Scientific Researchers - Essay Example

Chapter Fifteen Summary Scientific research is thought to be “wed” to communication, though it becomes difficult to maintain this relationship without running into problems. It becomes difficult to read the methods, findings, and other research of someone else; like fingerprints, people tend to have unique ways of displaying their findings so that others may understand them. In turn, an individual might find it complicated to write down their own research in ways that can be easily and reliably communicated to others. For these reasons chapter fifteen is dedicated to learning how to read and write social research in ways that can benefit those involved in either the reading or the writing so that others may easily understand what has been found. The chapter outlines three methods to learn how to read social research, and they are as follows: organizing a review of the literature to help focus on the most vital sources of the research, find certain skills for reading the literature efficiently, and knowing how to find and assess sources on the Internet. As most original research is seen as an extension of research that had been done previously, most researchers place in their research a literature review of previous findings and information. This allows the reader to understand what is already known and not known. It is recommended that the first thing a person should do is to organize their search of the literature based on certain key concepts that they are especially interested in. A method to go about doing this is to use special websites dedicated to looking up prior research, such as the Library of Congress. During this, it is important to make note of the other references that other researchers make use of in their research. Finding certain skills to read the literature can be difficult, especially as books and journals have different layouts, thus requiring different perceptions while being read. Journal articles begin with abstracts, which allow the reader to understand, at a glance, all that they are about to read in the whole article. Unlike books, which like to play on the element of suspense, journals like to present everything upfront so that there are no surprises. It is recommended that after reading the abstract, the reader should then read the conclusion or summary to allow them to get the full gist of the article. Skimming the article comes next, which would involve taking in the section headings and any graphs or tables that might be present. After this, the individual should read the article in its entirety to piece it all together. A research book in similar, albeit longer and more detailed. It should be read in much the same way as a journal article, though it is okay to skip sections if they look irrelevant to the purpose of the reader’s study. Though it is a helpful tool, the Internet should be used with extreme caution since anybody could easily change the information or otherwise present false information. “The power of the technology does not guarantee that it will always be used wisely. It is best to stick to websites that end in .gov or .edu as these websites have been checked and edited by professionals. The most vital part about using the Internet is ensuring that the sources are accurate, so following up with additional research would be beneficial. The first thing a researcher must do in writing their research paper is to understand their language perfectly. There should be no grammar, tense, spelling, or punctuation flaws in how they write their paper. Other guidelines that should be followed include understanding the various functions of a research paper, which are to communicate a body of specific data and ideas. These should be clear and concise. The researcher needs to grasp the concept that their paper is now an addition and a contribution to scientific knowledge. Finally, the paper should spark further inquiry, leaving an opening for future research. Besides the aforementioned guidelines, the researcher needs to understand that different reports serve different purposes. They need to take into consideration who their audience is so that they may present the information in a way that is easily understandable. The researcher needs to consider the form and length of the report, as well as the aim of the report, or what the report sets out to accomplish. The organization of the report is also vital. There should be a purpose and an overview, immediately displaying what the paper will cover. A literature review will present the reader with previous findings on the topic. It is important during the literature review that the researcher cites their findings properly to avoid plagiarism. An analysis and interpretation section will allow readers to understand what how the researcher interprets the data they found. The summary and conclusions sections summarize what has been found and what has been determined by the information previously discussed in the research report. The paper will essentially be in chronological order, presenting the reader with an easy-to-follow research paper. Chapter Six Summary Index and scale are common works found imprecisely and interchangeably in social research literature. The purpose of these measures is to include several indicators of a variable in one summary measure, a feat that other indicators are unable to accomplish. Although they both have different and similar meanings, it is more common that scale is used to describe both indexes and scales as scales satisfy the intention of including several indicators in one summary measure better than indexes are capable of doing. While indexes are based on the cumulation of indicators of a variable, scales are able to make use of and benefit from logical or empirical structures that exist within a variable’s indicators. The greatest thing that they have in common with each other is that they are ordinal measures of variables. They are also composite measures of variables, which means that they are measurements based on more than one data item, as previously mentioned. The constructing of an index includes the selecting of the specific items, examining their empirical relationships with one another and the actual assessment itself, if relationships exist, scoring the index, and then validating it. If different items prove to be indicators of the same variable, then they are thought to be empirically related to each other. It is of great importance that the researcher examines any bivariate and multivariate relationships among the selected items. The criteria used in selecting an item to construct the index involve the face validity, the degree of specificity with which a dimension is determined to be measured, and the amount of variance provided by the items. To score indexes, the researcher must decide what the desired range of scores will be and determining whether or not the items will have equal or different weights from one another. Furthermore, there are various techniques that allow items to be used in an index regardless of missing data. The way that indexes are set up, as well as the additional information or data that the researcher might have, allows the blanks to be filled in when needed. This helps to provide accurate and closed data. The aspects of these data that are missing can prompt future studies from other researchers, enabling an ongoing research project to properly fill in these blanks. Item analysis follows and is considered to be one of the most important steps in constructing the index. Item analysis is a method of internal validation originating on the relationship between the individual items of the composite measure and the measure itself. When external validation is brought up, the researcher is referring to the relationship that has been found between the composite measure and some of the other indicators of the measure, which are the indicators that were not originally included in the measure. There are four different types of scaling techniques that are outlined throughout the chapter, starting with the Bogardus social distance scale. The Bogardus social distance scale is a device that measures the differing degrees to which a person would be willing to associate with a specific class of people. The Thurstone scale is a technique that makes use of judges to determine the intensities of different indicators. The Likert scale is used to measure based on standardized categories. The Guttman scaling method discovers and uses the empirical intensity structure among numerous other indicators of any given variable. It is this scaling method that is probably the most popular in social research today. There is another scale of measure, one that is quite common though seldom used, and this is the semantic differential format. This method asks respondents to make ratings that rest between two extremes, such as “very positive” and “very negative.” Again, this method is fairly common; it is often implemented in surveys given to a large group of people and is usually based around feelings or opinions in regard to a certain subject. Another form of this is to use a scale with the numbers between one and ten, most commonly seen on surveys analyzing the behavior of a business representative or service. A final scale of measure that is often used in social research is typology. This method can be used as effectively as independent variables, but the interpretations tends to vary greatly when they are used as independent variables. Typology focuses on general classifications to organize its data. This method is common in the social sciences due to the fact that the data is classified based on certain characteristics, providing more accurate organization than other methods. The purpose of this chapter was to distinguish the differences between indexes and scales and to show how scales tend to be more accurate and beneficial, not to mention easier to implement and later interpret. Furthermore, there are more scaling methods than there are techniques to construct indexes. Scales tend to be the most favorable due to how versatile they can be depending on what each researcher needs to use it for in their studies. Read More

