LIS 397.1, Introduction
to Research in Library and Information Science
Nature and role of research in library and information science and in the
practice of librarianship and information management. Data collection and analysis
techniques. Reporting and critical evaluation of research.
A. Introduction to research. Kinds of research; formal research in general and in the science and practice of librarianship and information management. Introduction to proposal preparation. How to present research results. How to critique and evaluate published research.
B. Data Analysis. Descriptive statistics. Elements of statistical inference: basic statistics, sampling, estimation, correlation, and the testing of statistical hypotheses.
C. Data Collection. Surveys: questionnaires, interviews.
Required Texts
Alreck, Pamela L.; Settle, Robert B. The Survey Research Handbook: Guidelines and Strategies for Conducting a Survey. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: Irwin; 1995. 470 p. ISBN:0-7863-0358-1 (hardback); ISBN:0-256-10321-6 (paperback).
Hinton, Perry R. Statistics Explained: A Guide for Social Science Students. New York, NY: Routledge; 1995. 322 p. ISBN:0-415-10286-3.
[Note: I recommend that you obtain the texts for this course from a commercial source that will sell them at a discount and/or second-hand, such as Alibris.com and Amazon.com. To search for and compare book prices quoted by various online bookstores, you can use price-comparison engines such as AddALL and Best Book Buys.]
Recommendations: Books
Katzer, Jeffrey: Cook, Kenneth H.; Crouch, Wayne W. Evaluating Information: A Guide for Users of Social Science Research. 4th ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill; 1998. 297 p. ISBN:0-07-034309-8. [A readable guide to the problems of doing research in the social sciences, i.e., research that can involve large numbers of observations and multitudinous possible sources of confusion and error. Katzer et al. do a good job of discussing concisely a broad range of problems: the design of experiments, bias, "noise", statistical reasoning, and the interpretation of results by authors of research and by their readers.]
Koosis, Donald J. Statistics: A Self-Teaching Guide. 4th ed. New York, NY: Wiley; 1997. 278 p. ISBN:0-471-14688-9. [As the title indicates, this is an introduction to statistics designed for the autodidact. It makes good use of plentiful short question-and-answer pairs, and includes helpful discussions of how to use Microsoft Excel to carry out statistical calculations.]
Williams, Frederick. Reasoning with Statistics: How to Read Quantitative Research. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth; 2001. 240 p. ISBN:0-03-053158-6; 0-15-506815-6. [A readable guide to statistical techniques, including some topics often omitted from introductions to statistics: e.g., cluster analysis, factor analysis, and discriminant analysis. Earlier editions are also satisfactory for the purposes of LIS 397.1.]
Two Strong Recommendations
1. I strongly recommend that you purchase or borrow an electronic calculator that provides (as keyboard functions) automatic calculation of means, standard deviations, and linear-regression (trend-line) coefficients. You will find that using such a calculator (they are available for under $20) will greatly increase the efficiency of your studying in the statistical part of the course, by letting you concentrate on concepts instead of arithmetic.
2. I strongly recommend that you acquire a copy of the following book:
Stephens, Larry J. Schaum's Outline of Theory and Problems of Beginning Statistics. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill; 1998. 480 p. ISBN:0-0706-12595-5.
This book provides numerous examples and problems, for most of which solutions are provided. This enables students to check their understanding of various statistical concepts by tackling the problems and then comparing their answers with those provided by the book.
1. You are expected to work through the statistics text as outlined in the course schedule. There will be two quizzes on the statistical matters covered in the text and the accompanying lectures.
2. A written examination covering part B of the course, as outlined above, will be administered at the end of Part B. The exam will be given in two parts. The In-Class part will be given at a time to be announced in class. The Take-Home part will be handed out at the end of the In-Class exam.
With respect to the Take-Home part, I regret that experience indicates that I need to say explicitly that you are expected to work it without any assistance from or consultation with any other person.
NOTE: Failure to have completed all the computer and calculator exercises prior to this examination will be a severe handicap in taking the exam. Students who have not completed these exercises by the date of the exam will be advised to drop the course.
