Whatever the length of time you have to complete a research project, start the process by creating a timeline of due dates for components of the project: coming up with ideas, consulting the literature, settling on an approach (research design), identifying and obtaining measures, securing IRB approval, recruiting participants, collecting the data, entering and/or analyzing the data, presenting the results, and explaining the results. As explained earlier in the chapter, the written report (manuscript) includes the Introduction, Method (participants, measures, procedure), Results, and Discussion. Given time pressure, it is a wise idea to write sections along the way, rather than wait until after you analyze your data.
Figure 2.13 Steps for Managing the Research Process
Source: Adapted from Devlin, A. S. (2006). Research methods: Planning, conducting, and presenting research. Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth/Thomson.
Divide the semester (12–13 weeks) into weekly segments; then work backward from the final deadline. If your instructor reads drafts, incorporate that into your timeline. Figure 2.13 provides one model to manage the steps in the research process.
You can control your own behavior, but receiving approval from the IRB or feedback on your draft may not happen according to schedule. Manage the time for the activities you can control (generating ideas, consulting the literature, writing sections of the manuscript). One other challenge is worth noting. One of the biggest obstacles is obtaining complete measures (with all items and scoring instructions), which is not as straightforward as you might think. The pitfalls of this task will be covered in Chapter 5.
Academic Fraud and Steps Toward Transparency
Fraud is purposeful deception to achieve some kind of gain, financial or otherwise. When people talk about fraud in research, they generally refer to manipulation of some part of the research endeavor. The University of Virginia has a useful website listing forms of academic fraud. These include plagiarism, multiple submission, false citation, false data, and Internet resources (https://honor.virginia.edu/academic-fraud).
Fraud: Deception designed to result in personal gain; may take many forms in the research process.
In this book, a focus is on aspects of the research process where academic dishonesty may occur. You may be familiar with the phrase “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” which essentially means that if you violate standards of conduct, not knowing the “rules” does not excuse the behavior.
Examples of fraud in the academic process have already been discussed, most notably, the fabrication of a dataset by a graduate student (see Chapter 1). Why does such behavior occur? There are many reasons why people take these costly shortcuts, among them being extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated (Davy et al., 2007). There is some indication that fraud (data fabrication or falsification) is more prevalent in journals with higher impact factors, suggesting that authors purposely seek to advance their standing with these publications (Steen, 2011a). Research by Steen (2011b) also has suggested that research misconduct is increasing and that journals do not always inform their readership of the reasons for the retraction of papers. More than 30% of the retracted papers unearthed in Steen’s analysis were not so identified. Some authors have argued that motivations for power and achievement, labeled neoliberal values of self-enhancement, may explain cheating in higher education (Pulfrey & Butera, 2013).
There are a number of ways in which the integrity of the research process is currently being addressed. One approach is to increase the transparency of research data, by asking submitting authors to make their raw data available in a research data repository that could be available to reviewers, for example, or eventually publically available. A second approach, and its own kind of transparency, is to publicize papers that have been retracted, for which an expression of concern has been posted, or for which a corrigendum (a correction) has been posted. The website Retraction Watch, which is sponsored by the Center for Scientific Integrity, is one such website (https://retractionwatch.com/).
In the work of students in my research methods classes, the incidence of student misconduct has been quite low. When it occurs, it usually involves plagiarism or collaborating on assignments without permission. Fabrication of an entire dataset is at one extreme of academic dishonesty; unintended plagiarism may be at the other. Because plagiarism typically involves the process of writing, the specifics about what it is and how to avoid it are covered in Chapter 13, dealing with writing up and presenting your results.
Summary
At this point, you should have thought of a research idea and examined what has already been done in that area. By now you know the physical holdings and electronic resources your institution’s library has, how the interlibrary loan system works (make sure you have created your own account), how to search for journal articles through several different databases, and how to request articles that you cannot immediately download.
An important idea in this chapter is the critical task of narrowing the gap between some variable of interest, such as participation in college athletics, and its relationship to an outcome, such as college achievement. Your job is to eliminate competing variables by narrowing the research question sufficiently to rule out the most likely alternative explanations for any significant relationship that emerges. You cannot control every variable that may play a role, but you can certainly pose your research question in a way that reduces the likelihood that one of those competing variables provides a better explanation than your candidate.
This chapter presented a timeline that you may find useful in planning the work of the semester. Staying on top of your deadlines will also reduce the likelihood that you will engage in academic dishonesty.
If you have not had time to consider them earlier, here is the list of Revisit and Respond questions from this chapter.
2.1Why might it make sense to think of some ideas before consulting the literature?What advantages are there to using your own personal experience to develop research ideas?Write down two potential research ideas that come out of your personal experience and two that come from the Internet.
2.2What is the Library of Congress classification system?What is a keyword?What kinds of resources would you expect to find in the Reference section?In what ways can librarians help with your research project?
2.3What do the number of experiments and sophistication of data analyses suggest about an article?What is Beall’s List?When we talk about the publication practices of a journal, what do we mean?Why do reviewers need ethical standards?State the null hypothesis in your own words.Why might replications become more common in the future?What is the file drawer phenomenon?
2.4Explain how you would obtain an article that is not available as full text downloadable.What is the difference between PDF Full Text and HTML Full Text?What is the difference in journal coverage between PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES?
2.5Explain what information you should keep track of in each of the following sections: Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion.What are the three sections of the Method?What is the internal consistency of a measure?What is the shape of the Introduction? The Discussion?Why are the Limitations and Future Directions sections important to develop research ideas?
2.6Explain what a third variable is and why it makes sense to narrow the research gap.What role do demographic variables play in narrowing the research gap?Where should you look to determine which demographic variables to include?
Practice Quiz