Recording Descriptive Data

1. Data Gathering and the Research Process
2. Selecting the Method

• Recording normative data is discussed on another page.

Data Gathering and the Research Process

Before starting to gather data from empiria it is advisable to spend a minute in considering whether the information that you need could be reachable with other methods than the often relatively arduous empirical work. Such methods might include:

• Finding the information in already existing texts and literature,
• Interrogating people that have the information,
• phenomenological meditation where you use as material your own remembrances and earlier experiences with the objects.

Empirical operations are usually the most expensive phase in a research project and they deserve to be planned carefully. Remember, too, that they are in many ways related with operations that come before and after in the research process. If there are weaknesses in the preceding operations, it heralds difficulties in the empirical work, and if data collecting is haphazard there will be problems in their later analysis.

Below is a checklist of some important things that you should have done before launching empirical operations in a large scale. If they, however, seem too difficult it can be expedient first to do some tentative empirical research in a small scale before completing these tasks and starting to collect the main bulk of empirical material.

• Demarcating the Study. Which is the set or the entire multitude of those cases, specimens or individuals where you want to say that your future findings are true? It is often more or less identical to the set of cases where your findings shall be applied if such application is foreseeable.
• Selecting the sample from which empirical data are collected. It is often smaller than the set defined above. Try to use a random sample because it allows a more reliable generalizing from the sample to the total population.
• Defining the concepts (attributes or variables) that shall be registered. True, in exploratory research it is normal that along with your growing understanding you will want to improve even some of the definitions, but you should anyway try to define them as early as you can.

The list above contains tasks that you should do before the empirical phase. On the other hand, it can be advisable to speculate what is to happen afterwards, i.e. in the analysis phase. Many procedures of analysis (notably the statistical ones) require data in exactly the right format which is usually easy to achieve if you take it into account when planning the method of registering your empirical data.

Selecting the Method

Many researchers are inclined to see a contrast between qualitative and quantitative methods, see Two Cultures of Research. However, when studying products or their use, you will often want to record data of both these types, so this dichotomy will not provide a good ground for selecting the empirical data gathering method. Instead, there are two other questions that you should consider when planning your study:

1. The strength of your theory. Will you base your work on a model developed in earlier research? How strongly structured your research design is? There are three alternatives (which are more fully explained under the title Theoretical Input):
• Exploratory research: you have no good theory to base your work on. Such situation can occur also in the very beginning of new product development.
• Research as Revision of a Model: there are some usable theories and you can use an existing model as a starting point which you perhaps have to modify during your empirical study. A comparable situation is when you want to test a proposal for a new project and you are prepared to modify your proposal on the basis of the test.
• Hypothesis based Study: you can start from a credible theory and you can almost predict the results of your inquiry; nevertheless you want to be sure of it.
2. The nature of the object of study, and how you deal with it. Typical approaches are:
• Recording static objects, their dimensions and other attributes, in order to find out static invariances in the data: what are the generic features of this class of objects? What is the internal structure of this class or these objects? Static objects are often inanimate, but even people can be studied with same methods, if the researcher is only interested in appearance and dimensions.
• Observation of processes or what happens. This is usually done to uncover dynamic invariances: typical processes of change and their reasons, restrictions and outcomes.
• Presenting questions to people who know the object of study better than you, and recording the responses.
• Studying secondary material like documents, through which we obtain information regarding the primary object of interest. This can be necessary because:
  • the primary object is not available, or
  • we do not wish to disturb the primary object, because it would change its natural state.

Once you have answered these two questions, you will have good chances of finding an appropriate method in the following table.

	Exploratory research and documentation	Research as Revision of a Model	Hypothesis based Study
Study of static objects:	Intensive study of products	Extensive study of products	(Seldom applicable)
Methods for observing a process:	Non systematic observation	Systematic observation	Simulated incident observation Experiment
Methods for asking questions:	Focused interview	Questionnaire	Role-playing method Experiment
Study of secondary material:	Study of letters and other documents, their Hermeneutic analysis		Indirect study of deposits or wearing etc. Ex post facto -study

August 3, 2007.
Comments to the author:

Original location: http://www2.uiah.fi/projects/metodi