Dear Students:

I know you are going to enjoy this class. Here you will be introduced to most of the key ideas that are required to do research. The readings are (mostly) interesting, and surely, the discussions will be, too.

Lorne

Part IV of booth, like the rest of the book, does a great job explaining how to produce winning reports. Like Doris pointed out, Chapter 16, on Revising Styles, has valuable writing tips, especially for non-native speakers like me. But so also are the chapters on organization, introductions and conclusion, visual communication, and planning. I don't pretend it is going to be easy to assimilate the teachings of this book. But it is sure going to be my research companion for a long while.

If I am to summarize the lesson from this part in a sentence, I should say: "Think like your audience." How will my audience view my report? Would they understand the thrust of my arguments, claims, warrants, etc? Would my report hold their attention long enough for them to appreciate the contribution I am making? Not only does Booth answer these questions; it does so in clear, unambiguous style—a case of practicing what it preaches, if you will.

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After I finished this book I asked myself “Have you ever considered reader and reader’s perspective? Answer is “Not much”. I learned that we should consider reader’ view for every single step on the research as this book always emphasizes this point. Even the drawing or making a table and chart to support the evidence it should be simple and clear to understand.

“Planning” part was useful for me. It describes how to start to organize elements of our argument. And I carefully read “Citation” part. It gives us how to cite sources into the research paper along with plagiarism. I realized there are various cases for plagiarism. If we don’t know exactly we will get in big trouble. For the “Introduction and Conclusion” part, it teaches us the steps from establishing common ground to writing a conclusion. I know we spend a lot of time to write introduction and conclusion as well as revising those parts. To design these parts effectively we need to memorize and practice it as possible as we can. This book is expecting to be my companion for research.

Reading “The Craft of Research” textbook gave me an impression that writing a research paper is an art that we as researchers need to care about each individual line to finally have a well-trusted paper. Booth text book gives clear insights for every single detail that should be considered through making research paper. What I really like about Booth textbook that authors considered every stage in writing a research paper’s journey, starting from searching for an idea till revising the final draft paper. I agree with the authors as well that this book need to be read more than once especially for beginner researchers. From my side, reading this book wont end by the end of this class. It is a great guide for researchers to check the principles of making their research papers worthy and well organized.

Booth Part IV

I always find it hard to write the introduction part in my papers, and it takes so long to write an introduction that somehow satisfies me. I always think about certain things like, if my introduction is going to get the reader’s attention or not? And whether I’m using the right vocabularies or not? Without thinking about the three elements of the introduction (Context, problem, and response to the problem) that were explained in chapter 16. At least, now I know what I should care more about in my introduction part rather than focusing only on vocabularies and terms’ definitions.  

Over all, this book is very beneficial to me in several ways: easy to read, well-organized, and useful quick tips. While I was reading this book, I was thinking about how I can improve my writing by using the strategy from these all quick tips.  This book also emphasizes on "the Ethics of Research" as shown in page 274. Ethical researchers' papers stipulate all sources, data, or results. Especially, plagiarism is prohibited when we are writing our own papers. We should give a credit to people or sources of data we used in our experiments.

After I read "The Craft of Rearch", I got an idea from writers; Booth, Colomb, and Williams. They all have several styles of writing when they write an outline for their research. Now, I have to find my own way to start writing a first draft. I realized that the first step is the most difficult one for me when I do anything. It seems like I'm walking into the dark room. The advices from this book compare with the light pointed to end of the way.

From now on I have to rethink about my research problem due to the fact that the topic should be interested and should motivated readers. Reading this book give me a whole picture of all processes in writing research from start to the end. The critical thinking of writing a research suddenly happened to me. Thanks Lorne for recommend us to read this book the first to give us the inspiration to start doing research.  

Scientific knowledge is about understanding how phenomena occur, and not why they exist. It consists of concepts and statements that are useful for providing:

·         Methods for classifying phenomena

·         Logical explanations and predictions of phenomena

·         A sense of understanding of understanding of phenomena.

Concepts and statements are used by scientists to describe new ideas they are presenting to the scientific community. “Newness” presupposes the scientist’s familiarity with existing ideas. And, depending on the degree of newness of concepts introduced, the new idea can be categorized into:

·         Kuhn’s paradigm

·         Paradigm

·         Paradigm variation

However, before new ideas are accepted into the body of scientific knowledge, the concepts and statements they embody should possess the following characteristics:

·         Abstractness (independence of time and space)

·         Intersubjectivity—concepts are explicitly described using terms generally understandable by the audience, and explanations and predictions are rigorously and logically derived as to be acceptable to the relevant audience

·         Empirical relevance—it should be possible for other scientists to independently examine the correspondence between this new idea and empirical evidence.

Ideas are conveyed using statements, which contain concepts. Therefore, at the most basic level, there should be a shared understanding of the meaning of theoretical concepts used. Since by definition and requirement, concepts should be abstract, operational definitions, which are amenable to measurement, are used as their indicators. Operational definitions serve to set out the procedures to be taken to obtain some sensory impressions of the existence of the more abstract theoretical concepts. Operational definitions used to represent the same theoretical concept should be such that no two of them are negatively correlated.

