科研助力 | （即将）读研究生的你，如何选择研究方法？
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Research underpins and informs our understanding and appreciation of all aspects of the world, and its insights lead to physical, social and personal growth and change. While, in itself, your research might not seem to make any immediate direct impact, over time, research-led insights, understanding and changes affect everything we do in society.
（Gina Wisker，《研究生科研手册》，p. 9）
亲爱的读者朋友们，又到周五啦~
最近各大院校纷纷公布了2021年硕士研究生招生考试初试成绩，你或者身边人有在考研的吗？对研究生学习有什么期待呢？
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科研虽然自有乐趣，但刚刚接触科研工作时，我们难免一头雾水：研究问题是什么？研究方法是什么？怎么开展研究、收集数据？遇到类似种种问题，往往无从入手，最后可能会归结为四个字——“听导师的”。
然而，科研真的仅仅依赖导师就够了吗？且不说导师是否有足够的精力、时间和耐心进行细致地指导，这样不是发自内心真实所想的研究恐怕也很难坚持下去吧。
做研究的第一步应该是回顾自己在学科领域内的学习和阅读经验，找寻出可能感兴趣的点和有价值的主题，同时结合前人文献，准确定位研究问题。然后选择适当的研究方法，接下来就是收集数据和写作阶段。今天重点看研究方法的选择。
研究方法的选择与研究者的研究领域和研究问题密不可分，同时也会受到研究者世界观的影响——你是怎么看待这个世界的？
有一种看似二元论的区分方式可以相对简单地帮助我们决定世界观和方法倾向，即实证主义方法论（演绎性，强调定量数据的收集和阐释）和后实证主义方法论（归纳性，注重理论的发展和使用质性方法）。
Positivistic paradigm | Postpositivistic paradigm |
Concerned with hypotheses testing | Concerned with generating theories |
Uses large samples | Uses small samples |
Data are highly specific and precise | Data are rich and subjective |
Produces quantitative data | Produces qualitative data |
High reliability | Reliability is low |
Low validity | Validity is high |
Generalises from sample to population | Generalises from one setting to another |
Source: Adapted from Hussey and Hussey (2nd edn) (2003) |
（Gina Wisker，《研究生科研手册》，p. 68）
这当然是过度简化的分类，更好的做法是将定量研究方法和质性研究方法相结合。（需要注意，我们这里所说的是人文社会科学领域的研究。）
如果你不能确定什么是定量研究方法和质性研究方法，小编建议可以先阅读相关的书籍，比如《研究生科研手册》。这本书对方法论的本体论有较多讨论，可以帮助你建构起最基本的区分，同时作者也运用了大量实例来说明两种研究方法的区别和联系，读起来简明畅快。
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看完《研究生科研手册》，相信你不仅会对研究方法有所了解，还会整个科研过程有所把握。如果想要更加深入地去挖掘研究方法中的门道，可以按照需要和兴趣，阅读专门介绍研究方法的书，比如“什么是”研究方法系列——引领您进入社会科学研究方法学术园地
丛书主题涉及社交网络分析、在线研究、话语分析、日记法、质性研究、质性访谈、质性研究伦理、定量纵向数据分析等领域。每一分册均以“什么是……”命名，围绕一个主题，梳理该领域发展概况，阐释关键术语，介绍前沿成果或通过案例分析展示该研究方法的实际应用情况，并通过推荐书目或参考书目为读者延伸阅读提供指导。各分册作者均为相关领域的资深研究者，思路清晰，言简意赅。
小编也选取了每本书中具有代表性的“定义”段落，帮助大家以微知著，初步了解这些社会科学研究方法~
什么是社交网络分析？
What is Social Network Analysis?
Social Network analysis conceptualizes individuals or groups as ‘points’ and their relations to each other as ‘lines’. It is concerned with the patterns formed by the points and lines and involves exploring these patterns, mathematically or visually, in order to assess their effects on the individuals and organisations that are the members of the ‘networks’ formed by the interesting lines that connect them. It therefore takes the metaphorical idea of interaction as forming a network of connections and gives this idea a more formal representation in order to model structures of social relations. Treating a social structure as a network is the cornerstone of social network analysis. (p. 1)
（已经有学者将此方法用于舆论和疫情防控分析，感兴趣的小伙伴可以去知网看下~）
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什么是在线研究？
What is Social Network Analysis?
