Research and evaluation for busy practitioners

Information for lecturers

Welcome to the Lecturer section of the companion website for Research and evaluation for busy practitioners.

Please use the menu on the left to navigate your way through the lecturer resources. There is help for you if you are teaching research methods, including discussion topics and essay questions. There is information about how this book can be used to support your supervision of students’ dissertations or theses. The book may also be useful in helping you with your own research. And, lastly, there are links to online resources which you may find useful.

Discussion topics

Here is a list of discussion topics related to each chapter of the book. These are designed to be useful for both group seminars and one-to-one tutorials.

Chapter One

  • How clear (or unclear) is your identity of ‘researcher’? • How does your identity of ‘researcher’ interact with your other identities? • How do you think your current research could benefit other areas of your life? • To what extent is your research ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ research, and why? • Which parts of the research process appeal to you, and why? • Which parts of the research process do you find daunting, and why?  What steps could you take to overcome this?

Chapter Two

  • What do you see as the pros and cons of quantitative and qualitative research? • Under what circumstances do you think service users should be involved in research? • Can there ever be research which is not in some way value based? • What ethical dilemmas might you encounter during your research?  How can you manage these dilemmas? • What do you find most stressful about your research?  How can you reduce that level of stress? • How do you envisage linking theory and practice through your research?

Chapter Three

  • What are the most effective types of research question?  Why? • What is the best way to decide how to collect data? • How are you going to sample your population?   • Why do you think your plans will produce good evidence of an answer to your research question(s)? • Why is your research worth doing? • Who might benefit from your conclusions, and how?

Chapter Four

  • What is the purpose and function of project plans? • How can you develop organisational skills? • Is time management an art or a science?  Why? • What is the relationship between your research and your other work, or your plans for work? Is there more scope for one to enhance the other than you are currently using? • What is the relationship between self-discipline and negotiating skills? • How can you keep yourself safe and healthy throughout your research?

Chapter Five

  • What are the differences between a document review and a literature review? • Why is record keeping important for background research? • How can you read more critically? • How can you read more strategically? • Why is it important to make notes as you read?  How can you most usefully do this? • How do you know when you’ve read enough documents or literature?

Chapter Six

  • What are the pros and cons of using secondary data? • What are the ethical aspects of using secondary data? • How can you assess the integrity of secondary data? • What problems might you face in trying to complete a research project using only secondary data? • What factors can make it difficult to compare data from different datasets? • Should all data be openly accessible?  Why?

Chapter Seven

  • What are the pros and cons of using primary data? • How do you know how much data to collect? • Is it better to collect a little data from a lot of people, or a lot of data from a few people?  Why? • What are the relative merits of interviews, focus groups, and case studies? • Under what kinds of circumstances might it be particularly useful to collect visual data? • What are the ethical aspects of collecting primary data online?

Chapter Eight

  • Why is data preparation important? • What is the point of coding data? • What ethical dilemmas might you encounter during data analysis?  How could you manage these dilemmas? • Do the results of statistical calculations tell the truth? • What are the relative merits of content analysis and thematic analysis? • How might Geographic Information Systems (GIS) help your data analysis?

Chapter Nine

  • What methods might help to overcome anxiety about writing? • Why is it almost impossible to write a good essay in one draft? • Who are you writing for?  What do they want to read? • What is wrong with plagiarism? • Why is citation important? • How can you make your writing the best it can be?

Chapter Ten

  • What are the ethical aspects of disseminating research? • When should you present your findings, and to whom? • How can you work out which method(s) of dissemination will be most effective for a particular piece of research? • What creative methods could you use to disseminate your research? • Why is dissemination a political act? • What is the role of the internet in disseminating research?
Essay questions

Here are some suggested essay questions:

1. What is good practice in designing a piece of research?

2. What helps, and what hinders, the process of linking theory and practice through research?

3. Discuss the role of writing in research.

4. How does social research interact with social class?

5. Is it possible to conduct evaluation research using entirely quantitative methods?

6. Why is research a political act?

7. Discuss the extent to which research can be value free.

8. What effect does research have on organisational and government policy?

9. Evaluate the claim that the social survey is the most useful method for carrying out research in society.

10. Can the gap between qualitative and quantitative research ever be bridged?

11. Should research aim to be socially responsible, and why?

12. Critically evaluate and compare two pieces of openly accessible research.

13. To what extent can you measure people’s attitudes using survey methodology?

14. What are the pros and cons of ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ research?

15. How can research support practice? Give examples from at least two public services.

16. In what ways is academic theory relevant to practical research?

17. Discuss the relative merits of text-based and visual methods of data collection.

18. What are the roles of ‘facts’ and ‘truth’ in social research?

19. Where does social research sit on the spectrum between science and art?

20. Discuss the assertion that the only role for research participants is to provide data for researchers.

21. How do decisions about sampling affect the results of research?

22. What are the advantages and disadvantages of primary and secondary data?

23. Discuss the assertion that all data should be openly accessible.

24. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of any two methods of analysing qualitative data.

25. Paying particular attention to research ethics, discuss the political implications of disseminating research.

26. How might you draw on the performing arts and visual arts in disseminating research?
Supervision support

When you are supervising the research training of any student, you need to:

• Ensure you are fully competent and experienced in the student’s area of interest.

• Establish a rapport and use good communication skills to build trust with your student.

• Make your role and your expectations clear to your student at each stage of the process.

• Understand your student’s expectations at each stage of the process.

• Help your student to understand and navigate the process of doing a research project.

• Balance directive and supportive approaches, providing practical advice and emotional support as necessary.

• Encourage your student to take ownership of their learning and their research.

• Allocate enough time to supervise the student effectively.

• Keep clear and accurate records of each supervision contact, with details of who is going to do what and when.

• Read and critique your student’s work.

• Signpost students to other sources of help when necessary, whether as a result of academic or welfare concerns.

• Balance your student’s needs with your total workload.This book can help in several ways because it:

• Gives a good grounding in research methods, so is a useful resource for students who may be shaky in one or more aspects of the research process.

• Offers advice on managing the process through planning, organisation and time management, so can be helpful for students who have difficulty with one or more of these skills.

• Is full of practical tips, making it immediately applicable.

• Contains numerous quotes from people who have been through the process, which can help students to find and keep a sense of proportion about the problems they are facing.
Online resources for lecturers

If you haven’t already, we would urge you to explore the Higher Education pages of the Guardian website. These pages hold a vast quantity of useful information for academics, and more is produced weekly. Also there is scope for you to comment on recently published pieces which can be useful for networking and raising your online profile.

Talking of networking, are you on Twitter? If not, it would be worth signing up even if you hate the idea. You don’t have to tweet; the point is to find and check out some relevant hashtags. A hashtag is a word preceded by the hash symbol which is used to help people identify tweets on a particular theme, such as #research or #highered (short for ‘higher education’) or #emcrforum (‘emcr’ stands for ‘early and mid-career researchers’). Hashtags can provide useful gateways to the latest online resources as people tweet links to the most up-to-date information.

Blogs can be useful, too, for networking, research, and information. Some blogs are institution-based, such as the excellent blog from the LSE about the impact of social sciences: Others are group blogs, such as the very useful Research Whisperer.There are also individual blogs by academics for academics, but we’re not including specific URLs for these because they shift and change. You’ll find links on Twitter, or from other blogs.

If there are any essential resources we’ve left out, please let the publisher or the author know.