Approaching and planning the research: The research proposal and literature review Lecture 2: Oct.

3 2011
Research Methodology & Writing Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Fall Semester, 2011 Dr. David L. Goldblatt
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Class overview
The Research Project Proposal The Literature Review: conducting it, writing it up Reference management software Presentation: 'A Framework for the Assessment of

Information Sources (posted separately) Plagiarism & P. detection Examples Last assignment review Assignment
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RM&W D.Goldblatt HS '11

Course Reading and Reference Material

Beer, D., & McMurrey, D. (2009). A Guide to Writing as an Engineer. 3rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley. Booth, W., Colomb, G., & Williams, J. (2008). The craft of research, 3rd ed. Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Ethridge, D. (2004). Research methodology in applied economics: organizing, planning, and conducting economic research. Oxford: Blackwell. McCloskey, D. (2000). Economical Writing, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: essential tasks and skills. 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Williams, J. & Colomb, G. (2010). Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace, 10th Ed. Boston: Longman. Young, T. (2005). Technical Writing AZ: A Commonsense Guide to Engineering Reports and Theses. New York: ASME Press.

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The Research Project Proposal

Requirements: Thoroughness and clarity Useful for both the student as an operational plan and for the

advisor Structure parallels final report, and may be some content overlap.

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Research Proposal: Overview + Interrelationships (Ethridge p. 86)

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Research Proposal: Contents

Title Problem identification and explanation
description of problem being addressed rationale for proposed objectives

Objectives
Goals of research (ends, not means) One-sentence general objective plus a list of specific objectives

Literature review
Presents the base of knowledge already known about the area

being researched. scientific literature, not general, not popular media articles.
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Research Proposal contents (cont.)

Conceptual framework
conceptual analysis of the problem model and analytical lens through which problem will be

examined. Brief or non-existent in purely disciplinary research Methods & Procedures How the research objectives will be achieved Data to be collected/generated, analytical techniques, procedures (Later tailor specific methods and procedures) References
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The Literature Review

Purpose: Provide the researcher and reader with the state-of-the-art on

knowledge and literature pertaining to the proposed research. Focus: Research problem Should help in choice and refinement of approach, methods, and procedures, and may help you refine the conceptual framework and/or hypotheses. Relevant literature: may pertain to the problem, objective, conceptual framework, and/or the methods and procedures. Degree of formality: depends on requirements for research proposals/research of your respective programs/departments. Scope: scientific literature: (preferably peer-reviewed) literature: academic and professional journals and most formal research reports produced by universities, government agencies, research institutions, and many national or international organizations. Start with secondary data sources (in economics).

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Reference Management Software

Endnote, Zotero, and others. Zotero: Firefox and Word plugin.

http://www.zotero.org/support/ Zotero 3-minute overview: http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/zotero_to ur Zotero and MS Word plugin 2-minute introduction: http://www.zotero.org/support/screencast_tutorials/zotero_an d_word ETH Librarys courses and tutorials for Endnote http://www.library.ethz.ch/en/Dienstleistungen/SchulungenTutorials-Fuehrungen/Literaturverwaltung-mit-EndNote
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Online database searches

Search aids and search engines: disciplinary and multidisciplinary. Multidisciplinary databases include Academic OneFile, ProQuest,

Wilson OmniFile Full Text, Dissertation Abstracts International, etc. Scope of search Keywords Identify major related journals and check their indices over the past x years up to the present Relevant literature may pertain to the problem, objective, conceptual framework, and/or the methods and procedures. Key word searches may have to be done separately for each of these domains.

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Reading articles
Determine relevance from keywords, abstracts, and/or

conclusions. Junk as necessary. Usu. start reading the most recent studies first. Potentially useful: literature syntheses and meta-analyses. Taking notes: Can use Zotero for this too: attach freehand notes to references in your Zotero database

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Writing the lit. review

Synthesis of previous related research Gives perspective on your research, provides support for

problem description and objectives, and feeds into conceptual model and methods and procedures section. Make outline first Organization options Intro., summary sections Subheadings

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Reporting on articles in lit. review

thematic syntheses across a number of articles, as in S. Sharps: more

conventional Alternative: Research synthesis of important articles: part summary, part analysis, part critique

Introduction Purpose Setting /sample Intervention (experiment)/issue Procedures Variables/measurement instruments Data analysis Results Conclusions/implications Limitations/weaknesses

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Articles in lit. review

Summarize, then analyze, compare, and contrast the

literature. Be selective as pertains to your proposed research. Analyze and critique the strengths and weaknesses. Start by writing more rather than less. Discuss/summarize some of the literature you review; only reference others. Do not reference a source of an idea without having actually read the source (Ethridge, p. 120).

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Examples
S. Sharps literature review in Ethridge 2004. He elegantly follows an integrative approach of moving

across multiple references in discussing themes rather than summarizing whole key references. Kendall 2006s research synthesis

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Referencing
Referencing (in lit. review and elsewhere) To avoid plagiarizing, use references whenever you use:
Another persons idea, opinion, or theory Any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings- any pieces of information

that are not common knowledge Quotations of anothers written or spoken words Paraphrase of anothers words (Ethridge p. 121)

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Plagiarism & P. Detection

Turnitins originality reports & similarity indices Other uses of turnitins originality report
1) check degree of matches of your sources with published

sources 2) Check the match of your terminology and (short!) phraseology with that of your academic discourse community (if too few matches, you are not using accepted terminology in your discourse community.)

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Reference styles Reliability of sources

Writing and editorial style APA style in social sciences: http://www.apastyle.org Chicago Manual of Style Online:

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html Final formatting, APA style: See Bui (2009)s Ch. 10 for specific recommendations.

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Writing assignment
Assignment: outline/develop/refine your thesis literature

review. Submit what you have done by 8 October through turnitin; we will work on it further next class. Reminder: Sample of thesis/paper proposal and/or outlinefor assessment (''Before') due Wed. 12 October. Informational handout: Booth et al. Tip-Outlining

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