SRM-P10

SRM-P10
(PGDM 2010-12 : Term-II)

SOCIAL RESEARCH METHODS
(Faculty: Dr. P. Mishra)

COURSE OUTLINE

I Course Objective:

The course provides an opportunity for the participants to expose themselves to various theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of Social Science Research. A course like this draws its content from several disciplines. It helps the participants to expose themselves to various characteristics of social sciences. It helps them in understanding social research methods by exposing themselves to various concepts, tools and techniques of social research. Moreover it helps in developing skills amongst the participants to identify research topics, formulating research design, using suitable tools and techniques in social research. The course tries to develop skill to conduct independent research and tries to enable the participants to appreciate articles published in journals.

II Course Content

The course is visualized in three parts.

The first part relates to ‘conceptualization’ with emphasis on some theoretical concepts like science and scientific approach to research, unique features of social science, types of research, measurement of variables etc. The students are required to relate these theoretical aspects to the second part, which is known as operationalisation.

The second part of the course deals with instrument designing, use of various statistical tools and techniques used in social science research. Emphasis will be given to the application, interpretation of the findings of the statistical tools and their rationale.

The third part constitutes a field study (group work) and writing a research report in which various tools will be used for data analysis. The participants, in a group, are required to identify a research topic relating to the society/economy and conduct a study on the selected topic. The group will collect secondary and primary data and use several tools to analyses those. They will take the help of the course instructor for identifying a research topic and formulating a questionnaire for primary data collection. The groups will present the report in the assigned class for discussion. After the presentation and feed back, a final report will be submitted by the groups towards the end of the term. (The groups will be formed by the instructor)

The following are the topics that are intended to be covered in this course and the sessions allotted for each topic:

Topics to be covered Sessions

I. Conceptualization
· Scientific approach to Research and social scientific enquiry 2
· Types of Research, concept, construct and variables 1
· Scale of measurement-Some basic concepts, Reliability& Validity 1

II. Operationalisation I Sessions

i) Research Problem, Hypothesis & Research Design 01

ii) Sampling Techniques and their uses 01

iii) Questionnaire Construction and operationalisation of variables 01

Operationalisation – II Sessions

Tools for Data Analysis,presentation & discussion

i) Tabulation & diagrammatic representation of data 01

ii) Explanation, uses and applications of univariate and

bivariate tools ( includes two variable regression)

iii) Explanation and uses of multivariate tools. (The dependence

and interdependence methods)

(There are a large number of multivariate statistical tools available for

data analysis, but a few are included in this course since it is practically

not possible to use many).

The following multivariate tools will be explained and uses & application

will be discussed.

Multiple Regression, Exploratory Factor Analysis (Data reduction Method)

and Cluster Analysis (Classificatory method).

The data collected from the field by the groups will be used in the above statistical tools.

The students will be using of Excel and SPSS for processing and analyzing the data.

III. The groups will prepare a research report on their topic incorporating

the data analysis and conclusions, present it in the class for discussion

and submit a final report at the end of the term.

Reference

There are a number of books on Social Research Methods. However, two books viz. Foundations of Behavioural Research by F.N. Kerlinger and The Practice of Social Research by E.R.Babbie are quite handy for the first part of the course i.e. Conceptualisation.

For the second and third part any good book on Social Research Methods and/or statistics will be helpful. Students are advised to refer Basic Econometrics by D.N.Gujarati or Introduction to Econometrics by Christopher Dougherty for regression analysis.

For the multivariate analysis Business Research Methods by Cooper and Schindler and/or Multivariate Data Analysis by Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson & Tatham may be referred to.

References will be given during the sessions. Materials collected from several sources relating to different topics and relevant references will also be given during the sessions to help the participants in understanding the basics of the concepts & tools to be used. The following books (some of them mentioned to earlier) may be referred to by the participants for the present course.

1. Foundations of Behavioral Research by F.N. Kerlinger
2. The Practice of Social Research by E.R.Babbie
3. Business Research Methods by Cooper and Schindler
4. Social Research Methods by C.R.Kothari
5. Basic Econometrics by D.N.Gujarati
6. Introduction to Econometrics by Christopher Dougherty
7. Business Statistics by Ken Black
8. Scientific Social Surveys and Research by P.V.Young
9. Applying Regressiion and Correlation By J Miles & M Shevlin
10. Multivariate Data Analysis by Hair et al.

Evaluation

a) Mid Term Test 25 %
b) Presentations of exercises 15 %
c) Final Report & Presentation 20 %
d) End Term Test 40 %

Attendance in the class & discussions with participants will be correction features.

Good Luck!

Created By: Bijoy Kar on 09/09/2010 at 07:09 PM
Category: PGP-I Doctype: Document

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