Monday, July 21, 2008
Applebee's Case Study
I dropped off the questionnaires at Applebee's and am keeping my fingers crossed for some good results. My question is this, what do researchers do if their case study fails? I'm sure I will get some feedback, but I'm not sure of the quantity. While I'm waiting to pick up the completed forms, I've been doing more case study research and am trying to read as much literature as possible on the researching fields. I must say, I had no idea so much was involved in putting together a case study and a subsequent research paper. This is like nothing I've ever done before. With that said, I am finding the process supremely enlightening and am very excited that I now have the tools to write scholarly papers. I'm having daydreams of becoming published someday.... :)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The only way it can "fail" is if you collect no data at all. But isn't that also data collection of a sort? Perhaps not what you set out to find, but interesting insight nonetheless. Makes me wonder if any researcher, ever, anywhere was able to complete a research project exactly as it was originally planned.
My talk at the last May Seminar was all about my "failures". A LOT of my research has "failed" in that I didn't do what I initially set out to do, things didn't always work out, I didn't get enough participants, etc. But EVERY TIME I was pushed in a new direction, I ended up with really incredible, valuable results (and they were quite often published!). So yes, research fails a lot. But you end up getting data that often helps you in a different direction (or allows you to reflect on the efficacy of a particular method, etc.).
One particular "failure" by a TTU grad student: He set out to do a quasi-experiment looking at how students WITH grammar instruction and those w/o made errors. The quasi-experiment fell apart (not enough control), but he got some really important descriptive data that will add to the conversation in the field about how grammar instruction affects writing, particularly in online and hybrid scenarios. So his "failure" still held a huge contribution to the field, perhaps more so than if we were able to control it more.
Post a Comment