Online research methods do not describe an approach to finding out about the internet, but rather they describe an approach to finding out about people and the social world they inhabit, using the internet. (p. 3)
Online research methods have now established a clear place in the social research methods canon. Researchers began to experiment online from the mid-1980s but it was only with the development of the internet as a mass form in the mid- to late 1990s that online research really began to develop as a field and to advance the methodological questions. This chapter has argued that there is a complex relationship between technology, the social use of technology and the strategies that researchers develop to examine these. This relationship forms one of the main themes of this book, as it examines the key features and debates that have emerged in the areas of online surveys, online interviews and focus groups, online ethnographies and online experiments. (p. 23)
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什么是话语分析？
What is Discourse Analysis?
This book provides an overview of discourse analytic research as a rich and interdisciplinary field which continues to change and develop in new directions.
...
One starting point is that discourse analysis usually refers to a research approach in which language material, such as talk or written texts, and sometimes other material together, is examined as evidence of phenomena beyond the individual person. （斜体为原文所有）(pp. 1-2)
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什么是日记法？
What is Diary Method?
Diary method has arguably been the ‘poor relation’ of the methodological family in qualitative research, compared, for example to interviews … Yet, even a cursory search of the research literature published since 1990 reveals over 4,800 papers using diary method. Moreover, the method continues to provide researchers with a flexible tool for collecting rich data, especially in light of digital, web and social networking technologies.
…
Solicited diaries are diaries that people have been asked to keep for a particular reason, notably for research purposes. This approach, in which a participant records his or her thoughts, feelings and/or behaviours under the direction of an individual researcher, has been part of the researcher’s toolkit since the 1930s and is the main focus of the book. (pp. 1-3)
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什么是质性研究？
What is Qualitative Research?
In light of this contrast with quantitative social science, we can define ‘qualitative research’ along the following lines: a form of social inquiry that tends to adopt a flexible and data-driven research design, to use relatively unstructured data, to emphasize the essential role of subjectivity in the research process, to study a small number of naturally occurring cases in detail, and to use verbal rather than statistical forms of analysis. （斜体为原文所有）(p. 12)
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什么是质性访谈？
What is Qualitative Interviewing?
Most text books will tell you that interviews range through a continuum, from structured, through semi-structured, to unstructured (or focused) interviews (Bryman 2001; May 1997). The structured interview is at the quantitative end of the scale, and more used in survey approaches. The rest of the scale, semi-structured and unstructured, is the area occupied by qualitative researchers, with the interviews characterized by increasing levels of flexibility and lack of structure. Many of the terms you will have discovered applied to qualitative interviewing appear in this part of the continuum, for example in-depth, informal, non-directed, open-ended, conversational, naturalistic, narrative, biographical, oral or life history, ethnographic and many more discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. The terms used for any particular interview type relate to the underlying philosophy and specific approach taken to research, discussed further in Chapter 2. (p. 3)
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什么是质性研究伦理？
What are Qualitative Research Ethics?
…[E]nhancing ‘ethical literacy’ means more than learning how to achieve ethics approval. ‘Ethical literacy’ means encouraging researchers to understand and engage with ethical issues as they emerge throughout the process of research and not merely to view research ethics as something that is completed once a favourable opinion on a proposed research project has been granted by a research ethics committee. While it may be the case that some ethical issues can be anticipated prior to a study commencing, often ethical issues emerge as research proceeds, sometimes in unexpected and surprising ways. (pp. 1-2)
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什么是定量纵向数据分析？
What is Quantitative Longitudinal Data Analysis?
The subject of this book is quantitative longitudinal data analysis, and it focuses on data that are collected in large-scale social surveys. The most universal definition of longitudinal social science data is any data that have a temporal (i.e. time) dimension. A rudimentary distinction is routinely made between cross-sectional designs, where data are collected at only one point in time, and longitudinal designs, where information is collected from the same units on multiple occasions. Temporal data can be collected in cross-sectional designs, and it is mildly misleading to assume that longitudinal analyses can never be undertaken with cross-sectional data. (p. 1)
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研究方法多样复杂，远非一篇文章能够说得清楚。我们希望能以此文抛砖引玉，让更多小伙伴通过这些优质图书慢慢深入了解社会科学研究方法，早日从科研小白变成科研大佬~
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（本文内容来自原书，略有改动。首图来自Pixabay。）
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