This chapter explores the relationship between theory and research. It discovers the nature of knowledge and talks about the goals and processes of scholarly research, such as the research student of communication read about in communication textbooks. The chapter describes the purposes of theory and learns how to tell good theories apart from bad ones. It investigates the similarities and differences between quantitative, qualitative, and critical approaches. The goal of qualitative research is to uncover patterns, themes, and insights by exploring the essential qualities of a phenomenon. The chapter shows how to evaluate research by applying the criteria for good scholarship. In communication research, qualitative data is often in the form of words, such as the words a participant uses in an interview to describe his or her experience, opinions, or understanding of an issue. Qualitative data may also comprise a researcher's observations, artifacts, or other pieces of information that can be interpreted and assessed.
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 53 citations exist upstream.