Introduction

1. Introduction Research Design PhD course Doctoral School of Social Science and Business, Roskilde University Tobias Hagmann and Peter Triantafillou 29th January 2018

2. Overview • Presentation of participants • Course rationale and overview • The importance of writing • Communication and contribution • Exercise • Break • Knowing the academic requirements • Approaches to the art of explanation • Break • Designing your publication output and work process

3. Presentation of participants • Course responsible and participants present each 1 PP

4. Course rationale • Overall aim: • Provide newer PhD students with an introduction to the basic elements of research design issues at the doctoral level, including: • The interrelationships between research question, research strategy, literature review, theory, data collection and mixed methods, interactive research, and professional research ethics • Course approach: • Train and engage PhD students in research design through assigned readings for preparation, introductory lectures for learning and reflection, and student writing and discussion • Course book (BCW): • Booth, Colomb and Williams (3rded) (2008) The Craft of Research. University of Chicago Press. Easy reading, several platitudes, but practical and to the point.

5. Course overview • Monday 29th January Introduction/Social Science research Design • Introduction to the course by Peter Triantafillou and Tobias Hagmann • 12:00 - 13:00 Lunch • 13:00 - 16:00 Research Strategy by Laura Horn • Tuesday 30th January • 09:00 - 12:00 Research Questions and Hypotheses by Peter Triantafillou • 12:00 - 13:00 Lunch • 13:00 - 16:00 Data, methods and units of analysisby Tobias Hagmann • Monday 5th February • 09:00 - 12:00 Situating your work in the literature/s - Literature Review by Peter Triantafillou • 12:00 - 13:00 Lunch • 13:00 - 16:00 Theory by Allan Dreyer Hansen • Tuesday 6th February • 09:00 - 12:00 Researcher in Society by Tobias Hagmann • 12:00 - 13:00 Lunch • 13:00 - 16:00 Research Ethics by Yvonne Mørck • Wednesday 7th February • 09:00 - 12:00 Answering Your Questions on Research Design and Peer-to-Peer Feedback by Tobias Hagmann and Peter Triantafillou • 12:00 - 13:00 Lunch and Goodbye PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THE EXERCISES OFTEN IN ADVANCE OF THE SESSIONS!!!

6. Research design = construction plan of your research • consists of different elements that must be fine-tuned in relation to eachother • no good or effective research without a good research design • the research design needs to bethoughttrough and argued for (not simplyassumed or copied from others) • research design canbe more or lessformalized (depending on discipline and their more deductive or inductive approach)

7. Joseph A. Maxwell, Qualitative Research Design, 2nd edition. 2004. Sage Publications.

8. Key elements of a Research design 1. Goals Why is your study worth doing? Why do you want to conduct this study, and why should we care about the results? 2. Conceptual Framework What do you think is going on with the issues, settings, or people you plan to study? What theories, beliefs, and prior research findings or personal experiences will guide or inform your research? 3. Research Questions What, specifically, do you want to understand by doing this study? What do we not know about the phenomenon under consideration? What questions will your research attempt to answer, and how are they related to one another? 4. Methods What will you actually do in this study? What methods will you use to collect and analyze your data? 5. Validity How can you ensure that the data you collect will, a) address your research questions, b) yield correct and defensible answers to these questions, and c) apply to the larger population or process of interest? Joseph A. Maxwell, Qualitative Research Design, 2nd edition. 2004. Sage Publications.

9. The importance of writing • Writing is almost everything in academia! • The dissertation is a written product - your oral performance often counts for (next to) nothing. • Academic writing is a skill that has to be learned: • It requires a lot of practice, so get started as early as possible! • Produce a writing and publication plan with your supervisor. • You are responsible for controlling the reader’s interpretation of your text => • Write as clear, explicit and simple as possible – unless you hand in your thesis at a French uni. • Writing helps you: • Remember; Understand and Test your thinking (see Booth et al)

10. The importance of writing • Know your audience: Academia • The discipline (or disciplines) and the specific field: • What are the predominant styles of writing (articulating research problems, employing theory and method, structuring arguments, concluding, etc.) • The journals: • Crucial to make a journal review if you write paper-based PhD • EXERCISE: List the 5 most important journals in your field!

11. The importance of writing • Knowing your audience: Practitioners • (Almost) Always a good idea to try to disseminate your results outside the narrow circle of academia • Some are obliged to do so (co-financing), could help you improve your job chances after the PhD, could perhaps even contribute to solving problems • Requires distinct style of writing: • Be clear and to the point • Better to do the writing yourself – than having a journalist interpret / write your ideas up • Beware that misinterpretations and possible abuses of your results

12. ResearchING = communicating • Research only exists if and when it is communicated. • Hence you want to practice: • Communicating both in written and oral form. • Pitching and explaining your doctoral research to different audiences (lay, non-specialists, specialists) • Having confidence, but also humility to accept criticism and comments including on your presentation and writing style. • Publishing, not perishing. • Research takes place within relationships. • Presenting your work – half baked ideas and full papers – at workshops, seminars, conferences. • Communicate regularly with your supervisors and colleagues. • Learn from the pros.

