last altered 10/26/01, under revision

Homepage for IRLS606 Research Methods II

Martin Frické

Material may be added or changed on a continuing basis. One file that will remain untouched throughout is that containing the course requirements.

What is research?
 

Research is the process of offering conjectures to solve problems, and of the testing, and sometimes refuting, of those conjectures. It is a process of theory building and hypothesis testing-- the sifting and winnowing of ideas that leads to new knowledge, and new interpretations of old knowledge. It is a search for truth. And what it achieves are views that might reasonably be believed to be the truth, in the light of the evidence and the critical dialog.

This course
 

The School has the IRLS506 Research Methods course which is both an introduction to all types and styles of research and an exposition of the basic ideas of experimental and quasi-experimental design and of reasoning from the results obtained.

IRLS606 is a more advanced course. It will focus on the conceptual foundations of reasoning in research. It will have little or no hands on statistical mathematics or calculations (the presumption is that the student, when doing actual research, will use either software or skills acquired from elsewhere for these). But the course will have analyses of the reasoning and motivation that makes the selection of the various pieces of mathematics appropriate. The course will look in depth at the design of experimental, quasi-experimental, and similar, research.

The course will be at an academic level suitable both for Masters students who have completed IRLS506 and for Ph.D. students who are intending to do research which uses empirical data.

The course will consists of one two and a half hour lecture/seminar a week. For Spring 2002, the time for this is ????

Some important links

 

We will use Web support for the course. A student who registers will be give an account with a User name and a password. They will then be able to access fuller versions of the following links (complete will full navigation facilities).

The present links point to briefer versions, to give intending students some idea of what is on offer.

School links

For more information, contact Martin Frické .