YOU’VE COMPLETED 6 STEPS IN WEEK 2

Planning and referencing tools

Comments

Throughout this course we will be asking you to complete various exercises which will help you to write your research proposal. There are several online tools which you might find useful in organising and planning your work.

Planning

• Gingko is a free tool which helps you to structure a project and break down your work into more manageable components. We have set up a Gingko tree containing the questions you’d need to ask if you were taking the inductive approach to give you an idea of how it can work.
• Evernote is a free tool for note taking, organizing, and archiving. It will also allow you to clip web pages and attach files to your notes.
• MindMup is a free mind mapping tool to help with brainstorming, creating presentations and document outlines.

Referencing

• Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research and collaborate with others online.
• Bibliographic software, such as EndNote and RefWorks, allow you to manage references to all the publications and information sources you have used.

Blogging

• FutureLearn have a list of blogging tools which can be used to develop your skills as a reflective learner.

Activity

Look at some of the suggested tools and think about which may be useful for you when writing your proposal. In the discussion area add links to any other tools or approaches you have found useful for organising your work.

2.7.

Introduction to research questions

11 comments

Every piece of research requires a set of research questions that frame the problem and point towards the methods that will be used to generate findings. Research questions resemble the kinds of SMART targets typically set in project management. They must be very specific, imply particular kinds of answers, and deliver information that is relevant to addressing the initial problem. Well-formed research questions make for good research, irrespective of whether the findings that emerge are the ones expected by the researcher. Conversely, poorly-formed research questions normally make for terrible research, no matter how much effort has gone into collecting data. It is then vital that you formulate good research questions, which are placed at the heart of your proposal.

 

Research questions begin to take shape when an initial problem definition is developed by the application of theories, concepts and prior findings drawn from the literature. You can think of research questions as the ‘scholarly’ version of your initial problem, or more simply as what happens when you think your problem through what the academic community already knows (and does not yet know). A research question has a ‘technical’ component in that it uses the concepts and language developed by a particular approach to frame the problem.

 

For example, looking at what makes organizations change the way people relate to each other and the work they do becomes ‘investigating the drivers for change in organizational culture’. It also proposes specific kinds of relationships between various aspects of the problem. For example, exploring the moderating effect of investor sentiment on the options pricing means studying what investors feel about particular stock options and the impact this has on the mechanisms by which their value is established. Finally, a research question implies a range of definite answers.

 

Compare the questions:

‘Why do people stick with a particular job?’ and

‘Which employee benefits predict staff retention?’.

 

The first question could be answered in almost infinite ways – we end up saying ‘it all depends’, which is not really an answer at all. The second clearly indicates that out of a limited range of employee benefits, some are associated with staff remaining in post and others are not. Now it may be that the second question is a little premature – we would have to be confident that employee benefits are the real issue, rather than other factors such as the nature of the work, employment relations or general economic conditions. But we can say that the first question is a general enquiry or a philosophical puzzle, whereas the second is a genuine research question.

 

2.8. The Festival is a key event in the University’s calendar where we display to the world outside the University the impressive and ground-breaking research done by our postgraduate researchers.

 

As well as creating posters, researchers can enter other competitions such as PhDepictions, a photography competition for University of Leicester research students, and the Three Minute Thesis contest.

 

Activity

Universities often run events like the ones above, or PhD seminar series, where you have the opportunity to present your research, and often receive constructive critique. Although you won’t yet be at the stage where you can present research findings, we would like you to present your ideas for a research problem or idea in brief on this Padlet board using the password PhDLeicester. You can do this in whichever way you would like, for example by posting:

 

A brief text summary (no more than 140 characters)

A photograph

An audio clip (no more than three minutes)

A video (no more than three minutes)

We would encourage you to also give feedback by commenting on others’ posts on the Padlet board. This should be constructive and you must remain respectful of others and follow the FutureLearn Code of Conduct. Please also see FutureLearn’s advice on using Padlet.