University of Michigan Press Blog

Struggling with research? You're not the only one...

In Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have, Eszter Hargittai explores the frustration, uncertainty, and challenges that many social scientists face in the course of their research. The collection of essays aims to fill the notable gap in the existing literature on research methods in the social sciences. While the methods literature is extensive, rarely do authors discuss the practical issues and challenges they routinely confront in the course of their research projects. As a result, each new cohort is forced to reinvent the wheel, making mistakes that previous generations have already confronted and resolved. Research Confidential seeks to address this failing by supplying new researchers with the kind of detailed practical information that can make or break a given project.

Eszter Hargittai is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Eszter on:  

YouTube   Twitter   Inside Higher Ed   Wikipedia    CNN 

Dr. Howard Markel, Author of "Formative Years," on Swine Flu Vaccination

 

|Read Transcript|
|Original NPR Article|

Howard Markel is the co-author with Alexandra Minna Stern of Formative Years, which sheds light on the development of the fields of pediatrics and child health during the last century (1880-2000). Markel is the George Edward Wantz Professor of the History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, and Professor of History at the University of Michigan. MORE INFO

Inside Higher Ed: Eszter Hargittai and "Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have"

Originally published in INSIDE HIGHER ED, Oct. 30, 2009

For social scientists starting their careers, creating research models that work is crucial. A new book suggests that they may be unaware of problems they face in part because scholars don't share stories of what didn't work on their projects, and how to deal with particular challenges. Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. The essays in the collection are all by younger scholars, including the volume's editor, Eszter Hargittai, an associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, a fellow at the Berman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and a career advice columnist for Inside Higher Ed. Hargittai responded to questions about the book.

Q: I was struck by the part of your subtitle where you say "pretend they never have." Why do you think social scientists don't recognize or hide from problems with their research methods?

A: This title refers less to what social scientists recognize and more to what shows up in the final write-up of their projects. When one reads journal articles, the methodological sections tend to make the projects sound rather straight-forward. In books, details about methods are usually relegated to an appendix, at best, and do not tell the reader the reality of data collection. Instead, they are pretty, cleaned-up versions of what happened. For example, they will include the number of final interviews the researcher conducted, but they won't include details about how many attempts it took to get a person to come to an interview.

The Colbert Report | The Information Master

by David Bell, originally appeared in The New Republic on October 7th, 2009

The Information Master by Jacob Soll

Soll is also the author of Publishing The Prince (2005)

"That resonant piece of verbal shorthand, TMI--or Too Much Information--would make a fine epigraph for our age. Anyone with an Internet connection today has access to exponentially greater quantities of writing, images, sound, and video than anyone on earth could have imagined just twenty years ago. Small wonder that we have become obsessed with the idea of "information" as an abstract substance independent of its content--something that we accumulate, measure, and "process," rather than ponder and understand. And small wonder that the management and control of information, whether by its "producers," by governments, or by corporations such as Google, has emerged as an increasingly important political concern, and as a subject of scholarship."

Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have

  

By Eszter Hargittai, Editor. This collection of essays aims to fill a notable gap in the existing literature on research methods in the social sciences. While the methods literature is extensive, rarely do authors discuss the practical issues and challenges they routinely confront in the course of their research projects. As a result, editor Eszter Hargittai argues, each new cohort is forced to reinvent the wheel, making mistakes that previous generations have already confronted and resolved. Learn more about the book...

 

Watch "Cyberspace is Segregated," Eszter Hargittai.

Also, watch: "Google Culture," Eszter Hargittai on CNN's The Flip Side

|Eszter Hargittai's website|
|Twitter: Follow Eszter|
|Wikipedia: Eszter Hargittai|

On the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing, Looking Ahead

On July 20th, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin descended to the moon while Michael Collins orbited in the Apollo 11 module. Forty years later, Aldrin and Collins advocate aiming for Mars...But any "Space Race" depends on the direction U.S. Science Policy as a whole takes in the next few years. Key decisions in the fields of energy, transportation, industry, environmental policy, national defense, and medical research and development all hinge on funding that could also be allocated to a Mars Mission, and all deserve attention. So 40 years after landing on the moon and 52 years after the launch of Sputnik 1, where are we? And where does the U.S. go from here?

Click below for more information on Beyond Sputnik: U.S. Science Policy in the 21st Century, by Homer Neal, Tobin Smith, and Jennifer McCormick, including "Look Inside" features, table of contents, chapter summaries, sample chapter, author commentary, reviews, classroom resources from professors using Beyond Sputnik, and more.

On BBC this Sunday: Steve Ziliak, author of The Cult of Statistical Significance

Originally published by: BBC Radio 4's More or Less, with interviewer Tim Harford, is broadcast on Friday, 23 January at 1330 GMT and will be repeated on Sunday, 25 January at 2000 GMT (2:00 PM eastern, 3:00 PM central). Click to view details or to listen in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/more_or_less/7845787.stm

Click here to enter the controversial world of The Cult of Statistical Significance.

Steve Ziliak, author of "The Cult"

The figures on fertility

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has the world's largest database on artificial insemination.

But how does the HFEA make all this information useful to anxious couples considering having IVF treatment?

To find out Tim Harford speaks to Lisa Jardine, chair of the HFEA and Helen Joyce the education correspondent for the Economist and mathematician, who has had IVF treatment herself.