13. Exercise • In groups of 2: discuss the Introduction of your PhD project outline based on chapter 16 in the BCW book

14. Break

15. Knowing the academic requirements- The universals • The two universal requirements: • A relevant, academic and answerable research problem/question • An original contribution to scientific knowledge – following from the answer to 1. • The research problem could be theoretical, methodological, or empirical, BUT: • Always starts with: • An intellectual puzzle (it must not have a banal answer) OR • A relevant knowledge gap (not all knowledge gaps are relevant) OR • BOTH 1 and 2

16. Knowing the academic requirements- The specifics • Different ideals of research design, posing puzzles, styles of explanations and what counts as adequate documentation • At least three very broad research styles – often mixed in reality: • Deductive • Inductive • Retroductive

17. Knowing the academic requirements- The specifics • Know thy enemy, for example: • Mainstream – theory and method • You may not favour hypothesis deduction and testing or regression analysis, but you need to relate to this kind of research • Know thy: • Field • Discipline • Or (mix of) disciplines (Interdisciplinarity) • EXERCISE: In groups of 2, identify and discuss the mainstream theory or methods in your respective fields

18. Knowing the academic requirements- The specifics • Within or between a discipline? • Interdisciplinarity – its advantages: • Creativity • Making new contributions to the foreign field. • Discovering blind spots or even errors within the field • Covering research problems falling between existing disciplinary boundaries • Providing practical solutions, etc. • Interdisciplinarity – its disadvantages: • More burdensome: Requires more work to get an overview and in-depth insight into more disciplines • Superficiality: You may not be able to able to fully master more than one discipline • Inconsistency: You risk combing theories and methods with incompatible assumptions • Unfair assessment: You may be judged harshly by people used to mono-disciplinary approach

19. Approaches to the art of Explanation • How best to explain social (and political) phenomena? • Three general answers/strategies • Deduction / Causal law paradigm: • Testing of hypotheses deduced from (more or less) universal theories • Top-down generalizations • Induction • Develop theory based on inferences based on small-N observations • Bottom-up generalization (main aim!) • Retroduction (Abductive) • The adoption of a hypothesis based on existing data in order to render a social phenomenon intelligible • Can be used to build universal theories (Top-top generalizations), BUT not necessarily

20. Positivist vs. Non-positivist apProaches • Positivist (and critical rationalism) • Discovery and Justification separate: • Theory Construction (de-, in-, or retroduction) • Theory Demonstration (testing) • Non-positivist (hermeneutic, phenomenological, post-structuralist..) • No clear distinction between theory development and testing. Instead 3 overlapping activities: • Problematization • Turn your social phenomenon into a puzzle, something deserving explanation • Iterative theory and hypothesis construction • Persuasion & intervention (in social reality) • How would you characterize the approach of your PhD project?

21. Explanatoryapproaches- Points of reflection • How to test non-positivist explanations – if no clear test criteria (veri- or falsification)? • Contextualized descriptions of the social phenomenon: • Conventional criteria of documentation, logical coherence, .. • Focus on HOW social phenomena take place - which may lead to.. • Explanations or Intelligibility (WHY): • Lower (less universalizing) ambitions: contextually conditioned explanations • Multi-directional causal relations – between multiple type objects

22. Exlanatoryapproaches-Points of reflection • In what sense is non-positivist analysis critical? • The dubious self-understanding of post-positivism • We are critical by default – other approaches are not! • If you want to be critical, then specify in what sense • Possible avenues of critique: • Epistemological: Current explanations are factually flawed or only partially correct • Normative: Work with a normativity that is not mainstream • Perspectivist: Demonstrate the inhibitions on social conduct (freedom) enabled by particular ideas / discourses / worldviews

23. Explanatory Approaches- Points of non-reflection • Positivist or non-positivist approaches alike .. • It is MANDATORY to argue for your: • Choice of approach • What is its analytical value-added? Why not other approaches? • RQ • How and why this RQ? (To whom and to what is it relevant) • What is the link between your RQ and the analytical approach? • Data: • How you identify, collect, construe and interpret data? • Assessment criteria: • If no clear criteria of falsification, then • Explicate how– by what other criteria - others should assess your conclusions

24. Short Break

25. Designing your publication output- Monographs • Read other monographs in your field + from your department • Delineate the key elements and structure • Beware of top heavy monographs • Start early on to sketch what kind of possible answers / conclusions / contributions you expect to be able to provide

26. Designing your publication output- Article based • Check the formal requirements from your department • Read other paper-based dissertations in your field + from your department in order to decide on: • Publications: • Number? Co-authorship allowed? Type and level of journal? Journal submission or approval? • The framework: • Explaining what is not in the articles: Background, literature study, wider theory and method, general conclusion and contribution to the field • Key elements? Size?

27. Designing your work process • Make a work plan for all three years, including monthly milestones • Go through the plan regularly throughout the three years and expect to revise it several times • Start broadly and … • Your literature study is your way into the debates, puzzles, theories, methods and suggested answers in your field – so far!! • Expect to read a lot and take notes of what your read – much of which will never appear in your PhD • … gradually zoom in on: • Research question, theory, method, data.. BUT • Remember to make small notes on the things you decide to exclude along the way (and why you did so). • Result: Enlightened narrow-mindedness!

28. Designing your work process • Exploit available resources with no shame • Your supervisor, Other academics, Fellow PhD students, Research librarians • Participate in extra-departmental activities • Research stays at other department, participation in academic seminars and conferences; participation in PhD courses (at other departments) • Plan and use your teaching • Teaching is usually compulsory and can take a lot of time – talk with your supervisor about how to avoid overdoing this • Think about how to test your ideas on students – if they do not understand what you are talking about, you may want to clarify your research agenda