Course Description: The course offers an introduction to quantitative and qualitative research approaches used in communication and media studies.
Course Contents: Methods of science; Research definitions and characteristics; Communication/ media research purposes and areas: source, message, channel, receiver and effect; overview of milestones in communication research; Classification of research: pure and applied research, qualitative and quantitative research. Research process: writing research proposals; citation/ bibliography styles; literature review; formulating a research problem, stating objectives and hypothesis; types of variables; data types; data measurement levels — nominal/ categorical, ordinal, interval, ratio; Constructing data collection tools: questionnaire and interview schedules; Validity and reliability; Data collection methods. Research designs: Surveys; Sample; Probability and non-probability sampling methods; Sampling error. Qualitative research methods — case studies, ethnography, discourse analysis; Content analysis: content categorisation, coding, inter-coder reliability, data analysis. Quantitative data analysis: Frequency distribution of data; Descriptive statistics — measures of central tendencies and measures of dispersions/ variability; Normal curve; Tests of significance — Chi square, t ratio; Spearman and Pearson correlation tests; Graphic representation of data. Introduction to SPSS.