Transcript Amy Catalano, Ed.D., MLS, MALS Associate Professor of Library Services, Hofstra University.

Amy Catalano, Ed.D., MLS, MALS
Associate Professor of Library Services,
Hofstra University
 Library
research tends to be rather poor.
 Generally, studies are related to immediate
practices and situations and are not
generalizable.
 Non-cumulative
 Many academic librarians have not been
trained to do empirical research
 Many
new researchers make the mistake of
choosing a method before they have a
research question.
 The
 But,
research question will define the method
can you do the study well with the
resources that you have?
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“How I done it good”
Solving a problem you or your colleagues have had
Explore a theory (e.g., of information-seeking behavior)
Test the efficacy of an intervention
Exploring use of a library service
Explore use of a purchased resource (e.g., a database)
Look at reports published by ACRL which identifies areas of
needed research. For example: The Value of Academic
Libraries by Megan Oakleaf
Read through TOC/abstracts of recent issues of journals.
http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/i
ssues/value/val_report.pdf
A
research question should be focused
enough to be answerable in an article, for
example.
“What are the information seeking behaviors of
college students?” May be too broad.
“What are in the information seeking
behaviors of History graduate students writing
a capstone paper?” is more focused.
 Identify
a problem
 Gather data
 Develop a hypothesis
 Empirically test that hypothesis by analyzing
data
 Does
your study have implications for others
in your field? If not, you should do some
rethinking.
 You study should:
 -be replicable
 -universally be able to be researched by
others
 -control: have parameters and identify
factors that will affect your results (e.g.,
SES)
 Population:
The larger group from which you
will draw your sample (e.g., 250
undergraduate students registered with the
Students with Disabilities Office)
 Sample: Should be random, and therefore
generalizable to the chosen population
 However, convenience sampling is often the
norm.
 When doing a teaching intervention, for
example, entire classes can be randomly
assigned to conditions. This is cluster
sampling.
Qualitative: between 1 and 70 (or even more).
Although more than 20 is rare. More is not
always better or useful in qualitative research.
 It is better to ask is the sample representative
of what you are investigating?
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Quantitative: Varies by method: 30 for each
group in experimental research. For surveys 1020% of the population, although this depdents of
the size of the population.
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The more the merrier!
 If
you are going to use a survey, interview
protocol or test, you should ensure its
reliability and validity. (pp. 61-66, Seligpani)
 Reliability:
How well an instrument
consistently measures whatever it is
measuring.
 Validity:
How well the instrument measures
what it is supposed to measure. Several
types of validity (e.g., content)
 Research
Questions:
 How does…, Why does…, (Process questions:
the answer is not a number, more
exploratory).
 Methods:
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Interviews, observations, discourse analysis
Some results can be quantified
 What
are the perceptions of history students
on the availability of primary sources
electronically?
 This
question can be answered through
different methods:
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A survey
Interview
Focus group
A case study
 Interviews
 Not
meant to be generalizable, so a small
sample is acceptable
 Diverse views are helpful
 Structure or unstructured (or semistructured)
 Listen more, talk less. Ask open ended
questions.
 It is best to record an interview, which will
allow you to take notes.
 Watching
participants to examine a
phenomenon.
 E.g., Observing students navigating a
database without instruction to determine
how they instinctively search.
 Participant or non-participant
 Taking notes and having a rubric
 It is better to have more than one observer
and to calibrate training and check on
consistency of observations
 Like
interviews, but includes several
individuals to allow for a collected
understanding
 All
participants must get their say
 Recording
and transcribing a good practice as
the researcher will need to mediate the
focus group
A
follow-up interview is a good practice.
 Archival
documents
 Data-mining: e.g., catalog use, use of
services, via Millenium
 Can also be quantified
 Coding:
with transcripts of interviews, you
may want to code particular words or
phrases (with a number, for example) to
determine whether a pattern emerges
 Grounding
results in the current literature
 Triangulation
and cross-checking: using
multiple methods , data collection
strategies, and sources to get a clear picture
of what is being studied.
 To
what extent did the distance education
group perform better on the post-test than
the face-to-face instruction group?
 The
question calls for a number as an
answer.
Most rigorous
 Treatment/control group
 Manipulation of an independent variable
 Random Assignment
 Removal of the influence of any other variable
(can do this with some stats tests)
 All factors, except for the independent variable,
should be the same
 Use of pre-post test (often, but not always)
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Ex. Do students who receive instruction via
social media perform better on a digital literacy
test than students who do not?
 When
selecting an instrument search the
literature first for one you can use or adapt
 Check the reliability and validity
 Administration in paper/person gives you a
higher return. Online distribution is easier,
but there is a lower rate of return (usually
10%) and responses tend to be biased.
 Some survey types: tests of information
literacy, service satisfaction and use, userperceptions
 Question phrasing is important to validity!
 Sampling: convenience, random, snowball
 Citation
analysis: An examination of patterns
or frequency of citations, authors, topics,
methods etc.
 May be used to link scholarly works to other
authors
 May be used to indicate the impact of a
journal
 Not
many opportunities in librarianship
 Statistical compilation of the results of many
studies on one topic. The results are
generally the effect of an intervention.
 This
is a systematic literature review
 Often some systematic evaluation of existing
studies is a part of the review
 Appealing to librarians because it draws on
their data mining
 A common method in the health sciences an
among health sciences librarians
 Nominal:
number stands in for a word, e.g.,
1=female, 2=male
 Ordinal:
order 1st, 2nd, 3rd
 Continuous:
numbers from 0-?
 Allows
the researcher to generalize to a
population
 SPSS,
SAS, or Excel allows a researcher to
perform inferential statistics.
 Chi-Square:
Nominal Data, tests a hypothesis
 ANOVA/T-test: compares groups on an
independent variable
 Regression: Determines the weight of a
predictor variable. Also determines which of
several variables predicts an outcome
 You
can combine quant with qual to get a
better picture of your inquiry.
 For example, you can interview a selection
of participants from those you have surveyed
to determine why they answered in a
particular manner.
 Once
you select a method, be sure to read
further on best practices.
 Other
methods:
 Case study
 Ethnography
 Causal/Comparative
 If
you are going to be interacting with human
beings in some way, you generally need to
send a proposal to the IRB.
 These humans include:
students/faculty/staff at your institution,
people at another institution (and you will
need to work with the IRB at the institution
as well), or anyone you plan to interact with
via the telephone, survey, or test, for
example.
 You
should be familiar with the Belmont
report and basic Human Research principles.
 A tutorial, quiz and certificate are available
here:http://phrp.nihtraining.com/users/logi
n.php
 Connaway,
L. S. (2010). Basic research
methods for librarians (5th ed.). Santa
Barbara, Calif: Libraries Unlimited.
 Academic library research: perspectives and
current trends. (2008). Chicago: Association
of College and Research Libraries.
 SPSS for Psychologists