Research Design Course

Meeting 1

Introduction

• Who we are
• What you will learn
  • set-up
  • epistemology
  • methods
• Who are you?

Schedule for today

• Two brief presentations
• Discussion in groups of three
  • Two times 15 minutes
  • Match with different participants in each session
• Short break
• Roundtable discussion on RQs
• Suggestions for the next one-pager

Some ways to think about research

• The theoretical aim is the attainment of truth and its practical aim is agreement that truth has probably been achieved (Hirsh 1967)
• The goal is inference
  • casual or descriptive
  • ​ accumulation of facts alone is not sufficient; we should aim to infer beyond the collected data
• Complexity and uniqueness is not an obstacle
• Uncertainty is always present in our work  

Research Question

• What makes a RQ?
• • relevance
  • contribution to the literature (e.g., lack of a systematic study, controversy, assumption (unquestioned or replication), cross-field)
• Our primary motivation matters
  • reflecting on a RQ of high importance in the light of potential inferences
  • Asking about the broader relevance of our well-embedded findings