GEOG 696 Guide to Reading Articles for Methodology

Seminar in Geographical Research Methods

Spring 2010

Reading a research article for methodological and technical content.

In GEOG 596, you learned to do close critical reading of review articles and chapters and pieces presenting original research. The goal was to understand the intellectual history of geography and the very different approaches by which the different "schools" of geography frame their research: What is an important question, how is it justified, which epistemologies help you "know" whether you are meaningfully contributing to (that part of) the discipline, as well as methodologies commonly used to tackle the problem at hand. This class will entail equally close critical reading, but the goal is different. Here, we will not be reading so much for content as we will for the "nuts and bolts" of how someone actually carrying out a particular research project. Our readings will be mostly of original research articles presented in refereed journals in geography or cognate fields. I would like to give you a list of things to take notes on and pay close attention to as you go through an article.

What is the purpose of the paper? Try to identify the one sentence in the paper that gives you its purpose. Sometimes they're obvious: "The purpose of this paper is ..." or "This paper proposes to do the following ..." or "Our aim here is ..." but sometimes it's not written quite that obviously.

Why does the author or authors feel the research is important to do? This is normally justified by reference to existing work in the area, which may or may not be set off as a formal literature review section. What you're looking for in that discussion of past and present work is the "lacuna" or gap that the author(s) argue exists and needs to be addressed, which, of course, becomes the purpose of the paper. This is a hard skill to acquire, seeing what is conceptually missing in the readings you do to "master" a subfield enough that you can contribute to it. It really helps if you start paying attention to how other people represent that missing something so that you can model your own thesis on how they do it. Detecting that conceptual gap in the existing scholarly conversation and then devising an effective methodology to fill it is the heart of "originality."

Identify the hypotheses or, alternatively, research questions specified in the paper. These are the objectives that must be met to satisfy the goal or purpose of the paper. Testing these hypotheses or answering these questions should be both necessary and sufficient to achieve the purpose. Hypotheses are particularly common in more scientific approaches, where there is an existing body of theory. You generate hypotheses, which are typically if-then statements: "If this theory is correct, then the data should show ..." They are, very importantly, potentially falsifiable statements. Research questions are more common in qualitative fields in geography and other disciplines and in many scientific subfields that are still in the inductive and descriptive phase. They are more open-ended and flexible than hypotheses and work through a process of argumentation from evidence.

Identify the data used for the research, whether quantitative or qualitative. Are these primary data collected by the author(s)? Are they high quality secondary data, e.g., Census data or an IKONOS image or other published data set? Do you think the data used are the best available to meet the objectives or the overall purpose? Does the author acknowledge shortcomings in the data and, if so, show how they worked around the shortcomings?

Identify the methods used to collect the data, which might be field or lab work, image acquisition and preprocessing, visiting an archive, conducting focus groups or interviews, doing participant observation, collecting texts, taking photographs, and many other methods. Does the author acknowledge shortcomings in the data collection process and, if so, show how they worked around the shortcomings?

Identify the methods used to process the data into meaningful information, the actual analysis or synthesis at the heart of the project. These may include statistical analyses and decision-making, quantitative or qualitative literature content analysis, deconstruction, self-reflexivity, conducting experiments, close reading of historical materials, and many other methods. Does the author acknowledge shortcomings in the analytic methods chosen and, if so, show how they worked around the shortcomings?

Identify the structure of the article. What always comes first? How many major sections are there? How are they arranged? If this paper came from a dissertation or thesis, can you infer the probable chapter structure?

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First placed on web: 01/25/10
Last revision: 01/25/10