How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation

Abstract

How to do your Social Research Project or Dissertation looks to help readers to navigate research for a project or dissertation. It starts with an introduction to the research process and how to get started. It examines the process of developing an idea. It reviews the available literature. It then considers how to build upon the project idea, the ethical issues, and how to write a proposal. Next it considers sampling, and collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data. Finally, it describes how to evaluate the project and the process of writing up.

Understanding gift-giving in game live streaming on Douyu: An evaluation of PSR/social presence

“…Therefore, purposive sampling was utilized to recruit respondents. This sampling method makes the recruited participants more consistent with the research questions and requirements through the strategic sampling of participants (Clark et al, 2019 ).…”

“…In order to verify the data obtained in the questionnaire and the depth of the research, the researcher conducted follow-up interviews with some questionnaire participants. The interview is a method in qualitative research, which is suitable for generating theories because it tries to generate data about how people perceive and understand specific aspects of the real world, and these data are abundant (Clark et al, 2019 ). Specifically, semi-structured interviews were utilized in this research.…”

Bhutanese Teachers' and Students' Perceptions about Environmental Issues in Bhutan

“…For the teachers, the semi-structured individual interviews were adopted to obtain in-depth data (Clark et al, 2021). The semi-structured nature of these interviews provided sufficient flexibility to change the words and sequence of questions and also to probe the responses for clarification or elaboration (Clark et al, 2021). Each interview lasted around 35 minutes.…”

“…The focus group interview technique was used for the students because focus groups can bring together participants who share common experiences , and promote the collection of a wide range of responses (Clark et al, 2021). It is an efficient form of data collection from a large number of participants and was therefore appropriate for collecting student data.…”

“…As a result, more interaction is likely between the participants and more data can be generated (Cohen et al, 2018). Furthermore, focus groups allow the researcher to explore the diverse views and opinions of all participants (Clark et al, 2021), and also create opportunities for the participants to understand the views of others and critically reflect on their own opinions (Matthews & Ross, 2014). To obtain as many voices and perspectives as possible, 46 focus group interviews were conducted with the 194 students (Hennink & Kaiser, 2020).…”