ASSIGNMENTS

The instructor will provide additional information about each assignment. All assignments must be completed to pass the course. Written assignments are done either individually (IND) or by a group (GRP), are to be double-spaced, and must be submitted in class unless otherwise indicated.

Assignment	Date Due	Percent of Grade
Preparation and Participation		5%
In-class evaluation of Cano (1999) GRP	SEP 15	----
Critical Assessment of research report (5-7 pp.) IND	SEP 22, in class	20%
Topic of research proposal and abstract GRP	SEP 29, in class	----
In-class quiz IND	OCT 13, in class	20%
Draft of research proposal and empirical data collection instrument (> 6 pp.) GRP	NOV 10, in class	----
Research Proposal and empirical data report GRP	DEC 8, 3:00 PM	25%
Final Exam IND	SAT, DEC 11, 2004 (7:00PM - 10:00 PM)	30%

All assignments must be handed in on time, and the instructor reserves the right to issue a course grade of F if ANY assignment is not completed. Late assignments will not be accepted unless three criteria are met:

1. At least 24 hours before the date due, the instructor gives explicit permission to the student to hand the assignment in late. This criterion can be met only in the most serious of health, family, or personal situations.

2. At the same time, a specific date and time are agreed upon for the late submission.

3. The assignment is then submitted on or before the agreed-upon date and time.

Critical Assessment of an Empirical Research Study (Due September 22, 2004; 20%)

One of the goals of this course is to enable students to evaluate the results of empirical research of interest to our discipline. This assignment is designed to allow students to identify an appropriate empirical study of interest to them in the open literature of information studies and other disciplines, e.g., psychology, history, fine arts, computer science, sociology, and philosophy; to implement the evaluative skills developed in class and in course readings in the assessment of this study; and to develop a concise, informed written assessment of the study. This assignment is intended to help students import the skills developed in this class to their professional lives and to help prepare them for the formal research proposal and report which are the capstone of the class.

As Olson (1996, p. 136) says, good researchers can distinguish "what the author was attempting to get some reader to believe from what they themselves . . . [are] . . . willing to believe." He further notes that "Critical reading is the recognition that a text could be taken in more than one way and then deriving the implications suitable to each of those ways of taking and testing those implications against available evidence" (p. 281). We must be that informed, critical, evaluative reader, understanding the roles that various kinds of evidence and our criteria for evaluating evidence play in the assignment of illocutionary force to truth claims (p. 280).

It is wise to start this assignment immediately. In order to complete this assignment successfully, the student should:

• Identify appropriate research journals and/or monographs in the subject area(s) of interest; Hernon (1991b), Stenstrom (1994), Creswell (2003, pp. 27-48), and Busha & Harter (Chapter 15) provide some guidance on this score. You may also want to browse in the current serials on the 2nd floor of PCL, in the LIS and other bound serials on the 6th floor of PCL (especially in the T's and Z's), and in other collections in the UT General Libraries. Also browse in the General Libraries OPAC.
• Scan through a number of EMPIRICAL RESEARCH articles in these sources.
• Choose an EMPIRICAL STUDY of particular interest that addresses the use, nature,
  dissemination, or management of information as an object of study. The collection and
  analysis of EMPIRICAL DATA must be included in the study. The data, however, need not be
  quantitative nor be quantitatively analyzed. Please consult the instructor if there is any
  doubt of an article's suitability for this assignment.
• After several close and critical readings of the paper, use criteria discussed in class and in
  the readings (including, e.g., Katzer et al., Chapters 16-19; Robbins, 1992, especially pp. 85-86; and Busha & Harter, pp. 27-29 and Chapter 15) to evaluate the article. Also see Babbie on "Reading Social Research" (2004, pp. 473-478), but be wary of his use of terms such as "objectivity."

The product of this evaluation will be a formal academic paper of no less than 5 nor more than 7 double-spaced pages in length. Please refer to appropriate style manuals and to the syllabus section on Standards for Written Work while writing.

