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one common understanding is that the data are simply traces of social life.
remember when we talked last week about social science research. We talked about
how social research helps us to produce

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representations of social life. And for this we need data. That's the staff that we
work with in our research. And data should somehow be representation or a
phenomenon of social world that we're interested in. The good thing about data that
data can be stored, they can be shared it, they can be processed and then can they
can be analysed so we can perform operations on our data. We can do things with our
data. We can transform our data as well. Data. the foundation of what we commonly
call empirical research. Empirical research is any research that is based on a set
of what we would call systematic observations of the social world.

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Some research wouldn't involve any of those observations. For example, in
philosophy, arts and humanity, you would often come across studies that would not
involve empirical data. Within this module We will not be looking into research
that would not involve empirical data. We're interested in the observations of
social world done involving empirical methods of data collection and in any way
this would. It would be the dominant way of doing research in

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social sciences and educational research. What different ways of describing day
have in common? what could be common to various definitions. If that to this it
would be to describe it as your evidence based foundation of your evidence, sort of
your own facts You collected about the world that you are going to work with in
your research, Data can take many different forms. They can look very differently.
For example, we can think about data that constitute numbers. there is simple
example. In school settings, you might be interested to find out how many pupils
are going outside during their break

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time and how many are staying inside. So that would be your numerical observation.
You would be counting, and you would have some numbers to work with, or you can
give a test to your students. Then you may come back with a set of tests,

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course again, numbers you can play around with.

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So this is very much common way of collecting data

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in social science research and in education. We are ourselves producing the data
all the time. For example, when we do online shopping or going to

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restaurant , there is a record in this restaurant. How many people have customers,
for example, per day or

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per week. And as the researcher, you might be interested to get access to some of
this data.

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So numbers. This is one ofthe this type of data, but also
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audio and video data are also very common. For example, whenever you go on to
YouTube or any social media platform you could see a

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lot of material that you can actually turn into data.

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And treat as data. you can collect some video extracts focusing, for example, on
any questions you are interested in. For example, how do people teach others on how
to make a start with filmmaking or baking cakes or yoga or anything you are
interested in, so there is a lot of

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staff you can collect. A lot ofthe other data is based on doing interviews, asking
people questions, and then your interviews would be recorded with permission , of
course, and then you come home

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again with audio recording or video recording off this conversation between
yourself and your research participants.

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So written text images are also commonly used again.

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We can collect artefacts that is already out there that other people have created.
You can explore textbooks, for instance, or you can be looking into conversation
that have been taking place, say, on social media again, you will have a set of
written texts you can analyse, or if you use questionnaires, you can have a certain
set off written responses from people, so again you will come home with a set of
written text. , those are the most commonly used types of data

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However, in principle you can collect a set off what

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I would call a three dimensional objects. You might want to collect different kinds
of toys, and you would analyse what these toys are for, what learning potential
they're offering. Or you may explore ideology behind some off those toys you may be
collecting something that Children produced in classrooms or at home, as it might
give you some insight into the life ofthe these Children. pupils at school so data
can take on many, many different forms, not on their numbers or written text. But,
um, different, different forms.

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But before you actually start collecting data, you need to know what are you
collecting your data for? What are your questions? Questions that you are trying to
address? What aims you're trying to pursue? This brings us to a sort of key
indicators of what a piece of research is about. Before you start doing field work
for your dissertation, for example, you will need to think about what you're trying
to achieve. with your study what your research aim is. Then you would want to
formulate some research questions that

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you're going to try and address. for your study. And of course, it's very helpful
to come up with even a working title for your study because it is another way of
articulating what you're trying to do in this study.
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So they're sort of, you know, your research aims. Title questions, sort of
indicators that would give some ideas of what your research is going to be about,
what is also important and why it is so

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important to think through this indicators Before you start your own research, it's
because they draw some boundaries, and that

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is really important. No one, no researcher, can possibly research everything, even
within a specific topic at the same time. So you need to be very clear. What is it
that you are interested in? What is it you're focusing on and what is it you're not
going to focus on? And equally when you review research that is published, you want
to be clear for yourself? What these researches are trying to find out? Often in
research papers. But you will see, um, phrases such as this is beyond the scope of
this paper. What it means. It means that we're not going to focus on this.

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We're focusing on other things, but this is beyond or outside of the scope of our
paper and the issues that we're not going to focus on they are outside of our
boundaries. That's fair enough. You can't cover everything in one paper. In fact,
if you're trying to cover too much, these papers tend today some home, a rather
superficial They lack clarity, so it's good to be focused.

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However, when you review papers you also need to see if it is justifiable in a sort
of, you know,

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looking into what papers are covering or not covering. there might be cases when
you read that it's beyond the scope of my study. But you look again at the research
question, and you

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think, Shouldn't it be actually within your study? Shouldn't you look at this
issue? So when you do your critique as part of your

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assignment , you can reflect critically on the boundaries. Any particular research
has drawn as a starting point of your critique

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And what do you often see in research paper or journal publication is that people
often wouldn't have just one research questions, they would often formulate one
main questions and a couple of sub- questions, so they're already trying to create
a structure. They are breaking down. their study into manageable parts Very often,
you will see that each part and a

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research paper would be linked to a specific research questions that they're
actually quite useful for making your study presentation more manageable.

