Article A14.2 Research is Like Building a House: Lessons From My Early Experience in Sociological Research Kimberly Murray Assistant Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University–Texarkana, United States kmurray[at]tamut.edu Suggested Citation: Murray, K. (2017). Research is like building a house: Lessons from my early experience in sociological research. Research World, 14, Article A14.2. Retrieved from http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/A14.2 1. Construction Analogy This article is an attempt to synthesise some lessons for research students, based on my research in the field of sociology. My Master’s research focused on Army wives in the United States to better understand their experiences during war and deployment. I developed this project while I was a graduate student, so I will also discuss my experience as a novice researcher. In this article, I use a home construction analogy to discuss the research process. I put forward the proposition that doing research is similar to being an administrator for your own construction project. While conducting research, I followed general guidelines presented in research methods textbooks. However, I encountered a few problems that I did not foresee. Here I show you the “behind the scenes” work that I did to make progress in my work. I intend for you to use this article to build on your understanding of research, beyond what is prescribed in textbooks. If you compare and contrast this article with my final product (i.e., Murray, 2017), you will see how different the research construction process is from the neat and tidy finished version. 2. Finding a Research Question When building a house, you start with a vision. Do you want two or three bedrooms? Do you see yourself in a one-story or two-story house? Would you like an office or a craft room? Only you can envision your ideal home. Once it is built, you will spend many years and a lot of money maintaining this property, so you better be sure that it will make you happy and meet your needs. The same is true with your research question. You will spend countless hours and incur substantial cost conducting research, so think hard about your interests. For me, I wanted to study the military. I was in middle school when the September 11 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center (i.e., the 9/11 disaster) occurred at New York City, and the United States went to war during my formative years. Many people from my hometown joined the military and had problems returning to civilian life, and their families and friends suffered as well. I wanted to better understand their experiences so that I could help them in some way. With that general vision in mind, I then reviewed the sociological literature pertaining to military life and the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. 3. Literature Review If you have zero knowledge of the construction process, or if you have a vague idea of the type of house you want to build but are not completely sure exactly what you want, then it is wise to look at floor plans and browse pictures of different makes and models of homes. Let us pretend that you are interested in a ranch-style home (i.e., a one-story house with an open and rambling layout). You may want to focus your research on this home to get a better idea of how to build your own in this style. Upon review, you have a better idea about how much the house will cost, how much space you want, and the curve appeal you desire. You may modify the ranch-style somewhat to add a unique style twist that suits you to make your house your own. The same is true with your literature review. For example, when I first started thinking about a research question, I knew I wanted to study the military community and how its members experienced war. I started to read articles published by other sociologists about war in general, but soon realised that there were many subfields pertaining to war. Some researchers compared wars throughout history and their impact on society, while others examined how race, class, or gender created different experiences for those in the military. The most recent articles examined effects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan on combat soldiers, specifically post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I quickly found myself interested in those articles because they pertained to the same war, yet they focused primarily on the soldier’s experiences and not their family members’ experiences. Then I had a lightbulb moment, or epiphany. I knew I wanted to focus on military wives and the impact war and deployment had upon them, especially wives who were also mothers. Not only did my research question address a gap in the literature, but it also suited my personal research interests. It connected to a larger body of theoretical knowledge and literature, yet it was also unique enough to add something new to the field. I made my research question my own. 4. Relationship With Mentor(s) You are one step closer to building your house. You decided on a style, yet you have no carpentry skills and have never built anything in your entire life. Would you go buy some wood, a hammer, and nails and start construction yourself? If you are wise, then the answer is “No.” The first step when building a house is to consult with someone who has prior knowledge about it. That person can help you identify your goals and put together an outline of the construction project. Take the same approach when starting your research project. Before you do anything, it is important to find someone with prior knowledge about how to conduct research, and more specifically, the type of research that you want to pursue. The relationship with your mentor might be one of the biggest determinants of how successful your study will be. The key to picking a good mentor is to understand your personality and your needs. For example, my mentor was known in our department to work well with graduate students. In terms of personality, she was warm and friendly and provided as much positive feedback as she did negative. I needed someone like her because I felt insecure as a novice and I tend to perform better with people who take genuine interest in my work and provide frequent, consistent feedback. She treated me with dignity and kindness, and I felt very comfortable asking her questions throughout the research process. