SSHRC Proposal Example 4

This proposal is a submission from a master of psychology student, researching student-teacher relationships to understand how to deal with behavioural problems in the classroom. The overreaching theme seemed to be that everything they have done (volunteer work, past education, past research) and will do (continue with a dissertation) connects back to this research. To me, it was this dedication to the project that makes this proposal very convincing.

The proposal is divided into three main sections. 

1. Personal Qualification and Background Information; approximately half a page in length, this section spoke briefly of the root of their research interest and the various experiences that 'reinforced' their interest. Spoken in the past-tense, each experience also cited their role and the general benefit of each experience.

2. Relevant Course Work; at only a single paragraph, the smallest section, the author quickly describes their program and what courses they will be taking this year to help prepare for this research. A variety of course types was stressed (theory, practical, research) and connected back to how this will help conduct research.

3. Proposed Master’s Research; the bulk of the proposal, just over a page, the author subdivides this section into three main areas:

3A. Previous findings; as this research is an extension of previous work, there is a discussion of what has already been done (with citations of author and date) and the gaps in the research they wish to fill in.

3B. Methodology; a two paragraph overview of the approach of the research. Most of the sentences are action oriented (‘Participants will complete’, ‘I will use direct observation’, etc).

3C. Importance of research; as one of the closing paragraphs, this section reinstates the relevance of the research project and also mentions their intentions of furthering this research into a dissertation.   

Finally, a few sentences explicitly stating that her preparation makes them a strong SSHRC candidate close the proposal.

“Beat the Uncertainty”

Understanding the overlapping areas of the petals of the research daisy and pooling in all of them to the core seem to be one of the trickiest tasks, very much like introducing aliens into a Michelangelo conversation. Luker’s research process seems to be extremely exhilarating at times. To think of it as logic of discovery instead of logic of verification and theory generating and not just theory testing makes us reach a whole new level.

Whether it is gaining entrée into the information world and then deciding through data cropping what is relevant to the large picture: it seems daunting when the task has not even begun. Organizational research, which I am planning to partake, not only involves assessing the extent to which a program has achieved its intended results but also acute observation of the users and usability of software interfaces. Meta-analysis is also often regarded as the dominant approach for the organizational sciences. Ethnographic research is no doubt one of the most applicable to our changing times. Pertaining to the earlier described visual research methods, there are in reality various exotic ways of finding out that information which will lead us to the deep meaning, for example, there are processes like Sensory analysis which is a actually a branch of psychology. Personally I was once very interested in research through photography. But then, sometimes I feel the need to know the canonical ways too so that they can give me a more rigid structure. What is required, in short, is an awakening – visual or verbal, that would point me to the North Star.

Research Question

As Yuliya mentioned in her blog that ….lot of dots because lot of thoughts. I am fully agreed with her because Research itself means search again and find out in a systematically and scientific manner. As we got assignment on research proposal and everyone is in their research thoughts. Before starting with the Research Proposal, I found that Research process must be clear. As Luker define in chapter 4 that most challenging task of this kind of research is to transform the Research interest into a Research question. There are four features set off a true Research Question from a Research interest:
1) a true research process.
2) understanding the relationship.
3) permit’s a range of possible answers.
4) a good research question properly answered.

Once research question is frame, it easy to take out the research proposal.
As I learned from the Research class about the framing of the SSHRC proposal this Monday. Therefore, the most important part in the proposal grant writing is the way that you frame your project, to make it relevant to the current topics. Yet, we have to do our own research project under the guidance of Prof. Sara.

