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SS5302 Research Methods in Social Sciences
Semester A 2024-25
• Course Aims
This course aims to introduce basic research methods in social sciences, including both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and their application in social science issues. The course will cover research strategies and designs, practical issues in quantitative and qualitative methods, and research ethics and values.
Upon completion of this course, participants will be able to:
• demonstrate a thorough understanding of qualitative and quantitative research methods in social sciences and their application in different research settings;
• identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of different research methods in social research;
• design a correlational study on a social science topic; and
• comment critically on selected qualitative and quantitative studies.
• Teaching and Learning
The course contains lectures and data analysis exercises. You are expected to spend time digesting the lecture materials and working on research project (qualitative) and SPSS exercise (quantitative). You are encouraged to schedule individual or group consultation with the instructors on the progress of coursework, especially the research project and SPSS exercise. The course will be very useful for you to do rigorous qualitative and quantitative research in social sciences.
We will post announcements and lecture notes on the course webpage in Canvas (you can login to Canvas via https://canvas.cityu.edu.hk/login/ldap using your Electronic ID and Password). Most readings listed in this syllabus are reserved in our university library. Please finish the readings, including reading materials of the handouts, before class.
• Assessment
1) Fieldwork Notes (qualitative) 20%
2) Research Project (qualitative) 40%
3) SPSS Exercise (quantitative) 40%
100%
Deliverables:
• Fieldwork Notes (qualitative, for the method of photovoice) (20%)
Fieldwork Notes include three parts: i) 3 photos, ii) 3 audial files for each photo (each audial file must at least last for 1.5 minutes), and iii) transcription of each audial file in word format (at the beginning of the transcription, you must give the following information: student no., gender, year of birth, place of birth, length of residence in Hong Kong, and name of the community (if appropriate). All these parts (photos+audial files+transcription word files) must be uploaded to Canvas. Any deviation from the above requirements will be conducive to mark loss.
Two research topics are allowed for taking photos:
• My experience of studying at City University of Hong Kong?
• My experience of living in my community?
• Research Project (qualitative) (40%)
Students can freely organize among themselves. Students can conduct individual projects (1 student), or form groups to conduct the research project (group size can range from 2 to 12). Research topics are provided in 1), and data can be obtained from Canvas in 1). The template for an “excellent” research project is Ho, Wing-Chung; Rochelle, Tina; & Yuen, Wing-Kan. (2011). “‘We are not sad at all’: Adolescents Talk about their ‘City of Sadness’ through Photovoice.” Journal of Adolescent Research, 26(6): 727-765. You can follow the link below or use Google scholar engine to find the paper. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0743558410391255
The word limit of the research report is 10,000.
Deadline for submitting Research Project: December 6 (11:59pm), 2024
Assignments must be submitted to Canvas no later than 11:59pm of the deadline day. Kindly note that the Department has a late submission policy (printed in the latest student Handbook). According to the rule, late submission for 1 day can be deducted by 1 sub-grade. For example, the penalty will be a deduction of 3 sub-grades for 3 days of late submission. Submission after 7 days after the deadline may be given a ‘0’ mark.
• SPSS Exercise Assignments (40%)
Each student needs to apply SPSS to compile a coherent and meaningful report due on Dec 8. The report needs to apply 5 SPSS procedures taught in this course to address a research question based on a common dataset. This report needs to include a literature review section (20%), a method section (10%), results section (50%), and a discussion section (20%). Good description, justification, referencing, and formatting are necessary. The report will have 1,500 words in the main text, submitted in a single-line spacing Word file.
• Topics Outline and Tentative Schedule
Week
Topics
Week 1 (Sept. 3)
By Wing Chung Ho
Introduction of the course, and Nature of Qualitative Methods and Designing Qualitative Research
Readings:
Berg, Bruce L. (2007). Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences (6th Edition). Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.
Chiu, Catherine C.H. (2001). “Feminist Research Ideals and Dilemmas: Reflections in a Different Voice.” Hong Kong Journal of Sociology, 2: 157-175.
Creswell, John W. (1997). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks: SAGE
Hammersley, Martyn and Paul Atkinson (1995). Ethnography: Principles in Practice (2nd edition). London: Routledge.
Marshall, Catherine and Rossman, Gretchen B. (1995). Designing Qualitative Research (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks: SAGE
Weiss, Robert S. (1994). Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. New York: Free Press.
Week 2 (Sept. 10)
By Wing Chung Ho
Ethnographic Field Strategies and Photovoice
Readings:
Berg, Bruce L. (2007). “Ethnographic Field Strategies.” In Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. (pp. 171-221). 6th Edition. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.
