Title

Research Methods for Social Sciences

Prior

None

Professor

Don-yun Chen, donc@nccu.edu.tw; 29393091 ext.51145

Level

IMAS

Credits

3

Weekly Hr.

3

Cell Phone Use

Yes

Content

One Semester, Tuesday 1:00~4:00 pm, Room: TBA

Type

Required

Course Goal & Requirements

To do research in social sciences is very different from in nature sciences. As a result, students in social sciences needs to learn from others to improve their research ability and skills. A good research is not only important, but interesting and valid as well. Student needs to build up their “insights” of doing good research by learning from others’ works as well as doing it by their own. In this course, students will have following three goals to reach to. First, students can learn the research basics, for example, what is a theory? How to operationalize a concept? Second, students can know the difference and ways of doing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Third, students can learn to read, write a social science research paper and critic others at the same time.

Methods

Lecturing, Presentation & Critics, Homework Assignment 1-5

Grades

Homework (40%)、Mini Reports (20 %)、Final (30%)、Class (10%)

Reader

1. Babbie, Earl, 14^th ed. (2016) The Practice of Social Research. Cengage Learning.


2. Other articles in Pdf on Moodle.

Week

Course Content

1

*(9/12) introduction & Human Inquiry and Ethics (Chap. 1, 3)

2

*(9/19) Theory Building, Reading & Writing (Chap. 2, 17)

3

(9/26) Research Design (Chap. 4) – Homework Assignment #1

4

(10/3) Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement (Chap. 5)

5

(10/10) National Day (a day break)

6

(10/17) Indexes, Scales, and Typologies (Chap. 6)

7

(10/24) The Logic of Sampling (Chap. 7) – Homework Assignment #2

8

(10/31) Mini Report I Presentation: Research Question Navigation

9

(11/7) Survey Research (Chap. 8)

10

(11/14) Quantitative Data Analysis (Chap. 14) – Homework Assignment #3

11

(11/21) Qualitative Field Research (Chap. 10)

12

(11/28) Qualitative Data Analysis (Chap. 13)

13

(12/5) Experiment (Chap. 8) – Homework Assignment #4

14

(12/12) Unobtrusive Research (Chap. 11)

15

(12/19) Evaluation Research (Chap. 12)

16

(12/26) Group Consulting Time

17

(1/2) Final Presentation - Homework Assignment #5   

18

(1/9) Final Round Table Review

1. Babbie, Earl, 14^th ed. (2016) The Practice of Social Research. Cengage Learning.


2. Other articles in Pdf on Moodle.