Pre-course assignment

Read Bryman/Bell (2015), Ch 1-6. We expect you to be familiar with the core concepts from these chapters (quiz in the first unit).

Part 1:

Input lectures and discussion

- What is research?

- The importance of scientific analysis

- What is a research question and how is it identified?

- The research process

- The scientific discourse: presentation & publication of new ideas, research ethics

Part 2:

Methods and data: Elaborate the main methods used in empirical research (assignment 1, group presentations)

Part 3:

Assignment 2: Learn from examples: Choose a paper and write a comment (individual assignment)

• Students get a first rough idea of what is scientific research
• Students understand the concept of a research question and how and why different research designs are used to answer certain research questions
• Students can identify major steps in assessing a scientific paper and can develop a research question based on prior research papers and an adequate research design

≥ 80 % Attendance Requirement

• Writing skills

• Ability to identify relevant literature using research databases. EBSCO, Proquest are accessible via https://www.wu.ac.at/en/library/finding-literature/databases/ (requires VPN connection (https://www.wu.ac.at/en/it/instructions/vpn/) if not accessed from within WU network). Other resources: http://www.jstor.org (papers), http://katalog.wu.ac.at/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=WUW&prefLang=en_US (books from the various WU libraries). WU library’s CatalogPLUS also allows for easy searching for papers including SFX links for full text access.
• If you are new to WU or not familiar with the tools mentioned above, see https://learn.wu.ac.at/bibliothek/ which offers short introductions to searching by topic, search strategy, search tools, and reference management tools (Citavi, Endnote Web).

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