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The research Project |
Types of research |
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The
aim of the research paper, which is a requirement in the second term of the
academic year for the advanced students, and optional for the intermediate
students, is to equip our students with the skills of conducting research. You
learn to use various sources, and then put up all the data you have gathered
into one meaningful whole and interpret the results. You also learn how to
format papers, how to present information, how to cite works and write
bibliographies. In short, you learn those skills when stakes are not too high.
Starting with your freshman year, you will have to conduct research and will be
graded on your work. In your prep year you can do that for practice purposes.
Lifting
or plagiarism: A common problem in
prep school is that students use material available on the internet, or in
library books, copy information from these sources without any acknowledgement,
modification, analysis or paraphrasing and submit the paper to their teachers.
This practice is not legally or academically acceptable and students should in
no way plagiarize. It is the same as stealing someone else’s work.
What
topics lead to lifting: The most
important step to avoid lifting is choosing the research question carefully.
When the research question is not well formulated or when you go for
information that can be found in encyclopedias, lifting becomes inevitable.
e.g.
“ The History of Prince Islands”
With a topic like this, you are bound to come up with encyclopedic
information. As a prep
school student, who is no expert in history, you cannot interpret the history
of Prince Islands using the sources you have found. That means you are going to
find some books from the library, visit a few websites, find a few tourist
brochures, put them together and write a paper, which is 90% plagiarized.
e.g.
“Environmental Pollution in the Mediterranean Region”
Again such a topic is dangerous because 1. It is
too broad as a topic, 2. It requires expert knowledge to interpret. Therefore,
the result is going to be quoting one or two writers without even acknowledging
the sources.
e.g.
“The Komodo Monster” (which is my favorite example.)
What can a student do about such a topic apart from
consulting some encyclopedias or natural history books? A student of mine
presented information in such a way that it looked like he himself had done all
the studies in Malaysia jungles, observing the hunting habits of this monstrous
lizard.
A
limited research question, that does not require expert knowledge or
complicated research techniques is ideal for you.
Example
1: An oral history project to be
done with the residents of one of the Prince Islands ,
for example with the storekeepers in Burgaz Ada , collecting their memories about the Turkish writer Sait Faik Abasiyanik.
Prep school students can handle a project of this size and scope, with
Example
2: Environmental pollution in YADYOK
building or on BU campus.
The research project can be of two types
There
are also quantitative methods of research; however, since prep school students
do not possess the required knowledge of statistics that accompany that kind of
research, we should make do with the two types mentioned above.
As discussed above library
research, or in more modern form the Internet sources, usually takes the form
of informative research, that is you gather
information on a topic. A library research paper usually takes the form of the
literature review paper.
Purpose
of the literature review paper The
purpose of the literature review paper may be:
e.g. AIDS: What medical knowledge is there?
What
are the current methods of treatment?
What
drugs, medicine are used?
What
is the epidemiology of the disease?
e.g. Theories of second language learning from past to
present
e.g. Theories of second language learning compared and
contrasted
When
looking for sources about a topic, you should consider the following issues:
While
doing literature review, you may discover new areas to be studied and may modify your
initial questions.
For
a sample of a paper based on library research, see “Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings”
Qualitative
research may include such methods as:
Such
techniques are easier to use, do not require exact measurements or
sophisticated statistical methods, and with right amount of guidance you can
safely conduct research in the fields with which you are slightly familiar.
Qualitative
research produces descriptive data based on the researcher’s observations or on
the words of the people interviewed. Such data cannot be subjected to
quantitative (statistical) analysis methods, but give in depth information on
the subject studied.
In
order to learn the views, opinions, evaluations of people we conduct
interviews. Interviews can be of two types:
In
structured interviews you prepare a set of questions and try to obtain
answers to these questions. Data analysis is easier because you have comparable
categories for each respondent, and you can analyze what each respondent said
as an answer to each question and compare and contrast their answers.
Unstructured
interviews: You have the topic of
the interview but no set questions to ask the interviewee. The interview may
follow whatever course the interviewee chooses to talk about. Every subject may
focus on a different aspect of the topic in question, and as a result data from
individual subjects may not be comparable. On the other hand, such data provide
in depth information in great detail about individual subjects.
For
our own purposes, because we cannot expect our students to conduct case studies
or personality analyses, structured interviews where the interviewer focuses on
a set of predetermined questions, and tries to obtain answers to these questions
are more feasible.
A soon as you get home, write down your impressions, comments, etc.
before you forget them. It is a good idea to keep a research journal in which
you record all your observations, questions, problems, and interpretations
.
Most people are happy to answer the questions asked by university
students and welcome them, showing a cooperative attitude. However, there are a
few guidelines every wise researcher must be careful about:
The data obtained during the interviews can be analyzed in two ways:
Depending on the topic of research, one of the two methods may be
used.
For a sample paper based on interview technique, see “Problems of the Turkish Theater”
Surveys
are one of the most frequently used methods of social research, and are used by
the government, academic researchers in universities, campaign organizations,
marketing researchers, opinion pollsters, and many similar groups.
All
surveys aim to describe or explain the characteristics or opinions of a general
population through the use of a representative sample.
You
can conduct surveys of a smaller scale with a set of carefully designed
questions. Examples of topics may be the leisure time activities of BU students
or their attitudes towards current issues or their opinions on certain topics.
Comparative
studies are also within the scope of such survey studies, e.g. comparison of
the attitudes of BU students and ITU students.
The
theory in survey method is that all subjects are asked the same questions in
the same way, therefore a questionnaire must be prepared and a sample of the
target group must be taken.