-Meenaxi

SSHRC Proposal Example

I and three others got assigned the SSHRC Proposal Example #2, which is a Masters proposal for a research project that examines “the programs and policies of a chapter of Big Sisters,” in relation to body image issues among young girls. I have broken down the structure of the proposal, which I offer here (briefly). The first two sentences of the first paragraph begin with the word “I.” The first describes the student’s future academic affiliation, and the second describes the student’s “keen interest.” The remainder of the paragraph is dedicated to justifying a “space” for the research the student intends on undertaking. The second paragraph is concerned entirely with the student’s academic credentials – i.e. the courses they intend to take. The “purpose of the research” is in bold, and the particular objectives are listed in bullet points. The student then introduces each of the following sections with a subtitle: Background (which is allotted three paragraphs), Methodology (which is again presented in lettered bullet points), Contribution to the Advancement of Knowledge, and Access and Experience. Background and Methodology take up the largest portion of the two page proposal (probably about a page altogether). An interesting question raised during group discussion was the placement of the last section, Access and Experience. It seemed awkwardly placed, and as though it perhaps should follow the second paragraph, where the student lists the courses relevant to the research, and the perceived benefits of her supervisor’s guidance. My guess is that the student believed that, while relevant – and thus necessary to include – the reader would nevertheless judge this section the least “important” and therefore it was placed at the end. Or alternatively, because the student resumes their discussion of him/herself in the first person, he/she wanted to leave the reader with a strong impression of her expertise and trustworthiness. There was, however, a typo in the last sentence; the student writes “I belief my good…” instead of “I believe my good…” making it impressive that this proposal was accepted. Perhaps this was not the final draft.

Thorns of focusing

First Knight as if pushed gently to reconsider what research, or rather results of research mean: not description of state of facts but explaining them to the best of one’s understanding. The Luker’s voice added inertia to the initial push: explore, seek knowledge, seek place within it, slither into it, explore again, and add knowledge by answering your very special question... At that moment I stopped thinking that I didn’t have time to do Luker’s exercises: too exciting and promising became vision of challenging myself with following the way of the thinking researcher...

...A lot of dots because of a lot of thoughts... Especially the whole lot of them after the first rebound from the literature review while attempting to frame my research interest. Is the topic not worthy to be researched? No good skills of searching for what I need to find or even the lack of them in defining what I need to know? It made me to skip framing and proceed to the daisy:

My second literature review didn’t begin as focused as the first. I tried to stay calm about finding a little bit more on the petal themes than I expected to read in a lifetime except maybe the two of them. “Don’t panic” was the credo for this part of the work.

The victory over info glut flashed when I began to cross my broad searches in pares and was fully manifested for threes of them thanks to the great catalogue tools. Unfortunately, for me it doesn’t look satisfactory again for it seems as if I didn’t find those people who hold a conversation I want to slither in and I am not sure that I now have capacity to start a new one. I only can guess that the cure for this is still more focusing.

P.S.: for those who are not visual learners and researches as Jennette and Eleonore, but more of a textual, reading and “pronouncing in one’s head” types, I can advise for brainstorming such tools as Visuwords. Yes, it is pretty visual but the main point is in textual connections not imaginal ones.

One person's hermit crab is another's baseball cap

The play-doh community map (picture offered by Eleonore) instantly made me think about the board game ‘Cranium.’ In one of the categories a teammate constructs something with clay so that the other teammate can guess what it is. What is clear to one person is (very likely) confounding to the next. Granted, it’s within a short time limit, but it got me thinking about communication gaps and group contexts.

When someone feels they are under fire in a group interview, they will more than likely end up speaking the particular community language of the group, or what they think is proper in that setting. There can also be inequalities of representation between group members, in addition to miscommunications and misunderstandings. The Lunt and Livingston reading suggests that familiarity between members of the group can result in a more open group culture and therefore more substantive results.

Given the scope of our research, I may end up conducting one-on-one interviews regardless. At the cost of reliability and pertinence of the data (which will hopefully be covered in a separate quantitative data portion), I believe that in such interviews, people may give more complete and honest responses. This method could also sidestep the issues of arbitrarily mixing subjects into homogenous groups and then generalizing group opinions.

-Martin

Serious Play

Eleonore's post about the Lego Serious Play Research Project peaked my interest in the subject. I know it was a recommended reading, but there is A LOT of reading as everyone knows.

