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Social Sciences: Research Skills

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Relevant Subjects

SOCQ121     SOCP211

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SOCQ121 Assignment Tips

Synonyms to help broaden your search:

Try to have at least three synonyms of each of your keywords when conducting a searching in EBSCO or ProQuest. For example:

Keyword 1: Treatment Keyword 2: Condition
ginger OR zingiber officinale OR kanshokyo arthritis OR joint inflammation OR stiff joints

Your advanced search attempt in our databases should look something like this:

  ginger OR zingiber officinale OR kanshokyo
AND arthritis OR joint inflammation OR stiff joints

 

There are differences between primary and secondary articles that you will have to be able to identify in order to complete this assignment.

Primary research articles will include a hypothesis for the outcome of the experiment, the methodology that was employed throughout the experiment and the outcome of the trial. Primary research articles are often written by a person who conducted the research in question. Primary research articles include:

  • Pilot/Prospective Studies
  • Cohort Studies
  • Survey Research
  • Case Studies
  • Lab Notebooks
  • Clinical Trials, including Randomised Clinical Trials (or RCTs)
  • Dissertations

Secondary research articles explore information from primary sources of information in order to draw conclusions regarding particular research topics or discuss the current state of knowledge in a particular field of study. Secondary research articles will cite primary sources. These primary articles can be found in the bibliography. Secondary research articles include:

  • Reviews, such as systematic reviews and meta-analysis
  • Newsletters and professional news sources
  • Practice guidelines and standards
  • Clinical care notes

Qualitative research is observational and narrative based. It looks at people's history, experiences and circumstances when taking part in clinical research (Kempara & Chavan, 2013).

Key words to use when searching for qualitative articles:

  • Action Research
  • Case study
  • Focus Group
  • Interview
  • Narrative
  • Phenomenological Methodology

Quantitative research is numerically based. It focuses on the statistical and mathematical collection of data to explain a particular occurence. (Babbie, 2010).

Key words to use when searching for quantitative articles:

  • Quantitative
  • Survey
  • Validity
  • Variance
  • Correlation
  • Statistical

For more information, please see the Research Design library guide. 

 

Babbie, E. R. (2010). The practice of social research (12th ed.). Cengage.

Kempara, U., & Chavan, S. (2013). Qualitative research: A brief description. Indian Journal of Medical Sciences, 67 (3/4), 89-98. https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5359.121127