Choosing a Research Method

Estimated time: 0 minutes

Overview

Questions

• What distinguishes any method from another, i.e. are ther different method types? -How will learners know which methods are the right ones for their research?
• What ethical considerations do learners need to take into account when choosing a method?
• How does the research plan effect method selection?

Objectives

• Define a target audience for the user study
• Identify risks of participation in a study and ways of addressing those
• Develop an appropriate recruitment strategy based on the chosen target audience
• Create an outreach plan and craft relevant materials (including screener, emails, etc)

Lesson content goes here

Challenge header

1. Define your project

• Describe your tool/software
• State one usability goal (e.g. reduce user errors during form completion)
• List your project’s constraints

2. Brainstorm

• List all possible methods you know / recall
• Use cheat sheet as a reference

3. Filter & Select

• Narrow your list to 5 methods that your team thinks best fits your project’s constraints and goals
• Evaluate each method choosen against checklist/rubric??? (idk rn)

4. Reflect

• Finalize your list
• Write a sentence per method explaining why it fits in your project ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: solution

Solution text

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Instructor Note

Inline instructor notes can help inform instructors of timing challenges associated with the lessons. They appear in the “Instructor View”

Challenge 1: Can you do it?

What is the output of this command?

R

paste("This", "new", "lesson", "looks", "good")

Output

OUTPUT

[1] "This new lesson looks good"

Challenge 2: how do you nest solutions within challenge blocks?

Show me the solution

You can add a line with at least three colons and a solution tag.

Figures

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You can use standard markdown for static figures with the following syntax:

![optional caption that appears below the figure](figure url){alt='alt text for accessibility purposes'}

You belong in The Carpentries!

Callout

Callout sections can highlight information.

They are sometimes used to emphasise particularly important points but are also used in some lessons to present “asides”: content that is not central to the narrative of the lesson, e.g. by providing the answer to a commonly-asked question.

Math

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One of our episodes contains \(\LaTeX\) equations when describing how to create dynamic reports with {knitr}, so we now use mathjax to describe this:

$\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}$ becomes: \(\alpha = \dfrac{1}{(1 - \beta)^2}\)

Cool, right?

Key Points

• Presenting research method types, i.e. qualitative vs. quantative and attitudinal vs. behavioral.
• Introducing frameworks for method selection and considering constraints.