Russel-Research-Method-in-Anthropology

3
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Preparing for Research
Setting Things Up
This chapter and the next are about some of the things that go on before
data are collected and analyzed. I’ll take you through the ideal research
process and compare that to how research really gets done. Then I’ll discuss
the problem of choosing problems—how do I know what to study? In the next
chapter, I’ll give you some pointers on how to scour the literature so you can
benefit from the work of others when you start a research project.
I’ll have a lot more to say about the ethics of social research in this chapter—choosing
a research problem involves decisions that can have serious ethical
consequences—and a lot more about theory, too. Method and theory, it
turns out, are closely related.
The Ideal Research Process
Despite all the myths about how research is done, it’s actually a messy process
that’s cleaned up in the reporting of results. Figure 3.1 shows how the
research process is supposed to work in the ideal world:
Problem
Method
Data
Collection
& Analysis
Support or
Reject Hypothesis
or Theory
Figure 3.1. How research is supposed to work.
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