3. You are to read one book of your choice, from the General Readings in Science section of the Webpage entitled References for LIS 397.1, and write a 2-4 page review of it. Your review should (1) briefly summarize the content of the book and (2) discuss how, in your opinion, the book illustrates, and helps the reader understand, what is involved in exploring problems and attempting to solve them: viz., what is involved in scientific research.
4. You are to submit an exercise in the writing of a research proposal. This exercise should be approximately 5-10 double-spaced pages in length and should consist of: (1) a discussion of a problem; (2) a statement of one or more testable hypotheses related to the problem, together with statements of definitions and assumptions; and (3) an outline of a test of the hypothesis or hypotheses.
5. You are to submit a written critique of an article or report from the research literature of library and information science (or subject to my approval in advance, from the research literature of another field of interest to you). The article or report is to be one that purports to be an effort (whether wholly successful or not) to present the results of a methodical investigation, rather than one that is simply a case study, a speculative essay, or an anecdotal account of a problem and its solution. (Articles of these latter types can, of course, have merit, but they are outside the focus of this course.)
The critique should evaluate the article or report (1) as a research effort--i.e., with respect to definition of problem and methods of data collection and analysis--, and (2) as an exposition of what was done. Be sure to identify the author(s), title, and source of the critiqued article on the front of your critique.
6. You are join with a group (5-7 students) of your fellow 397.1 students in preparing and administering a short (10 -15 questions) survey instrument, and in analyzing and reporting the results of your survey. Due at the end of the course is a written report from each group, containing the survey instrument and presenting the group's report on the results of the survey.
This report is to be provided both in hard-copy form and in the form of a single Portable Document Format (.pdf) file suitable for being posted on the World-Wide Web. The Portable Document Format file must contain all the material that the group feels is appropriate for its final report. This file must be edited and formatted so as to present an attractive, professional appearance and so as to present all materials, including spreadsheets and the outputs of statistical-processing programs, in portrait (not landscape) layout. The title-page of the report must include identification of the report as being a product of course LIS 397.1, in the School of Information, of The University of Texas at Austin.
At the final meeting of the course each group will present a short (15-18 minutes) oral report on its survey and the group's experience in preparing, administering, and analyzing the survey. Each group will be responsible for organizing and timing its oral report (which must not exceed 18 minutes) and for ensuring that every member of the group takes part in presenting the report.
7. To facilitate communication between the instructor and the class, and among students, you must have an email account.
In learning statistics, there is simply no substitute for working a substantial number of arithmetic exercises. This is necessary in order for you to be able to acquire a basic facility with statistical reasoning and a basic understanding of statistical techniques and how you can use them to help you obtain useful knowledge about the real world. In this graduate-level course, unlike the case with a high-school or undergraduate-level course, I do not provide you with detailed assignments of exercises to be handed in at each class meeting, graded by me or a Teaching Assistant, and then returned to you. Instead, I rely on you to use your own self-interest and self-discipline to lead you to do enough calculations, using both a suitable electronic calculator and Microsoft Excel (or an equivalent spreadsheet program), to develop your skills and understanding. (The book by Larry Stephens, cited above, will be helpful in providing exercises.)
Your grade will be based 40% on the written examination on Part B, 7.5% on each of the two quizzes, 5% on the book review, 10% on the research proposal, 10% on the critique, and 20% on the group survey. Grading is done "on the curve", i.e., relative to your standing among all the students in the class.
Your written work will be graded not only on content but also on style. By style I mean general appearance, spelling, sentence construction, and the quality of the organization of your material. Specifically, the grade for your written work will be derived from two component letter grades: one grade on the basis of the content, and a second grade on the basis of style. The overall grade for your written work will be an adjusted average of these two component grades.
(Note: In writing your papers for this course, you must use a wordprocessing program; you must use the wordprocessor's spelling checker; and you are strongly encouraged to use a grammar-checking program. Please do not employ right justification of the writing line [sometimes called "full justification"].)
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Last revised 2004 Feb 23