Comp 2-EN111

Primary Research Investigations

Becoming an Active Researcher!

We know that we need scholarship on our discourse communities (e.g. articles, books, blogs, posts, websites), but how do we actively engage in the research process? How do we show membership or engagement with the group? What is Primary Research?

Look at your Week 5 Reading Notes with a partner for a few minutes.

Thinking about different Research Lenses...

What are qualities or factors of PRIMARY RESEARCH are important for your discourse community? Spend a few minutes thinking about what information, content, or material is valuable to your community and how do they show this? What do they value? How do they demonstrate their skills, knowledge, and experience among one another?

Think about the PROOF of where you find the answers to the above questions about your group.

Take 3-5 mintues to jot down some ideas on this and then we will share. Call your Doc: Pre-Primary Research Ideas

• Research that is produced rather than found
• Information collected firsthand
• Based on John Stuart Mill’s Philosophy of Scientific Method
• Researcher engages in a hypothesis-driven investigation
• Researcher collects data/evidence
• Research supports ongoing study or investigation that impacts others in the field/community.
• Human-based research (within your major/field of study)  involves ethical practices such as IRB approval. Your major professor can speak more on these practices.

Primary Research Fact List

• Expand on information that may not be widely known about
• Expand on a local/regional issue that has larger, global impacts
• Shows and develops greater researcher ethos – YOU become the investigator!
• Shows an active role in your discourse community as a passionate researcher
• Gain insights, behaviors, and commentary we might not have known about before
• Shows a concern for human subjects in your discourse community and telling their story

Why We need more Primary Research in our Writing...

• • Observations: Participant and Unobtrusive methods (e.g. job shadow, classroom visit, office visit, being on the sidelines and reporting)
  • Interviews: Questions to support either deductive or inductive reasoning
    • Deductive Reasoning – Start with hypothesis or known idea and gather evidence to support it
    • Inductive Reasoning – Start with a question and collect information that supports a conclusion.
  • Surveys: Questionnaire with a mix of closed and open-ended question about your topic to generate numerical data:
    • Likert Scale – On a scale of 1-10
    • Not very likely – More than likely
    • 1=not very important, 5=very important

Primary Research Methods

• Narrow down the topic and focus to get a concrete answer,
• Focuses on a specific issue important to the participant;
• Where necessary, defines a key term or concept (e.g. like discourse community, genre, lexis) and ask participants their thoughts on the matter;
• Call out a recent event or situation that the participant can draw on;
• Help the researcher illustrate the mindset, ideologies, and focus on their discourse community members.

AVOID these types of questions: Closed Questions or Basic Yes/No Scenarios; Questions that are too broad (e.g. How do you feel about football? How do you feel about X majors on a national level? What is a discourse community?); Asking for sensitive information – for these types of situations, participants may either ask to remain anonymous in which you can create a pseudonym (fake name) for them.

Day 1 Activity: Interviews

Good Questions Will...

One area of primary research you should engage in with you projects are conducting, recording, and transcribing interviews. This means you will ask questions, record the interview (e.g. via the Microphone tool in Notability, Phone or video recovering, Garage band for Macs etc.).

We will practice in class today constructing at least 7-8 solid interview questions you want to ask members of your discourse community. Thinking about what you’ve currently written about your discourse community, practice drafting these questions as potential ones you will ask participants. Later, we will partner up and share the types of questions we created and see how they worked.

Day 1 Activity: Interviews

Primary Research Process

In the Tech Com Society Webpage on Researching Discourse Community it references Writing Scholar Lester Faigley who identifies 5 questions to consider when researching a discourse community. The word "text" is often used but could also be broadly defined as "created content" or "content with meaning"

Choose one of those questions to answer right now as it applies to the group you are going gather research on. Post the question you chose and your answer with your Interview ?'s from Monday's Class

(6-8 minutes)

Day 2: Surveys

• Another quality of primary research is whether you have qualitative or quantitative date in your findings. Surveys can help provide a mixture of responses.
• Surveys can gauge "opinions and behaviors" of a group in a questionnaire-style tool (Driscoll 154).
• Who to choose for a one-on-one interview?
• How might you get more responses from multiple participants?
• Which questions are better to ask in an interview vs. survey?

Day 2: Surveys Activity

Qualitative = emphasis is on participant responses and analysis on what, how, why responders feel the way they do about a question.

• Descriptions mean more than numbers/stats
• Emphasis is more on research subject responses
• Tends to be more effective at establishing themes in research or perspectives.
• Case Analysis, Retrospective Analysis

Quantitative = emphasis is more on data sets and how the volume of responders can be used to make conclusions based on numbers & percentages.

• Graphs and charts play a big role in findings
• Likert scale (1-5 stars, Very Likely to Not Very Likely) help quantify results to show patterns/trends
• Numbers/stats more convincing in specific fields.

Day 2: Surveys Activity

Generating your own qualitative/quantitative results with surveys!

Today, you will practice with Microsoft Forms or Google Forms with seeing how survey creation and mass distribution of your survey can really help engage research participants with questions helpful to your primary research process. Share with your group members once you have at least 3 sample questions ready to look at (you can use a QR code or URL Link for your group).

• Microsoft Forms: Go to Eagle Mail (website/browser); Click on 9 dots at top and select Microsoft Forms app to get started creating. You may also have the Forms App on your Ipad.
• Google Forms: You need a Google account and access to Google Drive - select New and Google Forms to get started creating.

• The Value of both Participant and Unobtrusive Observations... (Driscoll 160)
• Participant Observation - commonly used within ethnographic studies within sociology, anthropology, psychology, education, etc. Emphasis is on joint interaction with the community during events.
• Unobtrusive Observation - Recording of behaviors, events, activities, interactions, without interaction. In public spaces for instance, these types of observations do not have to be voluntary.

Day 3:Observations

Discourse Community & Autoethnography

How can your first-hand experiences and observation help provide knowledge about the group you are researching? How will your experiences support sources and vice versa?

Observations are field data collected during a specific event or session with a group. WHERE would your observation take place (in-person, online) and why is this location the best place to gather info on your group? Take a few minutes to consider this setting.

Doc: Observation Practice Set-up

Work on writing exact observation (facts) not interpretation (opinion) about your discourse community (Driscoll 161)

• Practice giving facts about your D.C. (4-5)
• In a separate list, give your interpretation of those facts (this would be your perspective) (4-5)
  • Example: (Fact) - The D.C. of Writing Tutors uses WConline as the platform for booking consultations.
  • (Interpretation) - Writing Tutors use WConline platform but it seems that more real-time video calls would work better during consultations.

Doc: Observation Practice Set-up

Before you leave for the day, take all of your in-class primary research ideas (interview questions, survey ?'s or links, observation ideas) and place them in the On-Going Portfolio Document - Primary Research Tool Kit

I will come by to check you off for credit for today before you leave.