At the beginning of the semester in the sociology methods and research course, we started off with a lecture on the different types of research that could be used when researchers are analyzing data from the studies. I already know from previous classes about some particular types of researcher experiments such as the Asch line experiment, Standford prison experiment, and Tuskegee Syphilis experiment which all had different types of lessons to take away from such as conformity, the right to know what the experiment is about, and how role play can cause the human mind to change individual behavior. The purpose of this course was to prepare us on how to become better researchers by simply taking step by step for each assignment the professor assigned us such as doing a literature review on parent involvement, inputting data on a spreadsheet, and finalizing the final result from a small portion of responders. This was a new experiment for me because I’m not used to doing an actual experiment so I was excited to get a feel for how it is like to be a researcher.
The sources I used for my paper all came from the greenwood library academic peer view articles with a 5-year range so the data I looked up were still accurate and modern to go by. I personally have done researcher assignments from other classes when it comes to writing papers so I know what keywords to type in an academic search bar and read each article. After reading and understanding the concept of the article that when I include the ideas from other researchers and emphasize in my own word the meaning of the overall context while still giving them ownership. The topic was parent involvement so I only read the article that mentions keywords such as head start, poverty, parenting skills. I did end up changing my source when I begin writing my final paper because in my literature review I only mention education but knowing that there are more ideas to be included when it comes to parents being involved in the child’s life like sports, relationship bond, and vebral skills.
Some challanges I encounter when doing some research for my assignment was figuring out how to interupt the overall meaning of parent involvemnt while not trying to form a repitition throughout my final paper. I had the basic idea on what to inculde into my paper but having to add an abstract three introuduction paragraphs and three conclusion paragraphs was a challenging becasue it was a new concept for me to attained. Another objective that was kinda challanging for me was working with statistics on inputting data that we recived from the 11 responders from the fun activities and coding them into this program called R studio. I overcamed these challnges by simply following the professor direction and also figured out how to used the program myself. If I needed some addition help with a partiular assignments I did not hestiaste to email my professor and tried to get some clarification on how to improve my work ethic on whatever the situation I had trouble understanding.
Personally I already had enough confident coming to this research and method class with a general understanding on how researcher interpurt data from thier studies. The attributes for me did not really change that much as far as I’m concern, but I would say this after actually having a real life experiment while gathering real life data from responders and coming up with the best questionaire to ask parents and their children to get a overall reiew on how successful they were at completing these fun activities it taugh me a lot about how research works. I would like to do another research one day becasue I feel more comfortable and now having some actual experiment that I leanred from being in this sociology course this semester.
The phrase “Think like a Researcher” which to me simply means that it takes time and effort when developing a research. The reason I say this is becasue there will always be more information to inculde into an research experiment such as number of responders, what the overall objective of the experiment, and have to fix or update any chnages that been made each day. The best possible way when working on reasearch experiment is to take it step by step because it more benefical for the resaercher to come back another day with more ideas to add or take away from the expermient to make it more presentable. I believed it is better to have more than one researhcer when trying to figure out the best solution for cross-sectional studies, why becasue this is when anyone can speak thier mind and use their creatvity skills to help make the project easier for the responders to have clear understanding of what to except.