Research Methods for Information Research

David Streatfield of IMA offers some thoughts on research methods and related issues, focused mainly on work done with information services and libraries.

(These thoughts are based on his regular column published in Information Research Watch International.) They are grouped into eight main sections:

  1. Why look at research methods?
  2. Asking questions (and getting research answers)
    1. Research interviews: forms of interview
    2. Research interviews: the five main skills
    3. Research interviews: designing an interview schedule
    4. Research interviews: testing the interview schedule
    5. Research interviews: conducting the interview
    6. Research interviews: breadth versus depth
    7. Questionnaires: designing research questionnaires
    8. Questionnaires: making questions interesting
    9. Questionnaires: why they don’t work
  3. Some ways of asking questions (and getting research answers)
  1. Some types of interview:
    1. The focus group: getting the right people
    2. The focus group: getting the right structure
    3. The focus group: some activities
    4. The telephone interview
    5. The telephone interview: some ground rules
    6. The telephone interview: constraints
    7. Critical incident interviews
    8. Forecasting with questionnaires
    9. e-questionnaires
  1. Observation (Systematic observation as a research method)
    1. Peer observation
    2. Accompanied visits
    3. Work shadowing
    4. Structured observation
  2. Drawing inferences
    1. Analysing bibliographies
  3. Practitioners as researchers
    1. The manager as researcher
    2. Capturing the process
    3. Children as researchers
  4. Beyond research methods
    1. Active research dissemination
    2. Interpreting research findings
    3. Listening to the research evidence
    4. Citing earlier research literature
    5. Systematic literature reviews
    6. Towards evidence-based library and information work?
    7. Evidence-based working or methodological fundamentalism?
    8. Finding out about research methods
    9. Using concept maps in research
  5. Some methodological matters
    1. Grounded theory
    2. Illuminative evaluation
    3. Socially constructed research methods
    4. Beyond the research interview