Your assessment should have the following components:

• An Introduction of 1-2 pages identifying the importance of the problem to the field, stating your overall thesis with regard to the article (i.e., is the paper good or not?), presenting a brief summary of the paper, and explicitly identifying the major criteria used to assess the paper. Be sure that these are evaluative criteria, not simply a list of topics or sections of the paper.

• An Analysis of 3-4 pages comparing the paper to the evaluation criteria identified in your Introduction and referring to specific elements in the paper to support your assertions. It may be helpful to think of organizing the analysis around the Conceptualization, Operationalization and Methods of Data Collection and Data Analysis, Results, Conclusions, and Supporting Material, e.g., figures, graphs, charts, notes, tables, and
  appendices. This particular format is suggested, not required.

• A Conclusion of 1-2 pages giving your overall assessment of the research paper and your specific recommendations to improve the study and/or the paper

• An Appendix containing the complete text of the research paper, including appendices and other supporting material. Please submit all material in 8 1/2" x 11" format.

You may find it helpful to review the six model student papers from previous semesters on Reserve at PCL -- the papers are listed alphabetically by title in UTNetCAT. Their titles are: "Analysis of Content Analysis of Research Articles in Library and Information Science," "Analysis of Study of Community Censorship Pressure on Canadian Public Libraries," "Assessment of 'Preservation Analysis and the Brittle Book Problem in Libraries: The Identification of Research-Level Collections,'" "The Eye of the Beholder: Analysis of a Study of the Effect of Subject Matter and Degree of Realism on the Aesthetic Preferences for Paintings," "Library Jargon," and "Public Archives of Canada Collections Survey." Each of the papers is different from the others, but they are all excellent. Do not copy the model papers' approaches; instead, use them to help you understand what I regard as good work and a successful analysis.

If the paper you choose to evaluate uses statistical or other analytic methods with which you are not familiar, do your best to examine their use as carefully as possible given your current state of knowledge. Add a sentence or two to your evaluation that says, in effect, that the author uses some analytic techniques which you are presently unable to evaluate fully, but, e.g., the numbers add up, their use is not clear, their use is clearly explained with a full rationale for use given, the author fails to explain his/her purposes in doing the analysis, and so on. Please be formal in your description of such methods, and remember the strategies for being a skeptical, critical reader of statistics as discussed in Best (2001a) inter alia.

Please hand in two copies of your full paper. I will grade and return one, and I will keep the other for my files. This assignment is worth 20% of your semester grade.

Late assignments will not be accepted.

 

Research Proposal and Empirical Data Report (25%)

Approved Proposal Topic and Abstract:	September 29, 2004, in class
First Draft Due:	November 10, 2004, in class
Final Draft Due:	December 8, 2004, 3:00 PM

This assignment is the capstone of the course and has two components. It will be done in self-selected groups of 3-4 students, and every member of the group will receive the same grade.

1. The major part of the assignment is a fully realized research proposal that will be the result of the conceptualization and planning of an empirical investigation of a subject related to information studies of interest to the students. Be sure to review Creswell (2003); Katzer et al. (1998), especially Chapter 8; Losee and Worley (1993, Chapters 5 and 6); Robbins (1992, especially pp. 85-86); Cronin (1992); and Busha and Harter (1980, Chapters 1, 14, and 15). Also see Babbie (2004, pp. 485491) on "Writing Social Research" - his is a useful but not canonical model.

2. The second part of the assignment is the design and application of an empirical data collection instrument in the context of the proposed study and a report of the results. Review Creswell (2003), Babbie (2004) on data analysis, and Busha & Harter (1980), Chapters 2-6 and 15. Please include a schedule for the entire study as an Appendix to the empirical data report. This assignment is a small part of the larger project proposed above.

The research proposal will be 15-18 double-spaced pages in length and will include:

• Abstract of the entire proposed study -- Following Creswell (2003) and other sources, describe the question(s) the study will engage, the unit(s) of analysis, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures. Describe the data collection instrument you have designed.

• Statement of the problem -- You will tell the reader exactly what you plan to investigate and why that problem is of interest to LIS. Identify your research questions or your hypotheses in this section, identify major assumptions, and define important terms.

