Research or not?

Introduction to Social Research Methodology

Author

Affiliation

Ben Stanley

Department of Social Sciences, SWPS University

Aim

This exercise tests the single most important idea from today’s session: what makes an investigation systematic — and therefore research — rather than ordinary observation, opinion, or routine management activity. You will also practise spotting which kind of research a study is: qualitative or quantitative, descriptive or experimental.

Task 1: research or not? (15 minutes, pairs)

For each scenario below, decide with your partner whether it counts as social research. If it does not, say precisely what is missing — explicit procedure, transparency, repeatability, theory, or evidence. If it does, say what makes it systematic. One sentence of justification per scenario is enough, but it must name a criterion, not just a feeling.

1. A regional manager visits three of her stores unannounced, chats to whoever happens to be on shift, and concludes that morale is “basically fine”.
2. An HR department sends the same anonymous 20-item engagement questionnaire to all 450 employees every March, documents the procedure, and compares results year on year.
3. A CEO reads two articles about remote work in the business press and circulates a memo stating that hybrid working damages company culture.
4. A student spends four weeks working alongside warehouse staff, keeping a structured daily log of interactions using a predefined observation protocol, to understand how safety rules are followed in practice.
5. An e-commerce team shows version A of a checkout page to a random half of visitors and version B to the other half, and records which group completes more purchases.
6. A consultancy publishes a report claiming “78% of employees want a four-day week”, based on a poll of its own newsletter subscribers who chose to click through.
7. A financial controller compiles the quarterly staff-turnover figures for the board, exactly as the reporting template requires.
8. A team leader asks each of his eight team members the same five open questions about last year’s reorganisation, records the answers with permission, and codes them for recurring themes.

Task 2: what kind of research? (10 minutes, pairs)

Return to the scenarios you classified as research. For each one, place it on the two axes from today’s session:

• Qualitative or quantitative — what kind of data and reasoning does it use?
• Descriptive or experimental — does the researcher only observe, or deliberately intervene?

Be ready to defend your placement. At least one scenario does not fit neatly on the first axis — identify it and explain why.

Task 3: plenary discussion (15 minutes)

We will compare answers as a group. As we do, keep two questions in view:

• Several scenarios involve gathering information systematically for a routine purpose. Where exactly is the line between good record-keeping and research?
• Scenario 6 involves real data and real numbers. Why is it still bad research — and what, from today’s session, would it take to fix it?

Before you leave

Write down, in one sentence each: (a) one decision made in your current or most recent workplace (or at this university) that you suspect was based on intuition rather than evidence; (b) the research question that would test whether the intuition was right. Keep this — we will use it when we construct research questions in session 2.