Types of Research:

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Types of Research

• General categories

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The general types

• . Analytical
• Historical
• Philosophical
• Research synthesis (meta-analysis)
• . Descriptive
• . Experimental / Quasi-Experimental
• . Qualitative
• . Creative

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Why study history?

• Why conduct historical research?

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Historical

• Research that deals with events that have already
  occurred.
• An attempt to explain change and continuity in
  human experience.

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• Each book, article, piece is shaped by the
  historians assumptions beliefs, and cultural
  influences --his/her unstated paradigm.

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Has similarities to science

• Carefully derived questions
• thoroughly gather and translate evidence (data)
• Test inferences
• Work to disprove rather than prove findings

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Major difference to science

• Traditional science
• laws describe what some thing is.
• Relationship among components often expressed
  mathematically
• Theory builds upon the description, also
  proposes to explain a phenomenon
• If scientific theory is adequate it will be
  predictive
• it will account for future or further
  occurrences

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Historical view

• Humans as rational beings make and give meaning
  to social phenomena.
• Thoughts, actions, individual character of
  experience meaning are neither predetermined
  nor predictable.

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Theory in history

• Limited to accounting for meaning to both
  describe and explain particular events and
  processes.
• Generalizations are large synthetic statements
  that offer the historians sense of multiple
  pieces of evidence or data.

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• Uses paradigms
• A scientific model and the approaches used to
  test that model.
• also called
• perspective, tradition, approach.

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Needed areas of research

• Health, leisure, public recreation
• Education histories
• Use of drugs to enhance performance
• Women minorities
• Violence and the schools

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Needed areas continued

• Health interests programs
• European ethnic groups experiences both inside
  and outside education
• and so forth..

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How to start

• Topic of interest read secondary sources to know
  what historians do and do not know.
• Monographs
• Anthologies
• Journal articles
• films, newspapers, and so forth...

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2.

• Level 1 Read as much as possible on topic
• Level 2 Read to understand the broader society
  that affected the subject and conceptual
  frameworks and social theories that bear on any
  interpretations conclusions

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• Level 3 Read to uncover sources of evidence.
• In history generally listed as notes pages rather
  than in the text itself.

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Descriptive History

• Method of constructing a map of past experience
  that locates in time and place a person, trend,
  an event, or an organization by providing answers
  to particular questions.

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Different from

• Antiquarianism collecting of old things
• Chronicle listing of happenings in time.

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Analytical

• Focuses on how something occurred and why someone
  did something.

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Primary sources

• Archives
• oral histories
• government records, indexes
• first hand accounts

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Criticizing sources

• External criticism research process that
  established the authenticity of the source.
• Internal Criticism research process that
  establishes the credibility of a genuine artifact
  or document.