Maximizing Research Methods Instruction

Abstract

Teaching undergraduate students about scholarly research methods can boa daunting task. A teacher often must dispel several myths about the course before academic content can be addressed effectively. Many students are convinced that communication study should not involve numbers - or worse, formulas - and thus they may be quite anxious about empirical approaches to discovery. But if a teacher can get students past the initial reservations they bring to the classroom, research methods can be among the most gratifying courses to teach, as students learn to examine social phenomena with greater rigor and to be more careful about making all-inclusive, sweeping statements regarding the steps of a process or the significance of a relationship. In terms of broader institutional goals, communication programs can demonstrate centrality to a university mission by requiring the methods course, just as political science, psychology and sociology do. Few trustees, presidents and provosts question the importance of the social sciences, and when assertions about professional training arise, communication administrators must be able to articulate how curricula produce educated students, not simply able practitioners. At a time when state universities are cutting faculty and classes, as well as increasing tuition and fees, programs that fail to demonstrate their respective worth may face drastic funding reductions, and in some cases, outright elimination. From a pedagogical standpoint, Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University, recently addressed the future of journalism education there, focusing on the need for students to develop more than fundamental journalism skills during their time in a university environment.1 To pit the teaching of craft against the teaching of intellectual capacity, Bollinger argued, to pose a false choice. The questions are what part of doing journalism should be used for educational purposes and how should the integration with other forms of learning occur.2 The goal of this essay is to offer some insights on how to maximize the research methods course, such that students will take from the course a meaningful learning experience-as opposed to a short-term exercise on memorizing terms-and, ideally, administrators who review the course will recognize communication as an academic discipline rich in theory and methodology.3 The article builds on earlier work by the author,4 as well as on other works discussing methods instruction5 in addressing how the fundamental tenets of empiricism and classic thought on the philosophy of science can be used as a backdrop for teaching an effective course in communication research methods. It proceeds from the assumption that while building a research vocabulary is central to the mission of an undergraduate education (methods students should indeed understand the difference between reliability and validity, for instance) so too is appreciating how abstract ideas apply to life outside the methods classroom. What students learn in a methods course, in short, can substantially impact how they will perform in their chosen professions and how they will come to make decisions in the years following formal education. How rigorous, for example, will students be in distinguishing science from cleverly worded pseudo-science? Will they be educated about the manipulation of numbers for partisan gain? Will they ask important questions about causality before composing news articles or assembling organizational reports that simply assume its presence? Will they learn to make sound ethical judgments about conducting and reporting the results of research studies? Given these kinds of questions, it behooves a methods instructor to consider the class from a macroscopic standpoint, teaching students about the nature of knowledge gain through consistent application of scientific methods and the search for evidence.6 The course then will build on itself as the term progresses, with the instructor describing for students the linkages between subjects addressed in separate book chapters. …

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