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, she did the type of research I wanted to do (i.e., study of human experiences through interviews) with the same subculture that I wanted to study (i.e., the military). Working together was a win-win for the both of us, as we both could expand our knowledge on this subject. While building a house, a good contractor will save you time and money during construction, and a bad contractor can leave you bankrupt with nothing to show for your efforts. Similarly, beware of the wrong mentor. Such a mentor may have too many other commitments to fully engage with you, or he or she may not have a personality that is helpful to a novice researcher. For example, a few of my colleagues chose mentors who took weeks to reply to an e-mail and were dismissive about their research interests. Not only did many of them struggle with their projects, but they also felt undervalued and doubted themselves much more than I did. Even worse, some struggled with the student-mentor relationship because of conflicting personalities. How can you guarantee that you will select an ideal mentor? You can never be 100% right, but here are a few helpful tips. First, look at his or her curriculum vitae. Do you share research interests? Does this person publish frequently about this topic? After consulting with current and former graduate students, did you hear mostly positive reviews? Once you find an ideal mentor, you can move to the next phase of your project: choosing a method. 5. Choosing a Method There are different approaches to building a house. For example, you can place your house on a pier and beam support system, or you can place in on a concrete foundation. This largely depends on the environment in which you decide to build. If the earth is less stable or your home needs to withstand earthquakes, you may decide on a pier and beam foundation because a concrete foundation might crack easily in these conditions. Not only must the construction be structurally sound (which you have ensured with the help of a good contractor) so that you can safely live in the home and make it marketable for future sale, but it must also reflect your personal style so that you enjoy the construction process and feel connected to the home. The same is true when conducting research. Your method should help you answer your research question. For me, I knew there was not a lot of information in the field about the impact the current war had upon family members, particularly spouses, so I decided an exploratory, qualitative approach would work best with my research question. If there had been a large database with survey responses from military family members about their experiences with the current war, then I might have chosen a quantitative approach, as that would be more generalizable. However, that was not an option, and so I decided that the best way to understand military wives’ experiences was to simply ask them through interviews. I read about the interview method and discussed it with my mentor. We both decided that the method was a good fit for my research question. With my floorplan in place and major structural decisions made, I decided to take the next steps to construction. 5.1. Advantages of the Interview Method Whereas quantitative surveys may show you how a neighbourhood looks from an aerial viewpoint (i.e., number of houses, angles of the streets, number of cars that drive through per day, etc.), interviews allow you to see the wallpaper inside someone’s house. Interviews work wonderfully when your research question requires an in-depth understanding of a culture or subculture. The interview method allows interviewees to describe their lives from their own perspectives. The researcher uses an interview script but also has the freedom to ask unforeseen questions during the interview, and interviewees can go off-topic if they wish to do so. The interview, although formal, is as close to a casual conversation as you can get when it comes to research methods. I found that interviewees enjoyed the process of being asked questions and sharing their experiences. Interviews also give researches access to the nuances of speech (i.e., body language, pauses, rhetorical devices) that are unavailable with other types of research instruments, such as surveys. For example, if I asked a question that the interviewee felt uncomfortable talking about, she would stumble, pause, or have rhetorical incoherence while attempting to answer the question. These were clues into the thought-processes and emotional responses about their experiences with war and deployment. After the interviewing process finishes, the coding process allows the researcher to examine the interview transcripts and find themes and patterns within and across interviews. 5.2. Disadvantages of the Interview Method Conducting, transcribing, and coding interviews is time-consuming, especially if you do all the work yourself. This would be like building an entire house with your own two hands. This means that typically you can only interview a small amount of people due to situational constraints. Your results are also not generalizable. While analysing and writing about my interviews, I was tempted to discuss them as if they represented Army wives in general. My mentor and others who reviewed my work reminded me that I cannot assume that other Army wives or Army wives in general share the same experiences as the ones I interviewed. Finally, the researcher must be extremely diligent during the coding process to prevent bias from entering analyses. For example, I asked my mentor and other colleagues to also examine the patterns and themes I found in the interviews to make sure I was not trying to influence the findings subconsciously. 