Communication Research Methods

Objectives

If you are beginning your first research project, the task may seem overwhelming. How do I find a topic? Where do I find information on it? What do I do with it when I find it? Why do research? This course will get you asking questions, gathering information and encouraging you to think about the creation and interpreting of messages. Communication research is more than just statistics, so we will examine both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of communication research. This course will combine instruction and practice in both the methodology and analyses that communication scholars tend to employ. You will conduct an original communication research. Along the way you will acquire specific skills that will help you think, write, and speak like a communication scholar.

The goal is to provide students with principles and basic skills necessary to criticise research literature; develops minimal proficiencies in structuring designs basic to descriptive and experimental studies, including data collection, analysis, and presentation techniques in communication research.

Learning outcomes

• Discern between the perspectives and traditions of research in journalism and academic research, and their methods and procedures, both in their historical context and in relation to current trends.
• Demonstrate motivation, creativity and initiative in academic and professional projects, and also commitment to quality, rigour and ethics.
• Manage one's own training process in order to undertake subsequent studies with a high degree of autonomy and to successfully face the professional and intellectual challenges of evolution in the field.
• Use analysis and summary strategies and techniques to make efficient decisions in processes of research, selection and interpretation of data and information.
• Use data and statistics correctly and effectively for journalistic, informative or communicative purposes, in academic and professional contexts.
• Master written, oral, audiovisual, graphic, hypertextual and multimedia languages in order to present information in an effective journalistic form, in Catalan, Spanish and English, adapting to the medium and audience.

Content

1. Starting a research project in communication
   1. What is research (in communication)?
   2. Why write it up?
   3. Why a formal report?
2. From topics to questions
   1. From an interest to a topic
   2. Research question
   3. Problem
3. Literature review and sources
   1. Uses for sources
   2. Evidence
   3. Preparing a draft
   4. Writing a literature review
4. Your argument
   1. General and specific objectives
   2. Reasons, arguments
   3. Hypothesis
5. Research methodology
   1. Finding alternatives
   2. Qualitative vs quantitative research
   3. Design of interview
   4. Design of survey
6. Data Collection
   1. Data Analysis
7. Preparing a revision
8. Conclusions
   1. Three elements of an introduction
   2. Opening and closing words
9. Research presentation

Evaluation

In-class assignments (15 % of final grade): 1.5 point
Research project (part 1) and research presentation (25% of final grade): 2.5 points
Oral research presentation (part 1) (5% of final grade): 0.5 points
Research project (part 3) and research presentation (25% of final grade): 2.5 points
Oral research presentation (part 2 and 3) (5% of final grade): 0.5 points

If your final grade does not appear as passing, you will need to complete a new activity to pass the course. To be eligible for the reassessment of the subject, you need to be enrolled to the corresponding subject and have obtained a final mark between 1.9 and 4.9. 

Methodology

We will meet two times a week to work on research methods and discuss the course project. Readings will be assigned to facilitate the work, but class time will not be spent to go over these documents. Class time will be used to answer questions about the concepts and use these concepts to understand published research projects and help you plan your own inquiries.

Each student will be a member of a research group that will meet in class to work on course projects. People who do well in this class, regularly come to class. Please avoid missing a class, it is not ethical that only a part of your group works on the research project. It's much easier to conduct research when everybody works together on an issue. We will be utilizing Excel, Word and Google Drive.

Bibliography

Key references

• Booth, W., Colomb, G., Williams, J. (2003). The Craft of Research (2 ed.). The University of Chicago Press.
• Collins H. (2010). Creative Research: The Theory and Practice of Research for the Creative Industries. Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Creswell, J. W. (2008). Chapter 1. The Selection of a Research Design: In: Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Retrieved from http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/22780_Chapter_1.pdf
• Denzin, Norman K., Lincoln, Yvonna S., ed. (2005). The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications.
• Hesse-Biber Nagy S. (2010). Mixed Methods Research: Merging Theory with Practice. Guilford Press.