Maths of the credit crunch

Continuing with our credit crunch series, Paul Willmott returns to explain how the value of the global derivatives market could possibly be three times that of the world economy - a figure amounting to $150 trillion.

And, following a deluge of emails he responds to listeners' gripes about his piece on traders' bonuses from our 2nd January programme. 

Statistical significance

Professor Steve Ziliak, economist and co-author of 'The Cult of Statistical Significance' discusses the mathematical tool for separating random from real effects.

He explains to us why the misunderstanding of statistical significance has lead to bad government policy making and how one particularly famous brewery employed the technique to improve the pints we enjoy today.

The Controversy of "The Cult"

The University of Michigan Press was privileged to have a featured book review in the inaugural edition of the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics; the book: THE CULT OF STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives, by Stephen T. Ziliak and Deirdre N. McCloskey, about how researchers in a broad spectrum of fields, from agronomy to zoology, employ "testing" that doesn't test and "estimating" that doesn't estimate.  

The review itself, however, was an attack--not on the quality of the book, but on the very theories that underlie it, and represents the fundamental "unsafe" but important territory that these two authors have dared to tread. Fortunately, EJPE was kind enough to publish a response from the authors right on the next page about why this is important, who actually cares, who should care, and how to navigate the many traps of "the substantive/statistical distinction" that readers (and reviewers) often fall into...

EXCERPTS:

A List of Actual Ideas for a New America

Imagining America

From: Democracy for America, group blog for Change For Louisville

Written by: Thomas Janowski on Nov 1, 2008 2:44 PM EDT

Linked to groups: dfaROCHESTER

This morning I finished reading a book by Herbert J. Gans.  The title is Imagining America in 2033: How The Country Put Itself Together After Bush. [Look Inside HERE]

Some would probably dismiss this book as nothing but a wild fantasy.  I'm also sure the release of this book was meant to correspond with the fresh start America needs and will get on election day.  And yes, I'll admit that mainstream America will think many, if not most, of the ideas presented are too wild for passage into law or policy.  But isn't the dream we all have for a better future worth examining some new, fresh and wild ideas?

I'm going to randomly present a list of ideas from the book--with and without explanation.  So here goes:

-Make it against the law to outsource the production of goods/services that were developed via government grants, tax breaks, subsidies.

-Reforestation projects that are combined with windmill farms.

-Develop broad based international hunt for terrorists that is less likely to kill civilians.

-FICA tax should be progressive and without a cap.

-There should be a national consumption tax on luxury items.

-There should be an Obscene Profits Tax on corporations.

-Work with corporations who need government help and fight those corporations that work against the best interests of Americans.

BUY "IMAGINING AMERICA" NOW WITH 30% DISCOUNT: CLICK HERE

-A wealth tax based on whether people/companies derived their profits from government research grants or were helped with government tax breaks or subsidies.

-End fearmongering associated with the war on terror.  Get to a place where Americans are assured everything is being done to protect them and then don't think/worry about it anymore.

-Cabinet members should include blue collar, working class people.

-Heal the economy.

-Small Classroom Initiative.

-Nurse-Doctor (ND) program--this creates a new class of medical professional who would offer a first line of medical care and would make house calls and would be salaried.

-Medicare becomes America's universal health insurance and includes VA services and Medicaid.

-Economic Justice--collecting billions of dollars from those who have evaded taxes

-Legislate against pre-emptive war. 

-Assume war is unnecessary until proven otherwise.

-Any decision for war would have to done democratically.

-End funding for missile defense system.

-50 mile per hour speed limits--studies have shown the most fuel efficient speed is around 47 mph.

-Equality would give way to Fairness.

-There will be oil wars.

-Welfare would become 3 programs--Survival Aid, Parenting Help and Escape(to get people off assistance)

-There will be a general decline of religion as a political force.

-Birth control technology will nearly eliminated abortions and therefore the division between the two sides.

-Weight tax on cars.

-Community contrustion would bring living, working and shopping all within walking distances.

-Talent testing--education would be based on a student's strengths.

-Political Education for Democracy.

-UN Observers for troubled election districts.

-House of Representatives would have the option of "NO CONFIDENCE" votes about the President.

-Time for a new Constitutution?  An amended Constitution?

-Money does not equal free speech in political campaigns.

-Supreme Court would be made up of 3 Dems, 3 Reps and 3 Indies.

BUY "IMAGINING AMERICA" NOW WITH 30% DISCOUNT: CLICK HERE

Science Policy in the New Obama Administration

By Tobin Smith, Co-author of Beyond Sputnik: US Science Policy in the 21st Century

During the recent presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama, now President-elect Obama, sent some very positive signals to the scientific community concerning how he would treat science and the policies that impact it if he were elected President. Several of his positions on major science and technology policy matters were outlined in the responses he provided to the 14 questions posed by ScienceDebate 2008 (http://www.sciencedebate2008.com).  Now that Senator Obama has been elected, the question will be “does he follow through?”  

Some early tests that will indicate how President Obama will treat science are: 1) how quickly he appoints his Science Advisor and the status he assigns to this position; 2) what actions he takes to loosen current restrictions on stem cell research; and 3) what commitment he shows to science funding for key research agencies in his FY 2010 budget proposal.