RESEARCH 1:

COLLECTING DATA Dr Min Tak

WEEK 12 SEMINAR
THE ASSIGNMENT
STRUCTURE
Let’s go through the illustration of the simplified assignment structure
provided by Dr Timi Osidipe. Please download the original PDF file available
on Breo.
ASSIGNMENT RECAP – THE
FIVE TOPIC AREAS
You must develop a SPECIFIC RESEARCH QUESTION (in a question format with
a question mark!) relating to one of the following topic areas:

Social media
Education
Care (including health care, social care, formal care, informal care)
Mental health
Crime and Justice
WHAT NEEDS TO BE COVERED
IN EACH SECTION
Section 1. Research question, background and rationale (500 words)

- Introduce your research question

- Introduce any background information that can help readers understand your topic
(e.g. definitions, statistics, relevant policy, research evidence, etc.)
- Rationale (explain why your research question is worth investigating. Why is your
research question important? You can use statistics such as an increasing prevalence,
policy or media attention, lack of research on the topic – gap in the literature, etc. as
your reason for pursuing the proposed question)
SECTION 2. METHOD OF DATA
COLLECTION AND ETHICS
(1,000 WORDS)
- Introduce your research approaches (inductive/deductive AND
qualitative/quantitative)
- Describe your method of data collection in detail (a survey, semi-structured
interviews OR focus groups) – what the method is (definition), why the method you
chose is appropriate to answer your research question, what steps are involved, etc.
- Explain your sampling strategy (how many people are involved, who are they, in
which area in the UK, how they will be approached and recruited, through which
organisation/gate keeper)
- Ethical issues (ethical principles applied to your research, considering the method
you chose and the potential research participants)
Section 3. Data collection tools (500 words)
You are expected to develop a topic guide, a survey questionnaire, a focus group discussion guide,
depending on the method you chose in Section 2.
You are expected to write down actual questions you are going to ask to research participants here
Think about what questions you need to ask participants in order to answer your main research
question.
For example, if my question is the impact of witnessing domestic violence on children’s mental
health, I would not ask children ‘what was the impact of witnessing domestic violence on your mental
health?’. You WOULD NOT ask that question. So, how are you going to get answers for your
research question? By asking which questions? You may want to ask about how they felt when they
witnessed it, you may also ask them how frequently they witnessed it, at what age they started
witnessing it, how long it lasted, whether they received any support regarding this, whether they
spoke to anyone about their feelings, etc. So, in order to answer that one main question you discussed
in section 1, what kind of small questions do you need to ask your research participants (imagine if
you actually meet them and ask questions to draw out answers for your main question)?
SECTION 3 CONTD.
About 20-25 questions should be written (20-25 words per question, so if you
make 20-25 questions, it will be about 500 words).
If you are making a topic guide, you may need to put more than 25 topics as
topics are shorter than questions.
Questions/topics can be numbered or presented in a bullet-point format. It could
also be written inside a table.
The examples of these questionnaires were already provided in the previous
seminar and lecture slides.
This is optional but you could include a few sentences introducing your research
to participants at the start of the Section 3 (e.g. instructions for participants about
how to complete the survey questionnaire, a short script introducing your research
to your participants at the start of semi-structured interviews, etc.)
WHAT YOU NEED TO BE
CAREFUL
You must NOT write in the first person (I, my, me, mine, etc.)
You can refer yourself as ‘the researcher’ in your work.
You must ensure that you are NOT actually carrying out research. You are ONLY submitting your
(imaginary, but plausible) plan for research. You are simply proposing research. Anyone writing in their
assignment that they actually met and surveyed or interviewed real people will receive a fail mark.
So, for example, your writing could be something like the following:
‘The proposed research aims to explore the impact of dementia diagnosis on older people’s maintenance
of their personal network. The researcher intends to use semi-structured interviews…’
You must write in your own words. Contract buying is becoming a criminal offence.
You must use at last 6 journal articles or academic books. It is recommended that you use about 4-5
journal articles and 1-2 books on research methods.
Students often receive a fail mark due to poor referencing. You must use Cite Them Right website to
get the referencing guidelines the university is using. The official referencing guidelines can be found at
https://www.citethemrightonline.com/
WORDAGE
The wordage given for each section are just guidelines.
For each section, you can write 50-100 words more or less than the wordage given.
You do not have to write exactly 500 words for Sections 1 and 3, for example. You
can write between 400-600 words. Same for section 2, you can write between 900-
1,100 words.
In total, the length of your work, EXCLUDING your reference list at the end, should
be between 1,800 and 2,200 words.
You must include a cover page in your work – the first page should be a cover page
containing the title of your research (e.g. the research question itself or your research
topic), your student number and the course you are studying (e.g. Health and Social
Care, Criminology, Social Sciences, Child and Youth Studies, etc.).