Tutorial Week 4

FIC0154 Basic Communication Research ( 9^th October 2012 ).

Reference materials: Lecture notes 2 and 3 and relevant text book chapters

Question 1

Research is divided into two major sectors – academic and private. From your textbook, read up on the section relating to academic vs private research and summarise the points that differentiate between these two. You may find this reading in Chapter 1 of Wimmer and Dominick (pages 14-16 in the latest 9^th edition).

ANSWER:

Academic research	Private research
Academic research is known as basic research. Basic research is conducted to find new things out or explain some new trends.	Private research is known as applied research. Applied research is usually conducted to help a company for making a decision in order to earn profit. For example, company which want to sell a drink will carry out a applied research to find out who are their target group or is the brand name suitable to the product and easily being remember by the others.
Academic research is conducted by scholars from colleges and universities. For example, student from Taylor’s University, lecturers from Taylor’s University will carry out academic research.	Private research is conducted by non-government companies or their research consultants. Typical private research topic in the private sector include media content  and consumer preferences, acquisitions of additional business or facilities, analysis of on-air talent, advertising and promotional campaigns, public relations approaches to solving specific informational problems, sales forecasting, and image studies of the properties owned by the company.
Academic research is public. Academic research must be shared or published to the public. Any other researcher or research organization that wishes to use the information gathered by the academic researchers should be able to do so by asking the original researcher for the raw data.	Private research is private. Private research can only be shared when the company agreed or want to release the research. Most private sector research, on the other hand, generates proprietary data that are the sole property of the sponsoring agency and usually cannot be obtained by the other researchers.
Academic researchers generally do not have specific deadlines for their research projects. Academic researchers have more time to complete their research project. Academic researchers usually conduct their research at a pace that accommodates their teaching schedules.	Private sector researchers usually operate under some type of deadline. The company will generally set a deadline for the researchers to complete the private research.
Academic research is generally less expensive to conduct compared to the private sector research. Academic researchers usually do not need to cover overhead costs for office rent, equipment, facilities, computer analysis, subcontractors, and personnel.	Private research is generally more expensive to conduct compared to the academic research. Private research usually needs more incentive, professional, resources and expert sources.

Question 2

Explain the 8 steps of research, giving examples to illustrate what each step entails, if necessary.

ANSWER:

(i)                  Selecting and defining research problem.

• Many researchers come to be identified with studies of specific types or specific approaches.
• Researchers should find things which related to his or her personal field of study, topic which related to the society or current change, and the topic should not been explored by someone else.

(ii)                Determining topic relevance and significance.

• To determine the topic is good or bad, or is it worth to be conduct.

• There are 8 questions to determine whether the topic is relevance and significance.

(a)    Is the topic too broad?

-         For example, what are the effects of television on children, hence what kind of effects the researcher wants to discover and what kind of genre of television the researcher wants to conduct. The effects could be physical effect, emotional effect or academic results; while the genre of television could be advertising, cartoon, education material or entertainment material. Therefore, this topic is too broad and is not suitable to be conducted.

(b)   Can the problem really be investigated?

-         To determine whether the topic is doable.

-         For example, how a teenager who never expose to television communicate with others. It is very hard for a researcher to find a group of teenagers who never watch television before as television is a very common gadget in our life.

(c)    Can the data be analyzed?

-         The researcher needs to determine whether their data could be analyzed by doing statistic, whether have the capability and ability to count the average so that the data collected will not become raw data.

(d)   Is the problem significant?

-         A researcher should determine whether the topic chose is useful and meaningful to the society.

-         A researcher should be aware about is there any readers who will read their research result after it is published.

(e)    Can the results of the study be generalized?

-         A researcher should aware of is the research result could apply to the other people at other states or countries.

-         For example, what music genre a basic communication research student at Taylor’s University, Lakeside Campus like. This topic is not generalized as all of the students are from the same setting, the age group is the same, and the number of males and females are not balanced.

(f)     What costs and time are involved in the analysis?

(g)    Is the planned approach appropriate to the project?

(h)    Is there any potential harm to the subjects?

-         The potential harms include physical harm and emotional harm.

-         For example, a study about abused children and their violence behavior. The researchers can continue to carry out this topic, but they need to consider whether this topic is really beneficial for the society.

(iii)               Review of literature.

• Literature review is review on what other experts had done in the area of your study before you.
• A researcher need to look at how, who, where, and when the other experts conduct their research and the conclusion they made in their previous studies. 
• Through literature review, a researcher could learn from the previous research, save time, energy and effort, and prevent of repeating the same mistakes of the previous study.
• A researcher will fill in the gap that are missing in the previous research and conduct a new research to contribute new knowledge.

(iv)               Stating or come out with a hypothesis or research question.

• Hypothesis is a statement which pre-establish the relationship between two variables and it could either be accepted or rejected; while research question is question that you want to know the answer by doing the research and as a guide for researcher to conduct their research.
• Hypothesis is specific; while research question is general as it is open ended.
• Every research needs at least one, and usually more than one research questions; while hypothesis is not necessary for every research.
• Hypothesis is not necessary when there is no pre-establish relationship between two variables, hence the researchers have no idea on what is going on.
• For example, parents use their Facebook account to monitor their children online activity will be the hypothesis of a study, while do parents use their Facebook account to monitor their children online activity will be the research question of a study.

(v)                Preparing research instruments.

• Researchers are responsible in designing own instruments for their research to collect data. Instruments are needed so that the researchers could gain the answer they need and decide whether their hypothesis could be accepted or rejected.
• To collect data, the researchers need instruments or methods such as,

(a)    Questionnaire

(b)   Interview questions

(c)    Coding sheet (Content and analysis)

(d)   Journal (Require for observation method)

(e)    Notebook (Require for observation method)

(vi)             Data collection.

• This is the part where fieldwork, interviews or coding are carried out using specific research instruments.
• Data could be collected through distributing of questionnaire, doing interviews and any other instruments.

(vii)             Data analysis and interpretation.

• The data collected could be made sense through data analysis and interpretation.
• Data analysis and interpretation may involve statistical procedures to summarize data, analyze findings and make meaningful interpretation.

(viii)           Presenting data.

• The research result must be presented in a clear and concise manner but the format could depend on the purpose of the study.
• Research result should be publish in journal or share in conferences in the area which is related to your study.
• Research result need to be published so that public could know about your study and result.

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Teh Woon Ya.