Previous studies and their results
• Your critique of previous studies
• How your current study fits in the
literature
What is a literature review?
Summary of previous papers/studies
 With a purpose/message
 To show the relation between your study &
previous studies
 To show a gap in the knowledge that your
study fills (research contribution)
 To extend current knowledge to new
situations (replication)
 To confirm current knowledge (replication)
Other purposes of a literature
review
 To define and explain important concepts
 To give an overview of the topic and provide
background information
 To identify/synthesize a theory or model that will be
used to explain the results of your study
 To generate hypotheses to be confirmed or refuted in
your study
 To carry out a meta-analysis: to analyze the results of
several studies to arrive at a more authoritative
conclusion
 To demonstrate your breadth/depth of knowledge
 Etc.
Typical problems

Summary of 1 paper after another. No organization of
information

No relation to current study

No critique of previous studies, no evaluation of the
results of previous studies

Missing important information

Inaccuracy. Misquote or misuse of information.
Information taken out of context

Plagiarism



No proper citation
No paraphrase (cut & paste)
Poor language & style
Beware of plagiarism
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2 levels of intellectual property
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Ideas and content
Expression and language

Provide citation for other people’s ideas

In addition, use quotation marks around
passages used verbatim (cut and paste)

Avoid cut and paste

Read article & paraphrase from memory

Check the paraphrase for accuracy and that
it’s not an exact copy
Research method section
 How are you going to collect data (data
collection) in a way that will address the
research questions
 How will the research method guard
against biases and random errors?
 How will the research method allow you to
generalize your results beyond the
participants of your study?
 How does it rule out alternative
explanations?
Frequently used data
collection methods
• Questionnaire survey
• Operational data (data collected
automatically by the system as part of
library operations)
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Observation, ethnography
• Experiment
Other research approaches
• Historical research
• Content analysis
• Action research
• Case study
Findings section
• Summary of data collected
• Results that are close to the data
• Results based closely on the data
• Statistical results
• Figures and tables are used to support the main
findings of the study
• Each figure and table is referred to in the text, with a
description of how to interpret it and what the salient
information is
• Indicate whether the results are expected.
Explanations of the results
Discussion section
• Sometimes combined with Findings section
• Higher level research conclusions that
address the research questions
• Makes an argument using statistical
results, research methods, results from
previous literature, commonsense, etc.
• Relates the results of the current study to
the literature
Conclusion section
• Restates the research objectives/research questions,
in an informal style
• Summarizes the research results, highlighting
interesting results
• Points out contributions of the study
• Relates the research results to previous literature
• Points out limitations & weaknesses of the study
• Makes recommendations based on the research
findings
• Suggest future research directions
• To address weaknesses in the study
• Unanswered questions
• Perhaps the study has raised further questions
Presentation of Information
 Try to keep in mind who the potential audience are
(what they already know and what new information
they need)
 Identify the specific focus that your analysis is
aimed at (state the relationship in clear and
unambiguous terms)
• Indicate the purpose of the section or paragraph at
the beginning – why are you presenting this
information
• State your key messages up front and clearly (strip
out the jargon)
• Focus on the implications of your analysis for the
reader (downplay the methods and technical
details)
APA Guidelines for Manuscript
Preparation
• Orderly presentation of ideas. Logical flow. Give the
punchline at the beginning
• Smoothness of expression. Clear, logical writing
• Economy of expression. Concise writing
• Avoid abbreviations
• Reference to the author:
• Use “I” rather then “we”, “the author”, “the experimenter”.
Use “we” if there are more than one author
APA Guidelines
• Don’t use “we” to refer to the readers and the author
• Bad: We usually classify bird song on the basis of frequency …
• Better: Researchers usually classify bird song on the basis of
frequency …
• Alternatives: people, humans, researchers, psychologists …
• Avoid the generic “he” and gender bias
• Use gender neutral terms, e.g. person, individual, user
• Use plural: they, their
• Replace pronoun (his) with article (the)
• “he or she” should be used sparingly
• Not: he/she, (s)he, she
APA Guidelines
• Use active voice
• Use past tense
• Numbers
• For numbers below 10, use words
• For numbers 10 and above, use figures, except at the
beginning of a sentence
• Use figures for numbers before a unit of measure (e.g. 3 hr,
3 cm)
• Distinguish between different levels of headings, and
do it consistently
• Capitalization of important words in section headings
and journal titles: capitalize words of 4 letters or more
Figures
• Put figure caption below the figure
Figure 1. The Siberian Tiger
• Refer to the figure no. in the text.
The Siberian Tiger has black stripes (see Figure 1).
The journal instructions to authors may
require you to put all the tables and figures at
the end of the manuscript
Tables
• Useful for large amounts of numerical data
• Don’t use too many tables (combine small
tables into 1 big table)
• Put table heading above the table
• Refer to the table no. in the text, and point out
important information
• Use as few lines as possible in tables
Tables
Table 1. Example of poor table design
Table 2. Example of good table design
APA citation style
Reference in the text
In the text, use the author-date method to
cite references :
• In 1994, Lancaster evaluated …
• Lancaster (1994) evaluated …
• In a recent evaluation (Lancaster, 1994) …
• Three studies (Bart, 1985; Frasier & Niles,
1996; Slocum, 1978) …
• Past research (Christie & Marsh, 1924;
James, 1991a, 1991b) …
APA citation style
Citation format in the reference list
Journal article
• Gay, L.S., & Croft, W.B. (1990). Interpreting nominal
compounds for information retrieval. Information
Processing & Management, 26(1), 21-38.
Book
• Asher, R.E. (Ed.). (1994). The encyclopedia of
language and linguistics (2nd ed.). Oxford:
Pergamon Press.
Chapter in a book
• Fillmore, C.J. (1968). The case for case. In E. Bach
& R.T. Harms (Eds.), Universals in linguistic theory
(pp. 1-88). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
APA citation style
Citation format in the reference list
Paper in a conference
•
Mauldin, M.L. (1991). Retrieval performance in FERRET: A
conceptual information retrieval system. In Proceedings
of the 14th Annual International ACM/SIGIR Conference
on Research and Development in Information Retrieval
(pp. 347-355). New York: ACM Press.
World Wide Web document
•
Langston, L. (1996). Scholarly communication and
electronic publication: Implications for research,
advancement and promotion. Retrieved August 31, 2002,
from http://www.library.ucsb.edu/untangle/langston.html
Dissertation
•
Chan, Y.H.J. (2002) A survey of Singapore family literacy.
Unpublished master’s thesis, Nanyang Technological
University, Singapore.