Research Methods 101 By Elliott Hedman Part of Festival of Learning
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Research Methods 101By Elliott HedmanPart of Festival of Learning
Findings before research methods
Findings After Research Methods
Outline Am I doing Human Research? Getting Started Conducting Evaluation Practicals Questions/Case Studies
Warnings I am not Traditional, I am Media Lab I care a lot about inspiring design. I work a lot with companies. You will not learn the things I am about
to tell you in any class. In fact, many, many people will disagree with me.
There is not one right way. The wrong way would be not caring.
Am I doing research?Art Research
Am I doing ResearchMechanical/Engineering Research
Am I doing Research?Product Design
Am I doing Research?Human Research
Mixing Them Up
Getting StartedGrounded TheoryCommunityA Way To Observe
Grounded TheoryRead the literature
Talk to Major Players
Expand the Wheel
CommunityLive with them
Get outside the lab
Copy previously done research
Ways to ObserveHow will I learn?
How to do AWESOME ResearchThe Right QuestionStart EarlyPrototypeParticipatory DesignThe Lots of Data Problem
Choosing the Right QuestionWhat’s the big vision?
What do you love doing?
Play.
Start EarlySpace Allows Creativity
Technology Overload Problem
PrototypeFail Early, Fail Often
Make a New Prototype Every Day
Myth of Rigor
Participatory DesignThe final judge is the people who care
Communities will inspire you
Too Much DataLots of Data is not a band-aid
Different than learning as you go.
EvaluationThe Dangers of Machine LearningThe Dangers of Quantitative MethodsThe Dangers of Qualitative Methods
Machine LearningMachine Learning shows whether you can separate two parts of data.
You need to know a lot of statistics to appropriately use this in research.
Quantitative Methods Sampling
http://onlinestatbook.com/2/introduction/sampling_demo.html
Quantitative Methods Variability
http://onlinestatbook.com/2/summarizing_distributions/spread_sim.html
Quantitative Methods Correlations
http://onlinestatbook.com/2/describing_bivariate_data/pearson_demo.html
Quantitative Methods T-Test
Do the Means Differ?
Are people more self-aware working with a robot?
Quantitative Methods Regression Analysis or ANOVA
Do the Means Differ taking into account X, Y, and Z.
Are people more self-aware working with a robot taking into account gender, personality type, and financial income?
Quantitative Methods Correlations
When X changes, does Y change as well Does the larger the robot correlate to
the more self-aware a person is?
Quantitative Methods Warning! P<0.05 - the means may be different
Does not equate to the differences are large or interesting
Most people already have an answer before they ask their question
Does not allow for discovery.
Quantitative Methods Warning! Part 2 Normal Distribution Hidden Variables Independent Samples Proper Sample Size Number of Tests Transformations Within or Across
Qualitative Methods Tell People What you Really Learned Open Ended – Let the world come in Descriptive Flexible
Qualitative Methods Short Interviews / Surveys
Did you feel more self-aware after working with the robots?
Create biases Acceptable in journal?
Long-Interviews 1 to 1.5 hours
Open-Ended
Interpretation Difficult and Long
Observational Methods
Fly on the Wall
See what people naturally do
Grounded TheoryQualitative Methods require strong grounded theory
WarningsTraditional Ethnography is near impossible to do in the Media Lab
Interviews are more difficult to conduct correctly and take a longer time than statistics
Cannot answer questions about how frequent an event occurs.
Will it get accepted?
Warnings Part 2Grounded Theory1. Transcribe all the
important interviews2. Write field-notes about
each of your interviews.3. Go through all the
transcriptions and highlight every time a theme occurs.
4. Relate findings to previous established theory about that theme.
5. Go back through all the notes again.
It’s Great to Fail!You are here to learn and try! But make sure you try!
Resources to Check Out
Quantitative Books Cohen & Lea (2004). Essentials of Statistics
for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. New Jersey:
Wiley & Kline (2009). Becoming a Behavioral Science Researcher: A Guide to Producing Research That Matters. New York: Guilford Press.
Lane, D., Lu, J., Peres, C &. Zitek, E (2008). Online Statistics: An Interactive Multimedia Course ofStudy. http://onlinestatbook.com/
Qualitative Books Luker, Kristin. (2008). Salsa Dancing into
the Social Sciences: Research in an age of info-glut
Emerson, Robert (1995). Writing Ethnographic Field Notes.
People Statistics: Benj. Mako Hill Qualitative: Karen Brennan, Tiffany
Tseng Industrial/Design Research: Elliott
Hedman
Quantitative Classes ANOVA statistics with M.L. Cummings
Engineering Systems, MIT Empirical Methods 1 and II (API-202A)
Make sure to do the A class Kenedy School of Government, Harvard
Harvard School of Education Lots of Good APPLIED classes Do PhD Level
Qualitative Classes 21A.760J Qualitative Research Methods
Difficult to get into Must have strong Grounded Theory
Harvard School of Education MIT School of Architecture
Methods Class 21A.861 Methods for Graduate Research
in the Social Sciences Psychology 1901a - Methods of
Behavioral Research Harvard Psychology
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