Category Archives: research methods

what do research questions want?

Posted on December 27, 2011 by

Understanding what research questions want can be helpful. Different kinds of questions produce different kinds of knowledge contributions and often imply particular kinds of methods. Descriptive questions aim to provide some qualitative or quantitative information about something – they want … Continue reading →

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ethical research with children

Posted on July 14, 2011 by

 Dr Kaye Johnson, from South Australia, worked with children at her school to develop ethical standards for research. They called this The Child Speaks to the Researcher. 1. Please treat me and my life with respect. 2. Tell me about this … Continue reading →

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two points about visual research

Posted on July 13, 2011 by

(1) An image is not a neutral. It is literally and culturally constructed by a person or team of people through processes of: selection – where the image maker literally stands, what they foreground, what is in focus and out … Continue reading →

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thingification

Posted on July 13, 2011 by

Post-positivist social sciences typically name a set of characteristics that describe key features of the topic under question. This has the effect of making the subject under scrutiny a ‘thing’ whose attributes can be refined, named and renamed, discussed and … Continue reading →

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collocation

Posted on July 10, 2011 by

This is a term used in critical discourse analysis (1). It is used to describe two terms which are routinely found in conjunction with each other, and which may in fact be joined by a conjunction. One common collocation used … Continue reading →

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policy as problematisation

Posted on July 10, 2011 by

Carol Bacchi argues that policy works by creating a problematisation of a social/cultural/political phenomenon and then providing a solution. She notes that the problematisation may not always be IN the policy text -this may just outline the solution and how it is … Continue reading →

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a Foucauldian approach to discourse analysis

Posted on July 10, 2011 by

A Foucauldian notion of discourse (1) holds that: discourse is a culturally constructed representation of reality, not an exact copy discourse constructs knowledge and thus governs, through the production of categories of knowledge and assemblages of texts, what it is possible to talk … Continue reading →

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under de/construction

Posted on July 9, 2011 by

Habermas[1] once claimed that there were three different types of knowledge production: (1)    work knowledge where the intention is to predict ( taken up in positivist and postpositivist research traditions), (2)    practical knowledge about the sphere of human interaction where … Continue reading →

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