Journalism 101

University of Nevada, Reno

Donica Mensing

Research Assignment #3

The Research Question and Methodology

Assignment

Write a research question and design a methodology to answer your question.

Due

Beginning of class, October 21, 1999

The Research Question

The purpose of a research question is to focus your topic and identify exactly what you will be examining in your research.

Research questions generally ask a question about the relationship between two variables. The variables should be stated in terms that can be measured or evaluated in some way. For example, some sample questions are listed below:

• What photographs did Time and Newsweek publish on the Gulf War and how did the coverage compare? What impressions might a viewer get after viewing the images?
• How current are the political jokes on the David Letterman show and what is the source of his political material?
• How do the letters to the editor in the New York Times in 1997 compare with the letters to the editor in the Times in 1897?
• How do the articles on abortion in the Los Angeles Times during October 1996, shortly before the Presidential election, compare with LA Times stories on abortion shortly after the Roe v. Wade decision?
• How does the local news coverage on Channel 2 in Reno compare with the local news coverage of the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ohio?
• How much political information do teenagers get from MTV?

Methodology

The point of a methodology is to explain exactly how you are going to answer your research question. You need to define your variables and explain how you are going to measure them.

 

It should be written in such a way that someone else could follow the same steps you took and compare their answers with your answers -- think of it almost like a recipe.

 

You can do a content analysis -- where you examine the content of different media, looking for something specific, such as gender stereotypes, or incidents of violence, or sexual content, or information about casinos or young people. In this case, you need to identify the dates you are going to look at, the publications/shows you plan to read or watch, and exactly what you are looking for.

 

You could also do a simple survey to find out people's opinions about a media-related question. You could distribute the survey in class or to friends. If you do a survey, you need to include a copy in your methodology. You should NOT plan on surveying people in a public place. That takes special permission from the university's Human Subjects Committee.

 

Finally, you could conduct interviews with experts in your area of interest, either journalists or people with expertise on your topic. In that case, your methodology would need to explain who you plan to interview and what you hope to gain from the interview.

Resources

The Purdue University Writing lab (an outstanding site) has information on writing analytical papers and constructing research questions:

Committee of Concerned Journalists

This organization has conducted a number of studies you may wish to read. A good example is their study of the "Changing Definitions of News." Pay particular attention the sections "What was studied" and "Methodology" to get some ideas about what is included in a methodology.

The Seven Steps of Research

This is a site from Cornell University that has a useful description of the research process.

A Guide to Writing Research Questions

Another useful site from Rutgers University