Dissertation Briefing

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Dissertation Briefing
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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

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Different Research Approaches
Quantitative Qualitative
Purpose To explain predict To describe
explain To confirm validate To explore
interpret To test theory To build theory

• Nature Focused Holistic
• Known variables Unknown variables
• Predetermined methods Emergent methods
• Context free Context bound
• Detached view Personal view

Data Numeric Textual/image-based Representativ
e (large) Informative (small) Standard
instruments Loosely structured
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Structure of a Research Report

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Research method
• Findings
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendices

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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

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Research proposalIntroduction section

• Background Context (local international),
  subject area of your study, perspective from
  which the topic is addressed
• Problem statement whats the problem and why is
  it important to study it
• Research objectives
• The research objectives are
• to find out
• The research questions are
• What
• Why
• How
• Explain, clarify the research objectives
• Specify the scope of the study
• Briefly state the data collection method

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Literature review

• Overview of lit review
• Previous studies and their results
• Your critique of previous studies
• How your current study fits in the literature

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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)

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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.

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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

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Beware of plagiarism

• 2 levels of intellectual property
• Ideas and content
• Expression and language
• Provide citation for other peoples 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 its
  not an exact copy

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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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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APA Guidelines

• Dont 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

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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

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Figures

• Put figure caption below the figure
• 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

Figure 1. The Siberian Tiger
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Tables

• Useful for large amounts of numerical data
• Dont 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

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Tables
Table 1. Example of poor table design




Table 2. Example of good table design




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APA citation styleReference 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)

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APA citation styleCitation 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.

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APA citation styleCitation 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 masters thesis, Nanyang
  Technological University, Singapore.