Research Concepts

and Design
POLS7060 RESEARCH METHODS FOR
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PRACTITIONERS

1 Dr Yew Wei Lit

Department of Government & International Studies
Hong Kong Baptist University
2 Today’s Aims

 Understanding what initial steps to be taken when designing a

social research
 Understanding some key concepts related to the assessment of
research designs
 Adopting and applying methodological ideas and concepts to
research topics
3 Designing Research

 Research design: a plan that determines what to observe and

analyse, why and how
 Specify what to find out and how best to find out
 Typical dilemma: too many research topics, so many directions
to investigate
4 Designing Research

 Social research addresses socially significant phenomena,

engages directly or indirectly with ideas or social theory
 Is it socially significant? Does it engage with social theory?
 Goals: 1) exploration; 2) description; 3) explanation
5 Research Goals

 Identifying general patterns and relationships

 Advancing new theories
 Testing and refining theories
 Making predictions
 Interpreting culturally or historically significant phenomena
 Exploring diversity
 Giving voice
6 Research Goals

 When do you explore?

 Why describing may not be
enough?
 How do you explain?
7 Types of Reasoning
8 Causal Explanations

 Idiographic approach: Seeking to exhaust the

idiosyncratic causes of a particular condition or
event (deterministic and complete)
 Nomothetic approach: Seeking to identify a few
factors (variables) that generally impact a class of
conditions or events (probabilistic and incomplete)
– outliers/exceptions are okay!
 Independent and dependent variables
 Correlation =/= causation, but correlation is
necessary for causation
9 Independent and Dependent Variables
10 Spurious Relationships
Coincidental correlation,
caused by some third variable
11 Necessary and Sufficient Causes

 X is a sufficient condition for Y if the presence of X is all that is

needed for Y to happen
 X is a necessary condition for Y if Y cannot happen without the
presence of X
 Earning an A in every assignment is sufficient for earning an
overall A grade
 Earning at least a B for your research proposal project is necessary
for earning an overall A grade
 Hydrogen is a ___ condition for water?
 However, many conditions are neither sufficient nor necessary
12 Units of Analysis

 Why are they important?

 What to research on, and generalisability
(generalising)
 Why are longitudinal studies (based on
observations made at different points in
time) tend to be more challenging than
cross-sectional studies (based on
observations made at a single point in time
– a snapshot)?
13 Units of Analysis
14 Three Main Research Strategies
Ragin & Amoroso (2011, 52)
 Using qualitative methods
 Using quantitative methods
 Using comparative methods
15 Three Main Research Strategies

 Qualitative research: to understand commonalities

 Quantitative research: to understand relationships among
variables
 Comparative research: to understand diversity, often trying to
balance between qualitative and quantitative research
 Mixed methods: to triangulate the different methods
16 Three Main Research Strategies
17 Measuring the Stuff of Life

 Why is it difficult to “measure” in social

sciences?
 Words + meanings (ambiguity of
language), complexity/nuances of social
behaviour, not always directly observable
 How to measure? “Valuable”/”value”;
“religiosity”; “violence”; “class”
18 Measuring the Stuff of Life

Terms

Conceptualisation

Concept

Operationalisation

Measure
19 Conceptualisation

 Government working with private firms, outsourcing services to

non-profit organisations
 Collaborative governance: a governing arrangement where one
or more public agencies directly engage non-state stakeholders
in a collective decision-making process that is formal,
consensus-oriented, and deliberative and that aims to make or
implement public policy or manage public programs or assets
(Ansell & Gash 2008)
 Hybrid, networked governance
20 Conceptualisation

 The process through which we specify what we mean when we

use particular terms in research – something fuzzy and imprecise
(concepts) are made more specific and precise
 GONGOs or Quangos: government-organised/quasi
(autonomous)-NGOs (nongovernmental organisations)
21 Explaining the Evolution of China’s
Government–Environmental NGO Relations
since the 1990s (Xu & Byrne 2020)
22 Operationalisation

 Development of specific research

procedures that will result in empirical
observations representing those concepts
in the real world
 Composite measures (multiple indicators)
 How is “quality migrant” operationalised by
the Immigration Department of HK?
 From a researcher’s perspective, do you
foresee any problems if you simply reuse
the Department’s operationalisation?
Would you do things differently?
 https://tinyurl.com/y2pwmxp9
23 Operationalisation

 If you have time, compare it with that

of Australia’s Global Talent Visa
Program (link below)
 https://tinyurl.com/6hr3u34e
 Consider all possible variations, as
long as they are relevant – but too
much is better than too little
24 Measurement Quality Criteria

 Reliability: whether the same result is yielded every time a

particular measurement technique is applied — consistency
 Not the same as accuracy! Quantitative measures tend to be
more reliable than qualitative ones
 Validity: whether the measure reflects accurately the concept that
is being measured
 Does it make sense logically? Does it measure exactly what you
want it to measure?
 Qualitative measures tend to be more valid than quantitative
measures
25 Measurement Quality Criteria
26
27 Wrap-up

 The research process - plenty of research design options

 Always keep in mind your goals, your questions
 Conceptualisation + operationalisation: ongoing process that
requires reflection, flexibility, thoughtfulness in planning
 Research ethics and literature review: what are some of the ethical
issues involved in social research? How do we protect human
subjects? How do we survey and review the literature?