Ho, Wing-Chung (2019). Ethnographic Inquiry and Lived Experience: An Epistemological Critique. New York: Routledge
Ho, Wing-Chung; Rochelle, Tina; & Yuen Wing-Kan. (2011). “‘We are not Sad at all’: Adolescents Talk about their ‘City of Sadness’ through Photovoice.” Journal of Adolescent Research, 26(6): 727-765
Ho, Wing-Chung & Ng, Yat-Nam (2008) “Public Amnesia and Multiple Modernities in Shanghai: Narrating the Postsocialist Future in a Former Socialist ‘Model Community’” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 37: 383-416.
Malinowski, Bronislaw (1999). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Routledge, pp. 8-25.
Nowell, B. L., Berkowitz, S. L., Deacon, Z., & Foster-Fishman, P. (2006). “Revealing the cues within community places: Stories of identity, history, and possibility.” American Journal of Community Psychology, 37(1/2), 29-46.
Week 3 (Sept. 17)
By Wing Chung Ho
Focus Group Interviewing and In-depth Interviewing
Readings:
Berg, Bruce L. (2007). “Focus Group Interviewing.” In Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. (pp. 144-170). 6th Edition. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.
Campo, Marc & Darragh Amy R. (2010). “Impact of Work-Related Pain on Physical Therapists and Occupational Therapists.” Physical Therapy 90(6):905-920.
Holmes, Robyn M., McNeil, Marilyn & Adorna, Patti. (2010). “Student Athletes’ Perceptions of Formal and Informal Team Leaders.” Journal of Sport Behavior 33(4):442-465.
Ng, Shun Wing. (2009). “Transformation of Students into Active and Participatory Citizens: An Exploratory Study in Hong Kong.” Educational Research for Policy and Practice 8(3):181-196.
Ryan, Gery W., Rand, Health & Hernard, H. Russell. (2003). “Techniques to Identify Themes.” Field Methods 15(1):85-109
Week 4 (Sept. 24)
By Jacky Cheung
Quantitative Research Designs
(Empirical research cycle; research questions and literature review (hypothesis); experimental designs and survey research)
Reading:
• Babbie, chapter 4 “Purpose and Design of Research” (pp.88-122)
• Gliner, Jeffrey A., George A. Morgan, and Nancy L. Leech. Research Methods in Applied Settings. (2nd ed.) NY: Routledge. 2009. Chapter 3 “Variables, Research Questions, and Hypotheses” (pp.33-44)
• Singleton and Straits, chapter 7 “Experimental Designs” (pp.187-218); or Babbie, chapter 9, “Experiments and Experimentation” (pp. 270-293)
• Singleton and Straits, chapters 8 “Survey Research” (pp.219-262), 9 “Survey Instrumentation” (pp. 263-305); or Babbie, chapter 8 “Surveys” (pp. 228-269)
Week 5 (Oct. 1)
Public Holiday
Week 6
(Oct. 8)
By Jacky Cheung
Measurement and Questionnaire Design, and Sampling and Data Collection
Reading:
• Babbie, chapter 6 “From Concept to Measurement” (pp.163-196); or Singleton and Straits, chapter 4 “Measurement” (pp. 76-110)
• Buckingham and Saunders, chapter 3 “Preparing a Questionnaire”
• Singleton and Straits, chapter 5 “Sampling” (pp. 111-152); or Babbie, chapter 5 “Sampling Logic” (pp. 123-162)
Week 7
(Oct 15)
By Wing Chung Ho
Fieldwork Week + Student Consultation on Group Project – Deadline for submitting Fieldwork Notes (photos + voices + text of the voices) to Canvas
Students are – depending on their plans – to take photos and prepare their Fieldwork notes
Week 8 (Oct. 22)
By Jacky Cheung
Data Management and Descriptive Statistics
Reading:
• Babbie, chapter 14 “Analyzing Quantitative Data” sections “introduction” to “subgroup comparisons” (pp.413-429)
• Ho, chapter 2 “Introduction to SPSS” (pp. 11-24)
SPSS exercises
*Multiple rooms are reserved: LI-4208, LI-4307 & LI-4400
Weeks 9
(Oct. 29)
By Jacky Cheung
Central Tendency and Variability, and Probability Distribution
Reading:
• Moore, McCabe and Craig, chapters 1.3 “density curves and normal distributions” (pp. 53-82) and 5.2 “the sampling distribution of a sample mean” (pp. 335-352)
SPSS exercise
*Multiple rooms are reserved: LI-4208, LI-4307 & LI-4400
Week 10
(Nov. 5)
By Jacky Cheung
Statistical Inference
Reading:
• Moore, McCabe and Craig, chapter 6 “ Introduction to Inference” sections “introduction” to 6.2 “tests of significance” (pp. 353-393)