• Literature review -- This review will be highly selective, evaluative, and analytic. Give the review a substantive title, e.g., "Important Concepts in Academic Library Use." Relate the sources to each other and to the problem of interest. Please limit your discussion to the sources of highest importance to your investigation topically and methodologically. See Katzer et al. (1998, pp. 85-89); Cooper (1984, the Preface and Chapters 1 and 2), especially pp. 25-26; Babbie (2004, pp. 487-488); Creswell (2003, Chapter 2); and Busha and Harter (1980, pp. 347-348). Remember a literature review is not simply a literature search.

• Methodology -- Describe how you would investigate the topic by specifying the methods of both data collection and data analysis. Also give this section a specific, substantive title, e.g., "Understanding Visual Artists' Information Behavior." Identify the variable(s) of interest, define them and their relationship (if any), and specify how you would measure them. Remember that "measurement" means systematic observation, not just counting. Include in this section a particular discussion of the empirical data collection instrument noted below. This section must be specific enough to allow the reader to judge whether your method is appropriate and adequate to understand the phenomenon of interest. Be sure to include a discussion of what data would be gathered if you were to carry out the entire study and how they would be analyzed.

• Bibliography -- This section will include every source that you cite explicitly in your document and no other. Please ensure that the citation pattern for this bibliography and the notes for the text adhere to APA standards. See the Standards for Written Work.
  

The empirical data report has no page limits and will have the following parts:

• A copy of the data collection instrument itself -- this must be an empirical data collection instrument.
• A specific description of how the instrument was used to gather data, including the identification of the appropriate population(s) and sample group(s), and specifically how the data were analyzed to address (not answer) your overarching question
• An appropriate verbal/numeric description and summary of the data, e.g., tables, summary figures, descriptive statistics, or inferential statistics. Be certain to label all descriptive parts of the report accurately and fully.
• A graphic representation of the data as appropriate, e.g., bar chart, frequency polygon, or box plot
• An Appendix with a specific schedule stating when the entire study would be done.

Please hand in two copies of the final drafts of the research proposal and the empirical data report no later than 3:00 PM, Wednesday, December 8. I will return one copy of the assignment with a grade and keep the other for my files.

The research plan and empirical data collection instrument are worth 25% of your semester grade. In order to earn these points, the first draft submission date of November 10 in class must also be met. Late assignments will not be accepted.

The preliminary draft of the proposal will be greater than or equal to 6 (=6) pages in length and will consist of the following component parts:

• 1 p. abstract of the entire proposed study, not only the part related to the data collection instrument
• > 2 pp. statement of the problem
• > 1 p. lit review; a general indication of the kinds of material to be reviewed both methodologically and topically; give this review a substantive title
• > 2 pp. method(s) of investigation, including specifics about analysis of the data from the
  data collection instrument. This section is very often the weakest in students' and others' proposals -- be specific and direct, especially about how you will analyze the
  data you would collect.
• references.
  

Hints for a Successful Proposal

A good proposal explicitly answers the following questions, conceptually linking them together:

1. What is the phenomenon you want to understand? What is your question? It is often helpful to state your research problem as a question. Then the purpose of your proposal is to address that question. Everything in the proposal must contribute to that goal.

2. What concepts are necessary to understand and address the question?

3. How will your conceptualization of the question be operationalized? That is, what will you observe/measure?

4. How will you make the observations/measurements? Please keep the reliability and (construct) validity of measures clearly in mind, as well as the more qualitative criteria of credibility, transferability, and trustworthiness.

5. How will the data from the observations/measurements be analyzed?

6. How will such analysis address your question?

Be very specific and explicit in answering these questions -- they are useful guides for your proposal writing and design of the empirical data collection instrument for this class and for the implementation of proposals and the reporting of the results of research more generally. Also see Creswell (2003) and Katzer et al. (1998).

Remember, this proposal and empirical data instrument are rhetorical in nature. More specifically, among the major goals of the assignment are for you (1) to convince me about the legitimacy and appropriateness of your problem, your method(s) of investigation, and your methods of data analysis and (2) to demonstrate your ability to participate in the community of professional-level researchers. Persuade me.