Rationale for Assignment:
The rule of thumb for selecting research methods is to select methods that make the most sense given the research question. Over the last several weeks, we have considered the following types of research methods: participant observation, in-depth interviewing, focus groups, survey research, ethnomethodology, Netography, content analysis, comparative method, historical method, and creative sources. For this assignment, you will work from a research question that is provided and design what you feel like would be an appropriate methodological design to study the problem. There is no right or wrong answer to this question. It is a matter of your creativity in thinking about how you would use these methods to answer the question. It is also a matter of selecting the appropriate tools to do the research.
Technical Requirements:
- 3-5 pages double spaced of text plus appendices of artifacts (see below)
- 12 point font
- Double spaced
- Times new roman or Calibri font
- 1 inch margins
- In-text citations from your text
- At least 2 peer reviewed journal sources to support the methods you’ve selected for this research.
Research Question:
The BRIDGES Council on Juvenile Delinquency has asked you to reach out to kids who have been in the court system to better understand their perspectives on their situation, family life and their view of your community. Your job is to select the methods that would work best with kids between the ages of 12-18. You must also take into account any ethical concerns in working with kids.
Question: What do kids feel would most help their situation and allow them to remain out of trouble and succeed in our community?
Structure of the paper:
Introduction (1 paragraph 5 points)
- Introduce and frame what you will be discussing in this paper
Part 1: Identification and in-depth discussion of the 2 methods you selected to conduct the research (at least 1-1.5 pages for each research method) (50 points)
- For each methods you select you must discuss the following: your rationale for selecting the method, strengths and weaknesses to the method in regards to the research question, ethical concerns with each research method and how you will overcome those, sampling frame (how will you get your participants? Probability sample or non-probability sample & why), and a reflection on barriers you might encounter during the research process.
Part 2: Creation of supplementary Materials (45 points): For each method you select you must create the materials you would use in order to answer the research question.
- participant observation, in-depth interviewing, focus groups, survey research, ethnomethodology, Netography, content analysis, comparative method, historical method, and creative sources.
- For participant observation: What will be your role and why? How will you structure your observations? What will you be looking for during your observation?
- For In-depth interviewing: You must construct a questionnaire of at least 10 questions to help you get data to answer the research question
- For survey research: you must construction a questionnaire of at least 10 questions to help you get data to answer the research question
- For ethnomethodology: This method is about making the common sense plain—how do we know what we know. Thus, you must construct a questionnaire of at least 10 questions that allow you to dig deep into that aspect of the research question.
- Netography: what will be your strategy for observation in an online setting to collect data to answer the research question? You must provide at least a 5 point analysis of what you will be looking for in the online interaction.
- Content Analysis: identify documents for analysis, unit of analysis, sample units, coding procedure
- Comparative Method: Who would you compare and why? How would you access the comparative populations? What specific statistics would you be looking for in order to compare the populations?
- Historical Method: what records would you use? How would you select them? What your be your procedure for analyzing these in a systematic way?
- Creative sources: Once again, you must identify the plan you would use to put in place a physical trace analysis (where would you look & why?), Archives (identify the sources and how you would gain access, what you would be looking for)
