Doing internet research -Internet for Education

Doing research using the internet isn't as easy as you might expect. There are questions of validity, viewpoint, source and copyright to deal with.

This site might be just what you're looking for! It's a personal tutorial from the Virtual Tutoring Suite by SOSIG, focussing on techniques for searching and sifting through information on the internet. As you move through the tutorial, you can put interesting links into a virtual shopping basket for later reference.

The skeleton

The bare bones of your dissertations/projects are going to be taking shape soon. I came across this fabulous x-ray of what goes where in Rowena Murray's (2002) "How to write a thesis". Might be of use:

Background/context/review of the literature/introduction
• The subject of the research is important because …
• Those who have worked on this subject include …
• What has not yet been done is …
• The research project aimed to …

Theory/Method/Approach/Materials/Subjects
• This study was based on the approach of …
• This approach was chosen because …
• It was likely to achieve the project aims by …
• Others have used this method to …

Results/Analysis
• The steps in the research involved …
• Analyses were conducted by …
• Data/information/observations were gathered as …
• These were organized into …

Discussion/Interpretation
• Analyses suggested that …
• This interpretation was based on …
• Taken together the analyses show …
• Research aims were achieved to the extent that …

Recommendations/Implications/Conclusions
• Further research is needed in order to …
• More information is needed on …
• Practice could be improved by …
• Proposed changes would be feasible if …

Questionnaires

If you're sitting around tonight trying to design your questionnaire, have a look at the D-I-Y questionnaire writing guide. The section on 'rubbish questions' is really quite useful and links nicely to the need to test-drive your instrument!

Piloting your instruments

Many of you are now developing questionnaires and interview schedules. It is important to test drive questionnaires and interview questions -- doing this can provide an insight into how effective your instrument is and can provide initial data. Piloting allows you to:

• test out how you will administer your questionnaire/interview
• ask participants for feedback so that you can identify ambigous or misleading questions
• find out how long it will take for participants to do the questionnare or take part in your interview
• identify and alter/remove unnecessary questions
• rework questions which lead to unexpected responses

Conducting a pilot is a key part of a solid research design. Basically, piloting can show up any potential difficulties before you proceed to the rest of your project and gives you the opportunity to 'tweak' your instruments to ensure a good fit with your research design and question.