I grew up with an artist mother and went to art camp all through my youth, so I understand that some things are often easier to represent through art or visualization, especially when it comes to personal thoughts or feelings. It sounds like a "touchy, feely", super subjective method, and certainly not a quantifiable one, and it is. However, it's a method that may be able to tap into a person's psyche in a way that other methods don't have the power to. It's a method that allows for revisiting and revising as well. I like David Guantlett's personal work regarding the individual's identity, I think that I could use it to inform my own research choice.

For my research question, I'm playing with the idea of online and offline identities and how users feel about themselves in those different spheres. Are they different spheres? Or just extensions of one sphere? Do they require different identities? Why? I think that having a person build a representation for their identity in both their online and offline lives would be really interesting and revealing. Seeing the similarities and differences in the two representations would be very telling about a person's true feelings towards their contemporary identity (ies).

I was also thinking about having online and offline focus groups with the same sample and comparing the results...but perhaps that's for a different post.

Thank you Eleonore and Jennette for being so enthusiastic about such an interesting method, good luck on the workshop!

Get experience in visual research methods - October 8 at 2 PM in the Inforum

Jennette and I have been going back and forth on the ArtLab approach and we decided to host a visual research workshop for all those interested in exploring the method and delving deeper into their own research topic. The workshop will be based on Gauntlett's approach, as highlighted in the Lego Serious Play Research Project. The workshop will take place on Friday, October 8, from 2 PM to 4 PM, in the Inforum. The room number will be confirmed as soon as possible.

Because Lego is too expensive, at this point, we will be using clay to model and explore our research areas, examining ways to visually represent our areas of interest and what is still unclear to us. After an introduction and the modelling session, we will share and discuss our models with each other, exploring questions such as: why we chose to present our ideas in this way, how the other participants understand our model, and what insights we can derive from this discussion into our research.

We hope that the participants will leave the workshop with: 1) experience with a modelling research method; 2) a better grasp of their research ideas; 3) a clearer sense of how their research might be perceived and interpreted by others.

Because we will be buying the clay ahead of time, we suggest that each participant contribute 1$ to the materials. If you have any suggestions on how to make this workshop more useful or would like to be involved in organizing it, please do not hesitate to let us know. If you intend to participate, please also RSVP at: eleonore.fourniertombs@utoronto.ca before Thursday, October 7.

Visual research methods

I was fascinated by the Lego Serious Play Research Project, by ArtLab, which was one of our recommended 'readings' this week. The idea is to use lego to have research participants share individual and group identities, as well as thoughts about specific subjects. This led me to the International Visual Sociology Association website, which I recommend if you are interested in visual research. It also made me think of a tool that I have used for work called "community mapping".The objective of community mapping is to get participants to both reflect on and share elements of their community that particularly impact them. In the context of my work, which aims to support youth engagement, once the participants have gone through community mapping and a few other similar exercises, they start to identify themes that they would like to address in their communities, as well as possible resources and limitations. Typically, the community maps have been made out of play-doh. While these workshops are not academic, they do seem to have elements of action research and I wonder if the lego method could be applied in this way - to support community workshops, as a tool for action research, or both. The photo above, reproduced with permission, is from a community map made by a participant at a youth conference in Yellowknife, in March. In a post-conference questionnaire, many participants discussed their Aboriginal identity and how it had been reinforced during the conference. I would venture that this is also somewhat reflected in the community map shown here.

Interesting Fact about the Iterative Process: It Never Ends

This week’s quest to narrow an interest to a research question has been tricky; in an addition to the other complications others have mentioned, I’ve personally been struggling with the politics of omission: how can you be sure that, in circumscribing a frame, your exclusions will not plague your findings with a slew of shaky biases, rendering the entire project valueless to the academic community? 

