Understanding Research ─ Coping With the Quantitative - Qualitative Divide

Planning, undertaking and completing a research project – from dissertations to presentations - can be a daunting undertaking for any student, involving a number of easily taken mis-steps for those without adequate guidance.

The objective of any research project is to gather data, analyse it based on your research question and present your findings and conclusions. For students, having the right approach to these steps can mean the difference between an easily handled process resulting in a well argued and presented project, or panicked flailing, misdirection and confusion.

For those fearful of not getting enough research done, doing it the wrong way, putting it together incorrectly, or unsure of what the end result will be, then Understanding Research is an invaluable guide to getting it right and putting fears to bed.

Successfully completing a research project is a major milestone in most university degrees, and it should be daunting – although not unassailable. This book provides students with the guidance necessary to start, undertake and present their research project in social science or the humanities.

This text addresses:

• Where do I start? How do I begin my research and pull it together into a research question? - takes the student through the process of project design, starting research and gaining confidence in their choices
• Am I Researching the right things? Is it taking me in the direction I want to go? What direction is it taking me in? - explores the decision making process at all points of a research project and the implications of these decisions in the longer term
• Am I researching in the right way – should I be conducting interviews, reading articles or collecting statistical data? - outlines the practical and philosophical conundrums around specific techniques for gathering and analysing data

Focussed explicitly on the needs and experiences of students and including a wealth of practical tips, this work is an essential resource for all students embarking on a research project.

Understanding Research includes:

• 90 illustrations
• 2 tables
• 21 text boxes
• Glossary
• Further Reading guides for each chapter

M. I. Franklin is Reader and Director of the Global Media & Transnational Communications program at Goldsmiths (University of London, UK). With an academic background in the Humanities (History and Music) and Social Sciences (Politics) she has held teaching and research positions in Humanities, Social Science, and Engineering faculties in New Zealand, the Netherlands, USA, and the UK. She has received research funding from Social Science Research Council (USA) and Ford Foundation and awards for teaching excellence in the UK. Previous books include Postcolonial Politics, the Internet, and Everyday Life: Pacific Traversals Online (Routledge) and Resounding International Relations: On Music, Culture and Politics (Palgrave MacMillan). Digital Dilemmas: Power, Resistance and the Internet will be out in 2013 (Oxford University Press).