ELEMENTS OF THE PROCESS OF

SOCIAL RESEARCH
LECTURE 3
Research Questions
 Research questions are extremely important in the research process as they force you to
consider the main focus of your area of interest.
 For example, a study by Hartle (2020) titled “Why me Lord?” Some social factors
associated with the receipt of a donor heart in South Africa, focused the research
questions on the lived experiences of heart transplant individuals, including himself.
 As Hartle (2020: 4) notes “This thesis – and the research project which underpins it –
was never simply an academic construction. It is rooted in my life. Specifically, it
reflects my experience of this second life, which I have been privileged to live since
receiving a donor heart in a transplant operation on October 11, 2016.”
Research Questions
The main goal of this research is to investigate the meanings that heart recipients attach to
living with a donor heart within the South African healthcare and social contexts. The
following key questions will guide the exploration:
1. What was the medical experience (e.g. diagnosis process) before heart surgery and what
was/is it after (e.g. treatment regime and check-ups)?
2. How do recipient patients internalise the news that their death is imminent when they are
first advised of this, and what influences their decision to accept transplant treatment?
3. What place respectively do culture, individual identity or sense of self, faith or
spirituality have in sense-making around chronic heart disease and transplantation?
4. Do heart transplant recipients attribute their transplantation to a miraculous gift or the
luck of the draw?
Research Questions
Thus, “a research question is a question that provides an explicit statement of what it is the
researcher wants to know about” (Bryman, 2012: 9). Some types of research questions:
• Predictive
• Explanatory
• Evaluative
• Descriptive
• Developmental
• Empowerment Comparison
What questions can you ask under the above types of research questions?
Sampling
Some basic terms and concepts in sampling:
• Population: e.g. people, nations, cities, regions, firms, education institutions, prisons, churches etc.
• Sample: the segment of the population that is selected for investigation (e.g. second year sociology students
at Rhodes University).
• Sampling frame: the listing of all units in the population from which the sample will be selected (e.g. RU
Sociology Department undergraduate and post-graduate students or entire RU student population).
• Representative sample: a sample that reflects the population accurately so that it is a microcosm of the
population.
• Sampling bias: a distortion in the representativeness of the sample that arises when some members of the
population (or more precisely the sampling frame) stand little chance of being selected for inclusion in the
sample.
• Probability sample: a sample that has been selected using random selection so that each unit in the
population has a known chance of being selected.
• Non-probability sample: a sample that has not been selected using a random selection method (e.g.
convenience sampling, snowball sampling or purposive sampling).
• Census: counting of an entire population.
Data Collection & Data Analysis

■ Methods of data collection: interviews (open-ended questions), semi-structured (open-

ended and closed questions), questionnaires (closed and open-end), participant
observation etc.
■ The collection of data entail different approaches in terms of how structured or open-
ended the implementation of the methods are.
■ Given the varied data collection methods, how can quality be assured? How do you do
good research?
■ Methods of data analysis: thematic analysis, content analysis, secondary analysis,
discourse analysis etc.