But longitudinal exploration prohibits latitudinal progress (or a shallow one at best), so a backbone must be grown and a decision must be made. I think this is where Luker’s iterative process becomes a useful way to approach this stage of research. I found if I progressed with the understanding that what I’ve done is not ‘set in stone’ I was much more willing to let myself explore a path. In other words, completing a step was not the end of the phase but just another lap in a cycle. I would write my interests, ‘review the literature’ and adjust. I would ask a question, consider methodologies to answer it, and ask another question. While this process can hypothetically go on forever, I found it a good way to explore my interests and discover what area exactly I was intrigued by.  

I also thought this would be a good forum to share a little bit of this process (although it is rather lengthy just for a blogpost, so I included an edited version after the  break). 

The Importance of Having a Plan

For me, this week was about focus and concision. Doing research in the age of the 'info-glut' can be really difficult and time-consuming, but I found that Luker's tips were really useful in learning to navigate that.
Research is a process, and it tends to be a long one for me just because I get caught up in certain tracks and then I change my mind or I realize I've been reading about the wrong thing (true story). I have always had a problem with being organized before going into the research process, but Luker's tips were really helpful for that. Her idea of not reading a whole book, just the introduction and conclusion and the table of contents is something I did during my undergrad, but not nearly enough. I would often find myself reading a book that my professor had told me would be useful for my topic, but finding it wasn't really that relevant, but I would continue to read thinking that maybe it would eventually say something useful for me.
I also appreciated Luker's point about not always listening to your professors. While they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful, they don't always know exactly what your research interests are, and may try to give you advice that doesn't quite fit your ideas. Research is a personal thing, in that it's your own personal interests, and I appreciated Luker reminding me of that.
It's really easy to get off track when doing research, especially if you're like me and have a curious mind and can't help but follow every lead to its end no matter how pointless. This chapter really helped remind me that to do research properly and not waste time, you need to go into the process with a plan and a clear research question. I'm really going to have to work on that.

The Logic of Verification

“The logic of verification” which Luker explains takes for granted the possibility of “qualification” — that a social phenomenon is (a) divisible into its smallest part, which can then be (b) assigned a numerical value and thus (c) contrasted and compared – is at times an unsatisfying method of verification, yet there is not a clear alternative available for social scientists who are looking to discuss subjective experiences in an objective way. The social world, as Luker acknowledges, is substantially different from the natural world, and thus trying to evaluate the two using similar methods will almost inevitably lead (at some point) to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of particular phenomena. The trend can perhaps best be seen in the university, where such sub-disciplines as political theory, traditionally housed in the department for political science, have been moved to less “scientific” departments (in this case, the department of philosophy – which is itself becoming increasingly quantitative in nature). The problem is that data can be persuasive, and hence we are easily convinced that the results tell an accurate and complete story when they often in fact do not.

Salsa in Social perspective

I began this blog with the overview of Research. Research is the systematic process of collecting and analyzing information to increase our understanding. As Luker said that Social Science Research is a set of guidelines about to conceptualize and execute a systematic and that lets us rigorous intellectual enquiry into something which research can get as close to the truth as possible by adopting the research methodology tools and techniques irrespective of the research context be it social, business, political or scientific.

As per Luker's Research Methodology is challenging task as with the passage of time and change in the social orders the relevance of the research and as we pass through the era of the information scarcity to the era of information abundance and world wide web, where today the information available is beyond the human capacity to process and analyze , so Luker emphasis on the filtering of the information and having the validated and verified data for the qualitative and quantitative research.

The paradigms of research have been expanded to present a way of thinking that helps us to gain a clear idea of the different examples used in research, material on focus research group.

Salsa dancing into the social sciences research will be an interesting case study to evaluate our research methodology understanding about the subject and its application.Keep sharing your ideas.