• Ho, chapter 1 “inferential statistics and test selection” (pp. 1-10)
SPSS exercise
*Multiple rooms are reserved: LI-4208, LI-4307 & LI-4400
Week 11 (Nov. 12)
By Jacky Cheung
More on Statistical Inference
Reading:
• Babbie, chapter 14 “Analyzing Quantitative Data” section “bivariate analysis” (pp.430-434)
• Moore, McCabe and Craig, chapters 7 “Inference for Distributions” sections “introduction” to 7.2 “comparing two means” (pp. 417-472) and 9 “Analysis of Two-way Tables” sections “introduction” to 9.1 “inference for two-way tables” (pp. 525-535)
Optional reading:
• Treiman, Donald. (2009). Quantitative Data Analysis: Doing Social Research to Test Ideas. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Chapters 1-3 (pp.1-64). (There is a Chinese version of this book: 《量化数据分析：通过社会研究检验想法》，任强译，社会科学文献出版社. 請閱讀第1-3章)
• Ho, chapters 3.5, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11,14.1-14.3 16.1-16.3
SPSS exercise
*Multiple rooms are reserved: LI-4208, LI-4307 & LI-4400
Week 12
(Nov. 19)
By Guest speaker(s)
The use of research methods in security industry
Week 13-14 (Nov. 26, Dec. 3)
By Wing Chung Ho
Student Consultation on Group Project
• References (for quantitative methods)
5.1 books
Babbie, Earl. (2013). The Practice of Social Research (13thed.). CA: Wadsworth, Inc.
Bausell, R. Barker. Conducting Meaningful Experiments: 40 Steps to Becoming a Scientist. London: Sage Publications, 1994.
Buckingham, Alan and Peter Saunders (2004) The Survey Methods Workbook: from design to analysis. Cambridge: Polity Press.
DeVellis, Robert F. (2003) Scale Development: Theory and Applications. (2nded). NY: Sage.
Gliner, Jeffrey A., George A. Morgan, and Nancy L. Leech. (2009) Research Methods in Applied Settings: An Integrated Approach to Design and Analysis (2nd ed.) NY: Routledge.
Henry, Gary T. 1990. Practical Sampling. Applied Social Research Methods Series Volume 21. London: Sage Publications
Ho, Robert (2006) Handbook of Univariate and Multivariate data analysis and Interpretation with SPSS. NY: Chapman & Hall
Moore, David S., George P. McCabe and Bruce A. Craig. (2012). Introduction to the Practice of Statistics. (6e.) New York: W. H. Freeman & Co.
Punch, Keith F. (2006) Developing Effective Research Proposals (2nd ed.). London:SAGE.
Rudestam, Kjell Erik and Rae R. Newton, Surviving Your Dissertation. London: Sage Publications, 1992. Chapter 1 “The Research Process”(pp. 3-8) and chapter 2 “Selecting a Suitable Topic” (pp. 9-19)
Singleton, Royce A. Jr. and Bruce C. Straits. Approaches to Social Research. Fourth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Babbie, Earl. (2009). The Practice of Social Research (12thed.). CA:Wadsworth, Inc.
Treiman, Donald. (2009). Quantitative Data Analysis: Doing Social Research to Test Ideas. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. (There is a Chinese version of this book: 《量化数据分析：通过社会研究检验想法》，任强译，社会科学文献出版社)
Young, James Webb. A Technique for Producing Ideas. Chicago: NTC Business Books, 1975.
5.2 Online Resources :
http://www.quantitativeskills.com/sisa/
Simple Interactive Statistical Analysis
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/selstat/ssstart.htm
Selecting Statistics
http://www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm
Survey Research (including sample size calculator)
http://www.census2011.gov.hk/en/index.html
HK Census 2011.
http://hkupop.hku.hk
HKU Public Opinion Site
http://onlinestatbook.com/rvls.html
Rice virtual lab in statistics
http://www.surveyconsole.com/console/showSurveyLibrary.do?surveyID=169
Free Survey Template Library
http://www.researchmethods.com/
Research Method Workshop
http://www.research.umn.edu/consent/menu_soc.html
Informed Consent
http://www.randomizer.org/
Random Number Generator
http://sda.berkeley.edu
Survey Documentation and Analysis
http://www.anu.edu.au/nceph/surfstat/surfstat-home/surfstat.html
Surfur Stat
http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/
Web Center for Social Research Methods
http://www.websm.org/
Web survey Methodology