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

Input presentations by instructors, individual assignments, group work.

Compulsory attendance for input lectures (part 1), for group presentations (part 2) and individual presentations (part 3). One to one consultation for the individual assignment (part 3) will be individually scheduled with the lecturers.

Please note that the sessions in December are the individual feedback sessions. Students will get a doodle survey and can than choose their spot from the available feedback slots of course 1404 and 1405.

• 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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