6. Gathering Resources Two other very important considerations when building a home are time and money. Your construction budget and timeframe largely determine how big of a house you can build and any additional finishing touches you desire. Similarly, you must take a realistic look at your research design and ask yourself if it is feasible given your resources. If you lack money, then you can apply for research grants or do fund-raising. Perhaps you can borrow equipment or rent it to reduce costs. Also, how much time can you dedicate to this project? Always anticipate that it will take longer than you assume. My department fortunately had the equipment needed to record and transcribe interviews (computer, phone, recorder that connected to the phone if the interviews were conducted via telephone, and a transcribing machine). I knew I had only a year to complete the research and present findings to my department, so I decided to interview between 10-12 participants. I would do all the interviews, transcriptions, and coding myself, so I did not need to pay for any of these services. I did have to schedule my time very carefully, however, to write my Master’s thesis. It took additional time to re-write my findings into a journal article format for publication. 7. Securing Ethics Approval When building a house, the city or state makes sure you are following proper building protocol. Building codes are in place to protect people from potential harm. Is it structurally sound? Is it safe? Will anyone be hurt if they live here? In case of my research, an Army wife may say something negative about the military institution. If top officials were to find out who she is, she could face adverse consequences. Interviewees are safer when I hide their identities to speak freely and honestly about their experiences. Think about your university’s ethics committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) as city officials evaluating your home. The IRB protects everyone involved in the research process. Before I started conducting research, I had to have the IRB approve my project. The IRB approved my project as I had a secure process to ensure confidentiality and anonymity of my research participants. Fortunately, in most universities in the United States, the IRB takes full control of this process, assisting researchers with policies and procedures that promote an ethical research process. Once approved, you may confidently move forward with your research. 8. Finding Participants & Gaining Trust A house contractor must hire workers to complete construction. The workers must feel confident that their pay, rights, and benefits associated with employment are secure. Similarly, to conduct interviews, you must recruit participants and make sure they understand the conditions of their involvement with the project. My mentor gave me a list of organisations she contacted to recruit veterans for her oral history project, so I contacted the same organisations and asked for volunteers. Once I found a few volunteers, I asked them to recommend others that might be interested. This is a snowball sample. When I talked to them, I gave them a general description of my project and let them review their consent form guaranteeing them confidentiality. Although I did not anticipate it, some felt intimidated and nervous about me interviewing them and recording their answers. This is where my interpersonal skills helped me to gain their trust. For example, instead of e-mailing them or merely giving them the consent form, I called them and described the project and fully explained their rights as human subjects in a research project. We decided on an alias before we started the interview so that their identities were never connected to their interviews. I made sure to be friendly and use a non-jargon-laden, conversational approach when speaking to them. I told them to feel free to ask any questions before, during, and after the interview. I also let them read my findings and have copies of their interviews and transcripts if they wished. 9. Interview Script Before starting the interview process, you must put together an interview script, which is a series of questions that together will help answer your research question. This is much like putting together an interior design scheme for a home. Having an idea about where you want to put your furniture and how to decorate your home will give you a better idea of how you will experience the home. Although I did not record their names or any other identifying data, I did ask them for demographic data, such as where they lived, their age, marital status, whether they had children, and their employment status. I started with very general questions, such as, “Can you tell me a little bit about your partner’s military service?” so that interviewees are comfortable with the process. I save the more possibly uncomfortable questions for later in the interview, such as, “Are there any other problems that you and your husband face?” At the end of the interview, I asked them if there was anything they would like to add so that I can modify the interview script if I think it will improve the quality and relevance of the data. For example, the interviewees may think I left out something in my script that is very important to understanding their experiences. During my interviews, I had not put in a question about infidelity in my interview script, but many interviewees discussed it, so I decided to pay closer attention to that theme. I concluded each interview by giving them my contact information so that they could call or e-mail me any time. 10. Coding Interview Data The coding process is much like trying to find a stud when hanging something on your stud wall (i.e., a wall created from a frame of timber covered with plasterboard). You knock on the wall and hear thuds that sound hollow and then thuds that sound firm. When you hear firm thuds up and down a section of the wall, you found the stud. Another worker can do the same thing and find the stud, too. Similarly, you must review the interview data and find patterns and themes that stand out to you. Ask your mentor or colleagues to review them too, and see what patterns and themes they find. If you agree on certain patterns and themes, then you can be more confident that your biases are not impacting your analysis. In other words, feel free to hammer the nail in the stud and know that your painting will hang securely from that nail. The literature review and content of the interviews will give you an idea about how to code interview data. While coding, I went quickly through each transcript and conducted line-by-line coding, where I jotted down notes next to each line on the transcript about the themes I saw. I then composed a list of themes and patterns that seemed related to the literature review and my research question. After deciding on the codes, I went back through interviews and synthesised my notes, comparing within and across interviews. I selected quotations from interviews that highlighted these codes and then used them while I wrote about my findings. Finally, I asked my mentor and other colleagues to review my work to avoid biased findings. 