It should be read in much the same way as a journal article, though it is okay to skip sections if they look irrelevant to the purpose of the reader’s study. Though it is a helpful tool, the Internet should be used with extreme caution since anybody could easily change the information or otherwise present false information. “The power of the technology does not guarantee that it will always be used wisely. It is best to stick to websites that end in .gov or .edu as these websites have been checked and edited by professionals.

The most vital part about using the Internet is ensuring that the sources are accurate, so following up with additional research would be beneficial. The first thing a researcher must do in writing their research paper is to understand their language perfectly. There should be no grammar, tense, spelling, or punctuation flaws in how they write their paper. Other guidelines that should be followed include understanding the various functions of a research paper, which are to communicate a body of specific data and ideas.

These should be clear and concise. The researcher needs to grasp the concept that their paper is now an addition and a contribution to scientific knowledge. Finally, the paper should spark further inquiry, leaving an opening for future research. Besides the aforementioned guidelines, the researcher needs to understand that different reports serve different purposes. They need to take into consideration who their audience is so that they may present the information in a way that is easily understandable.

The researcher needs to consider the form and length of the report, as well as the aim of the report, or what the report sets out to accomplish. The organization of the report is also vital. There should be a purpose and an overview, immediately displaying what the paper will cover. A literature review will present the reader with previous findings on the topic. It is important during the literature review that the researcher cites their findings properly to avoid plagiarism. An analysis and interpretation section will allow readers to understand what how the researcher interprets the data they found.

The summary and conclusions sections summarize what has been found and what has been determined by the information previously discussed in the research report. The paper will essentially be in chronological order, presenting the reader with an easy-to-follow research paper. Chapter Six Summary Index and scale are common works found imprecisely and interchangeably in social research literature. The purpose of these measures is to include several indicators of a variable in one summary measure, a feat that other indicators are unable to accomplish.

Although they both have different and similar meanings, it is more common that scale is used to describe both indexes and scales as scales satisfy the intention of including several indicators in one summary measure better than indexes are capable of doing. While indexes are based on the cumulation of indicators of a variable, scales are able to make use of and benefit from logical or empirical structures that exist within a variable’s indicators. The greatest thing that they have in common with each other is that they are ordinal measures of variables.

They are also composite measures of variables, which means that they are measurements based on more than one data item, as previously mentioned. The constructing of an index includes the selecting of the specific items, examining their empirical relationships with one another and the actual assessment itself, if relationships exist, scoring the index, and then validating it. If different items prove to be indicators of the same variable, then they are thought to be empirically related to each other.

It is of great importance that the researcher examines any bivariate and multivariate relationships among the selected items. The criteria used in selecting an item to construct the index involve the face validity, the degree of specificity with which a dimension is determined to be measured, and the amount of variance provided by the items.

Read More