I. Sampling
The important principle you at this introductory level should know is
that the sample should be representative of the population. For instance, if
you want to study the BU students in general, the sample should not consist of
prep students only, but should include students from each year of the
university. Or if you target the students staying at the dorm, then you should
not include those students who do not stay at the dorm.
II. Constructing the questionnaire
The most important point to be considered when designing a
questionnaire is to construct the questions unambiguously and to be clear in
mind about what the question is for, what it tries to find out or assess.
If you keep in mind these issues, questions will be well designed.
After formulating the questions, it is a good idea to test them on a
few people. Other people may interpret the questions differently from the
questionnaire writer. Therefore, if the questions are piloted before they are
given to the target population, possible misunderstandings and ambiguities in
the questions may be remedied before they are actually used.
Language of the questions: Questions should be
·
In the
language of the target population
·
Clear enough
to be understood by the respondents
·
Clear enough
to bring out the information the researcher is looking for
·
Worded as
simply as possible
A good question does not lead the respondents or lead to ambiguity.
e.g. “How many newspapers a day
do you buy?”
This question assumes that the respondents buy newspapers everyday. A
better way to ask would be:
“Do you buy newspapers?”
If yes, “Do you buy newspapers every day?”
If yes, “How many newspapers a day do you buy?”
You
can use observation technique to gather data on a topic of your choice. One
simple example would be observing classroom behavior. Things to be observed
could be “Are girls more active than boys?” or “How do teachers respond to
disruptive behavior in class?”
I.
Conducting successful observations
When
making observations the important point is knowing
what to observe. A lot of people look around in a classroom and see nothing
unusual or nothing worth recording. However, to a trained eye there are
patterns of behavior emerging, responses being given and themes forming. In
order to make successful observations:
If
we go back to the initial example of “How do teachers respond to disruptive
behavior in class?”
II. Data analysis
v
Data can be
analyzed in terms of the frequency of occurrence of the behavior or the emergence
of themes and patterns.
e.g. Disruptive behavior study
·
How many times
each type of behavior occurred
·
How the
teachers responded and with what frequency
v
Another
approach may be just going to the class, watching carefully what is going on
during the lesson between the teacher and the students, seeing what the teacher
considers as disruptive behavior and recording the behavior and how disruptions
are treated by the teacher.
Data analysis of such an observation will be more in a case study or narrative format.
e.g. Study on disruptive behavior in class
“In a class a student who had a leading role among his class mates was
hostile towards the class teacher. He tried to make all the jokes himself and
wanted to get a good laugh from the class. When the teacher tried to make a
joke, the student tried to stop his class mates from laughing at the teacher’s
jokes, thus preventing them from forming an alliance with the teacher.”
Observation,
be it structured or unstructured, may produce many interesting results and can
also teach you to really look at things happening in your surroundings and see
patterns, themes and order in what seems to be chaotic. Observation can also
produce further research questions and is conducive to formulating further
research projects.
Different from
written history, which records global events and changes of historical
importance, oral history concerns itself with the experiences, memories, and
evaluations of individuals. These individual recollections also constitute
a part of history and are of significant importance because they bear
witness to events from the viewpoint of the individual members of the society.
With the spread of recording machines and the Internet, oral history studies
which focus on the experiences and personal accounts of individuals gained
themselves a niche in keeping records of the present and the past for the
future generations.
“We all have stories to tell, stories we have lived
from the inside out. We give our experiences an order. We organize the memories
of our lives into stories.
Oral history listens
to these stories. Oral history is the systematic collection of living people’s
testimony about their own experiences. Historians have finally recognized that
the everyday memories of everyday people, not just the rich and famous, have
historical importance. If we do not collect and preserve those memories, those
stories, then one day they will disappear forever.
Your stories and the
stories of the people around you are unique, valuable treasures for your family
and your community. You and your family members can preserve unwritten family
history using oral history techniques. Likewise you and your community can
discover and preserve unwritten history large and small. Oral history is so
flexible that people of all ages can adapt the techniques of asking and
listening to create and learn about history and historical narratives.”
Moyer (1999, Step by
Step Guide to Oral History)
A useful link where
you can find all basic information on how to conduct oral history studies is:
http://dohistory.org/on_your_own/toolkit/oralHistory.html
With knowledge
of simple techniques of asking questions and recording the data, you too can
employ oral history methods to record the recollections of people.
e.g. Oral history project in Arnavutkoy:
"Arnavutkoy past and present, neighborly relations in the past and the
present."
A group of
advanced students in spring 2004 conducted such a study in Arnavutkoy. The
steps were as follows:
·
They started
to read about the past of the neighborhood, and as they read on they came up
with more questions
·
They contacted
the neighborhood NGO (Arnavutkoy Semt Girisimi), and started talking with them about the looming
danger of the third bridge across the Bosphorus.
·
They contacted
the local residents
·
They started
to gather information about which local residents are knowledgeable about the
past of the neighborhood
·
They conducted
interviews with these old residents and video recorded the interviews
·
They took
pictures of the neighborhood residents and the key architectural spots
As can be seen,
such a project involves the following steps:
·
Background
reading
·
Setting up the
research topic
·
Setting up the
interview questions to focus on
·
Finding people
·
Conducting
interviews
·
Recording the
interviews
·
Evaluation of
the data
For
sample research papers based on oral history technique, see “Arnavutkoy:
Past and Present” and “Sutluce”.
Internet links and resources
1. Purdue University OWL has excellent handouts for
Research Skills and Resources and Writing Research Papers
Evaluating Sources of
Information
Writing research papers: A step-by-step guide
2. Colorado State University Writing Center has a good guide to the World Wide Web
and Documentation APA, MLA and other style manuals
Written by Zeliha Gulcat, Sept 2004
.