11. Anticipate Problems & Take Precautions Every now and then, construction does not go as planned. A window shatters or your paint colour does not look like it did in the store when it dries on the walls. Setbacks are common and you must be willing to adjust when necessary. First, anticipate problems. I conducted my interviews via telephone because participants lived all over the country. I did a test-run using my office telephone, the recorder that plug into the phone, and the tape recorder. I forgot to press record on my tape recorder during that test run, which means I would have lost my entire first interview had I not anticipated problems. Another time, the tape malfunctioned. Always have extra blank tapes available. During one interview, the interviewee spoke so low that I could not hear it to transcribe it, so I had to find another interviewee. All of that time was wasted due to a technical error. Because I recorded interviews from my office, I tried to schedule interviews during the evening so that most of the people in my department were gone by the time I started recording. While transcribing, I tried to find a quiet space so that I did not make errors. Just like a contractor makes sure to secure expensive tools at the end of every work day, so must you make sure to save your equipment in secure locations. Save your interview transcripts in multiple locations. If you save to a computer or jump drive, make sure you must enter a password to access those files. My office computer accidentally got wiped of all its files during my research, but thankfully I had backed up everything on a jump drive. Try to be as proactive as possible so that you do not panic when a setback occurs. 12. Practical Lessons Learned This year-long process taught me a lot about myself and others, but most importantly, about the research process. First, research is a non-linear process. The neat and tidy scientific method that you see on posters in classrooms is not the way people conduct research. Sure, they use it as a guide, but there are much more complex processes at play. Just like a construction site is loud, messy, and full of potential hazards, so is the research process. Second, only you can build your house. Often, I wanted my mentor to tell me what my research question should be or pick my research method for me, but only I could design and conduct the research. Although I had support and guidance, I had to do the work myself, which was intimidating. I battled imposter syndrome, which occurs when someone does not feel worthy enough or smart enough to be the researcher. I defeated the syndrome by dedicating time and energy to reviewing the literature in my field, consulting with my mentor and other colleagues about my process, and creating a detailed research design and a series of to-do lists that addressed my biggest concerns, which were finishing the project on time, eliminating biases, and connecting my work to the literature. I kept these lists on my office desk and gave myself mini-deadlines so that I stayed on task and had little time to worry about my insecurities as a novice researcher. Finally, I wish I would have thought about the publication process much earlier in the research project. Had I written my findings in a journal-article format rather than a long Master’s thesis, I would have been more prepared to publish my findings. Instead, I had to remodel the project so that it would be marketable to scholarly journals. 13. Conclusions Despite all the floorplans you review, the actual construction process is full of surprises. However, it is very satisfying to see the finished product. All the hard work and hours poured into your research project will manifest in the form of a successful thesis or dissertation defence or a publication if you create the right research design and follow through with it. Finally, here is a word of caution for student researchers. Construction is not the only possible analogy for research. Several analogies are used to foreground particular aspects of research. A previous article in this journal likens research to undertaking a journey, building a structure, performing a drama, participating in a shared space, and engaging in struggle (Dash & Kuruvilla, 2007, Section 2, “Day-1: Orientation to Learning and Research”). Yet another article in this journal is devoted to viewing research as “sailing on a sea” (Agrawal, 2009). Despite the value of the construction analogy, we should be mindful of the limitations of analogical reasoning in general. Each analogy illuminates some aspects of research, but overlooks other aspects. While the construction analogy clarifies the sequence of actions typically undertaken in a research project, it becomes a bit stretched when we recognise that the research thesis or publication is, after all, not a house, but a piece of scholarly text written for a particular set of readers. References Agrawal, A. (2009). Research is like sailing on a sea. Research World, 6, Article A6.2. Retrieved from http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/A6.2 Dash, D. P., & Kuruvilla, C. D. (2007). Doctoral Summer School 2007: Fundamentals of management research. Research World, 4, Article A4.2. Retrieved from http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/A4.2 Murray, K. (2017). Intensive mothering on the homefront: An analysis of army mothers. Sociological Spectrum, 31(1), 1-17. doi:10.1080/02732173.2016.1227284
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