Renolds (2007) takes us through the journey of translating an idea to a potential scientific knowledge. The purpose of scientific knowledge includes providing typology of objects of study, prediction of future events, explanation of past events, sense of understanding of causes of events, and the potential for control of events. In order to achieve the above purpose, a researcher makes claims or ‘theories’ by extracting statements from a conceptual model describing characteristics or concepts of object of study. Conceptualization could take the form of Kuhn paradigms (i.e. views that radically depart from held beliefs), paradigms (i.e. views that represent dramatic new orientation), or paradigm variations. Concepts are essential ingredients of theoretical statements and their definition must be acceptable to relevant scientists. Not necessary as in some social science studies, it is important that concepts or surrogate concepts in statements be quantifiable either at nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio level.

Statements might describe an existence of a phenomenon (i.e. existence statements) or relationships between concepts (i.e. relational statements) in theoretical, operational, or concrete abstraction level. Theoretical statements (which more abstract than operational and concrete statements) form the most important element of a scientific body of knowledge.

These statements could be laws (i.e. ‘real truth’), axioms (i.e. basic statements), propositions (i.e. statements derived from axioms), or hypothesis (i.e. untested statements). Hypothesis statements might be derived from variations of laws, axioms, propositions, or all. They must be falsify by testing them against real life or empirical data. Concepts in hypotheses "must be measurable using appropriate operational definitions in a concrete setting" (Renolds, (2007), p. 80).

When measuring concepts in human and social science phenomenon, it is important to measure phenomenon unobstructed by avoiding ‘fight-back’ or ‘learning’ effect, to maintain objective or value-free orientation by stating any bias upfront, and to uphold ethical codes of research.

I appreciate Renolds’s theory construction primer. I will reread it but here are my questions:

(1) Renolds talks about not making scientific contribution if the object of study is situated in temporal or spatial context (Reynolds, 2007, p.12 & 13). He exempts those that are significant enough and categorizes them as historical explanations. These historical explanations are accepted if they reinforce an underlying general principle being applied. How about case studies situated in temporal or spatial context with no apparent support or test of explicit general principles?

(2) Is it acceptable at this level to make claims that tend to explain associations but do not explicitly indicate independent and dependent variables (Reynolds, 2007, p.70 & 71)?

Renolds, P. D. (2007). A primer in theory constructions: Pearson Education, Inc.

In the first half part of this book, A Primer in Theory Construction, it is such a good book for getting a basic idea in concepts and statements of a new theory in a body of scientific knowledge. Starting at the important characteristics of scientific knowledge, it is clearly described about typology, predictions, explanations, sense of understanding, and also control. Creating or developing a novel theory in a way of scientific knowledge is very challenging for scientists and researchers because it is quite difficult to convince others to believe and respect in a new theory that no one used before. The research procedure and the strategy of assuring new idea is very fruitful.

By the way, although there are several types of new ideas, the conceptualization or paradigm can be broadened by paradigm variations, as described in the example of Freud's Theory of Personality (pp. 22-24) and Heider's Balance Theory (pp. 26-28). It means that there are many aspects in one paradigm depending on each researcher's angle. In addition, the definition of concept and abstract vs. concrete concept are undoubtedly explained in chapter 3. I can understand four level of the quantification of concepts: nominal (labeling), ordinal (rank order), interval (rank order, but different meaning), and ratio (direct comparison). When I went through the chapter 4, I've suddenly known that it is very crucial to identify the relationships between concepts since there are several forms of statements used to articulate scientific knowledge. Variety of statements and using that relationship of statements in research are critical issues to discuss in class.

I wonder if anybody could tell me how to classify the degree of empirical support for the statement or how to categorize the relationship to theory. The relationship between Theoretical Statements and Empirical Data is so abstract and confused me.

This book describes the different types of concepts and statements that compose a scientific body of knowledge. And we expect that scientific knowledge provides a typology, predictions of future events, explanations for past events, sense of understanding, and control of events. Among these purposes typologies can be achieved since any set of concepts can be used to organize and classify. For sense of understanding, it is provided only when the causal mechanisms that link changes in one or more concepts (the independent variables) with changes in other concepts (the dependent variables) have been fully described.  Also this book indicates characteristics of scientific knowledge which are abstractness, intersubjectivity, and empirical relevance. Abstractness should be independent on the time and space and intersubjectivity should include explicitness and rigorousness. For empirical relevance, other scientists can evaluate the correspondence between the theory and the results of empirical research.

In Chapter 2, author introduces Kuhn paradigms which are scientific revolutions. While examples of Kuhn paradigms are founded well in the physical and biological sciences it is not easy to find example in the social science. However Freud’s ideas were a good example to meet the criteria of Kuhn paradigm. Also author explains that a paradigm and a Kuhn paradigm differ in degree; the Kuhn paradigm represents a dramatic change from past orientations, whereas a paradigm represents a definite shift in orientations, but less than a scientific revolution.

I learned what exactly concept is, difference between abstract and concrete concepts, relationship between abstract concepts and operational definitions, and quantifications of theoretical concepts as well in the chapter 3. And I also learned that there are four kinds of forms of quantification such as nominal level, ordinal level, interval level, and ratio level.

In chapter 4, author emphasizes that theoretical statement of the form (Given C1 …. Then Y) are most important for scientific body of knowledge and it should be placed before explanation, predictions, or sense of understanding.