Specialized Generalists

I'm not going to lie, I was a little terrified when I realized that taking this class was manditory. To me, "Research Methods" meant rigidity, dryness and worst of all statistics. Some how I managed to make it through my undergrad without taking any kind of statistical analysis, I figured now, in graduate school, was my come-upance.
Is it ever refreshing to read Luker and her casual eloquence regarding the study of social science. She eases you into slowly thinking about and building your own research project, without striking fear into your heart. But as Martinus discussed in his post, the parameters (or lack there of) that Luker suggests are seemingly endless, and its a little difficult to see how there is any "science" involved at all when everything seems so subjective.
However, I'm finding lots of overlap in the literture that I'm reading for other classes. There seems to be an explosion of blurred distinction or outright cross-over between disciplines. The openness and lack of singular catagorization that Luker speaks of, seems to be everywhere and is something that academia has been and currently is grappling with.
I think this makes learning all the more exciting and well-rounded. To be able to share thoughts and ideas with those that previously would not have been connected to your research at all, is pretty incredible. So many different perspectives! In her article "On Translation and Transformation: Media, Education and the Continuity of Culture" (2009) Twlya Gibson, paraphrases another thinker and claims that we are entering the age of scholars as "specialized generalists".
I'm okay with that and working on becoming one myself.

New but very hopeful to find social truth

Coming from engineering and chemistry, I’m very new to social research. Not only had I put extra efforts to bear with Luker and professor Grimes while exploring paradigms and deeds of human leaders in sociology, but also tried to enter a new state of mind, where promises like “you will not be trying to assess the distribution of individuals … across a known number of categories whose boundaries are clear” will not throw me into confusion. A chemical experiment without boundaries is more of a hobby than science (I was taught). Not that I’m saying this kind of hobby or passion didn’t bring humanity discoveries like penicillin, but still constant curiosity and attentiveness are not the same as conscious inquiry. Fortunately, the happy thing is that I’m becoming interested in researching our “fishiness” and at the same time more and more impatient about how to find categories that you didn’t set to look for; collect not too many and not too little data without aiming for exact data; acquire wisdom to be human (“fish”), but analyze findings without “public” constrains (being “fish”), and be sure that you add to universal knowledge, not only to personal hours worked.

What I want to find after learning this Salsa Dancing methodology is truth. And I believe it won’t deprive people of possibilities to find another truth, and yet another one, because, for me, truth is not complete and absolute in itself but what can help, guide or add to knowledge at the moment it was brought into light.

Every result or claim can be useful even if proved wrong, for then you can study why at the time of its research it was impossible to conclude otherwise. Of course, the researchers have to be good and open-minded students of methods (good: you can’t acquire basic knowledge from mere air; open-minded: roughly speaking, any grand theory can be disproved any time and better to be prepared to do it than not), and have to be the best in every contemporary to them aspect. Then there won’t be any doubt that research, including thinking, could have been done better — not in scale, but in attitude. So, any discovery made by such researchers will become a new brick for what we call research — a building knowledge process spread across years and centuries. All bricks, errors or not, compose research, and our view, and our understanding of the world; all bricks are valuable and truthful when brought to the construction site of knowledge with all possible precautions taken not to consciously or unconsciously deceive.

Dependable Ol' Monochrome

I get the feeling that I will inevitably end up adopting the ‘pragmatic/critical-realist’ approach in my research proposal, with quantitative data intended to supplement the qualitative. Hopefully, in this way I can address questions of What, Where, When, How and also the all-important Why. As this approach will likely require relatively more source material I am at least somewhat comforted by Luker’s seek-by-relevancy method.

Something that resonated with me in the Knight readings was that (to paraphrase): ‘Readers will make their own subjective generalizations and interpretations of the data, so the researcher should invite alternative viewpoints from other cases and theories.’ In other words, a reflexive method is crucial in theory development.

But just how possible is it to conduct neutral, objective research, when the parameters of the study alone suggest subjectivity? I’m not sure whether to be irked by the foggy nature of critical-realist social-inquiry or to extol it as a broad summation of perspectives, converging on some informed opinion.

-Martin

Not Random, but a Rainbow...