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So although most studies would have research questions, some research would
articulate this boundary slightly differently, and sometimes you come across the
problem statement sort of more narrative statements of

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what research is about. Or sometimes you would find references to research aims.
They're often not so far removed from research questions. Aims are always those
things that you're trying to achieve. Then the aims would be sort of the way of
articulating what this research is trying to achieve. When you come across and read
a research paper without an explicit research question, this may be a bit
challenging to understand what the paper is trying to achieve. So it might be
helpful to formulate a possible question on the basis of what the researchers say
about this study, so that would be quite useful as well. Not all research papers
will have a set of research questions or research aims presented explicitly, so you
may have to, um, you may try to uncover them, In some

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papers This you may come across studies that articulate this through hypothesis is
in their papers. Hypothesis are provisional answers to your questions.

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In a way, they are assumptions, guesses about how the social world is organised,
and that's often based on prior research ideas that people developed about the
particular topics, so this would be the basis for generating your hypothesis and

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then research aims would be helping you to test those hypothesis. You will often
find this in psychological research. The other reason why it's useful to look for
different indicators of what your research is about. is that these indicators
typically suggest or even name a very particular perspective on the topic, it could
be in your title. or subtitle. It could give you an indication of a particular
perspective.

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For example, you may have a title. How can we improve learning through play in
primary school? And then you would have a subtitle: Psychological Perspective So
that would be an indication of your perspective you're taking in your paper, There
might be a reference to a theory that you're using to explore a particular topic,
but again, this is not always the case. Sometimes you need to read between the
lines, to work it out , what sort of angle people are taking and what that's
perspective they're using in order to explore their topic.

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Assessing research questions. That's an important question, especially within this
module.

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When you do your critique, you may want to look at research questions and think
about how you can access. Their quality.

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There are a number of things we can ask about

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research questions in order to assess their quality one. And in the first place we
can ask, are these

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questions actually answerable with data at all? Are there any data at all we can
think of to address that research questions. Some questions would be quite
difficult or challenging to answer. For example, should education be free? unless
we would like to explore people views and work out What the dominant view on this
issue? But it looks like a question which would be asking about moral judgement,
something that research can't really answer. Research can tell you about moral
judgement that people are making, So that would be a tricky question to answer. If
you're interested in this questions and if interested in

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people's perspectives, you may want to reformulate. You may use this question to
explore people's views For example, would are people's views on free education
then, yes, that's question would be possible to answer through interviews or
questionnaire. For example, when you talk to people and ask them about the
perspective on this question, you also need to

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be specific enough and be clear about the terms you're using. For example, if we
look at another example of a question, what is the ideal class size? There might be
some problems with the how use some

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terms in this question.

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The term class size is fine. It's pretty clear, however, what is ideal according to
what? If you explore perspectives of someone who is, say, responsible,

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full budget and, then you ask teachers who actually

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work in the classroom. You might find that they perspectives are a bit different.
Teachers would like to have smaller class classes, but budget holders might have a
slightly different perspective.

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So again, that's another things you need to take into account. When you assess
research questions. You also need to summarise.

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What is it that you're trying to do? So if you're planning , you need to do more.

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You should consider adding a research question. Sometimes what happens? You
formulate your research questions, you start your research and then you write it
all up and you create a nice narrative. And then you realise that the questions
that you formulated at the very beginning, do not quite capture what you ended up
doing, so you may go back, do your research questions and add an additional
research question. Research questions should be relevant to your purpose.

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So you need to be clear about the purpose of

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your research. For example, you may have research study that might be beneficial
to, for example, teachers Are you doing this research to help teachers, students of
policymakers? So if these issues come up? You need to make sure that they're also,
um, your research questions are relevant to what you are planning to do.

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Feasibility is also important. It's great to be ambitious, but if you can't achieve
your aims, then that's not really helpful. Think about what would be feasible in
terms of funding,
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expertise and support you might have or might not have. And of course, whatever you
are doing needs to be ethically acceptable. There are ethics codes of , conduct
ethical guidelines so you can use these guidelines to identify what and if there
are any potential ethical issues or dilemmas and if there are and they can't be
alleviated, it is quite possible that you may not be allowed to do your research,
but we will come back to ethics next week. I think one on more criteria.
Originality. Before you start formulating your research question, you need to check
what has already been done in this area, and you may want to be original in your
research. There's no point to answer question, which has always been answered , but
you can always see if you're still interested in something that you feel has been
already sufficiently answered, you can always take a slightly different perspective
or perhaps explore this question in a slightly different context, so there are
still many ways you can pursue your research.