Part Three: Creating Data

From the beginning of this book, you have read about the collection of data. Part Three, with its seven chapters, presents the main ways data are created and used in social research. The idea of creating instead of collecting data may strike you as odd. Most researchers use terms like collecting or gathering data. In fact, we have throughout this book. Why, then, do we speak of creating data? Simple. As the researcher you create your research project. You decide which variables to study. You also decide how to measure each of these variables, and which method or methods you will use to obtain these measurements.   In addition, you will choose how to analyze your data and what conclusions you will draw from your analyses.

We hope you approach the following chapters with this view in mind. With this perspective, you may appreciate even more your own vital role in how your data are created and, therefore, how your decisions and actions affect the outcome of your research.

Accepting the idea that you create your data also means that you and you alone are responsible for the accuracy of your data. We hope this sobering thought will increase your interest in learning how to create, record, and analyze your data as well as possible.

Part Three provides detailed descriptions and step-by-step guidance for applying the most frequently used methods of conducting social research. We begin with a discussion of the experiment — the most rigorous form of scientific inquiry. Chapter 9 describes how experiments are planned and conducted in the social sciences. The following two chapters are devoted to conducting surveys. Chapter 10 describes how to construct a questionnaire. Chapter 11 describes how to conduct interviews using a questionnaire. Not all research, however, depends on collecting new data. Creative researchers find ways to reanalyze available data to answer new research questions. This approach to research is covered in Chapter 12. Observation is mankind's oldest technique for learning about our environment. Observation as a scientific process is described in Chapter 13. Social scientists are frequently asked to conduct evaluations of medical, educational, or other social development efforts. Chapter 14 describes ways of planning and conducting evaluations of programs. Part Three ends with Chapter 15, which has two main parts. The first part compares the strengths and limitations of each of the research methods presented in the preceding chapters and discusses the advantages of using a multimethod approach to collecting data. The second part of this chapter describes how to plan and conduct a Rapid Rural Appraisal, a specific form of multimethod research.

After you complete Part Three, you will be ready to prepare a research design and, using that design, to collect data to answer your research question. Part Four, which follows, describes how to organize and analyze the data you will collect.

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