Too much of anything is regarded as bad. But would we say the same about information. In an age where information is readily available and gaining knowledge would supposedly lead to wisdom, one would certainly announce that there is no harm in producing or assimilating knowledge. And we surrender our soul to the passion of gaining that which has not been achieved – in other words that hypothesis we can absolutely believe in and proclaim to the world. However that knowledge often comes at the cost of something opposite of frivolous. Then we question our methodologies, ethics but rarely do we turn ourselves away from finding out new truths and soon it becomes something acceptable even if it is more than just stem cell research.


Trusting a particular methodology and trying to get results through its application is yet another dilemma. There is always choice and also invariably the wrong choice. Someone, somewhere, sometime might come up with something that would nullify previous claims, solve a bigger mystery, – and there might not be an end to it. Life with its various speculation and realities would raise more issues by the day. Trying to make meaning, finding a path, meandering through information I try to see light of day, hoping that the interdisciplinary nature of my stream would garner some kind of enlightenment. These random thoughts help to put me in perspective – sometimes deep, sometimes coherent but always elusive – catching them and transforming the written world – is the motto needed to follow through in life’s travails and thus embark on a path, chosen for life.

A Research Daisy

I'm also a visual thinker. Not that I don't like writing; in fact, I work with writing and drawing to crystallize my thoughts. When working on websites or publications, for example, I am usually responsible for the architecture and the content, and I often send scanned drawings to my graphic designer to illustrate how I want the information to flow before I even start writing the texts. I was therefore thrilled when Luker suggested that we draw a Venn diagram to illustrate the multi-disciplinarity of our research.

After having done a few of her exercises, it seems that my "intellectual itch" involves investigating how architects of websites aimed at various cultural groups define how to structure the information in a way that will appeal to their various publics. You may have noticed that, if you change the language on a multilingual website, you may see more or less text, more or less graphics, and even a different navigation system.

It seems to me that website architects have a lot of power over how information might be represented to members of different cultures and may contribute to changing their preferences over time. Given that power, do they choose designs intuitively? Using primary data collection? Secondary data collection?

This idea will, I hope, evolve during the course of the semester, but as a beginning, here is my first research daisy. It was drawn using Aviary, a free online tool that is very similar to Photoshop.

But wait, there's more!

Hi, my name is Martin Driessen and I’m a latecomer to the class. Since most of you are probably wondering who I am, I thought an introduction might be appropriate.

I’m an Edmonton, Alberta native, and spent my Undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta. My focus was in the History field, so I naturally had the opportunity to take a Historical Methodology class. It has, however, been about four years since my Undergraduate, so it was strangely refreshing to see Foucault’s icy cold stare in class today.

I look forward to integrating Luker’s unique brand of methodology in my own research. Specifically, I want to look at issues surrounding information piracy, net neutrality, and copyright law.

Students in a Post-Foucauldian Era

Very much like the student who spoke up in class today, I was very excited to see Foucault mentioned so early on in the Luker text. I come from a cultural & social history background, so Foucault has been the bread & butter for many of my favorite classes.

However, Luker admits that her generation of scholars "were trained in a pre-Foucauldian era, and we have not really come to terms with what Foucault has done to our taken-for-granted ways of thinking, much less with what he has done to theory, and still less what he has done to methods." (7) Now, here for me lies the crux of the issue I have with Luker's text thus far.

Today's generation of MLIS students have been raised in an academic environment where Foucault's theories permeate deeply across disciplines - even if a student hasn't read Foucault, he/she most likely is familiar with social construction, and understands this belief to be extremely important to today's social science studies.

So who is Luker writing for? Today's student understands Foucault's theories, just as today's student understands the present info-glut situation, and intuitively knows how to navigate it. While I find Luker's text readable & entertaining, I suspect that it will not impart any ground breaking research information to me (or to the rest of the class).

But it's only the 2nd week so I'm keeping my hopes up!