Reference no: EM132436711 , Length: word count:2500
POLI10301 Making Sense of Politics Assignment - The University of Manchester, UK
Report - A MIXED-METHODS ANALYSIS
Objectives and tasks - Your goal is to write a research report including a mixed-methods analysis performed to address a research question.
You will perform a quantitative analysis of secondary data using a representative survey and a qualitative analysis of original interview data. You will include a table or a figure to present the results of your quantitative analysis (more details below).
Your report should include the following sections:
- A cover page containing an informative title, a short abstract and the word count: In your abstract you will describe briefly (150 words maximum) the aims of your research and the main findings. Include an accurate word count. The cover page (i.e. title and abstract) counts towards the final word count.
- An 'Introduction': In your Introduction you will present your research question(s) and suggest at least one hypothesis. Explain why the topic is relevant. Justify your hypotheses. Use references from the literature to acknowledge the source of ideas or information obtained from another source or author. Three to five references are sufficient for this report!
- A 'Data and Methods' section: You will describe your data, variables and recodings. You will describe and justify the profile of the person chosen for your interview (more details below). You should also discuss how you obtained consent from the interviewee and whether the interview was recorded. Justify your choices and discuss any limitations.
- A 'Results' section: You will present the results from a piece of mixed-methods analysis that combines findings from a cross-tabulation analysis using survey data and a qualitative semi-structured interview.
- A 'Conclusion' section: In the final section you can interpret the findings in light of your expectations and add any other critical comments you consider appropriate. You can also suggest ways in which your piece of research could be improved in future analyses.
- A list of 'References' for any cited material. This bibliography does NOT count towards the word count.
- An 'Appendix' where you will include the Topic Guide developed to conduct the interview.
Throughout the report: standard rules for footnotes and bibliography apply. You can use the Harvard or the Chicago referencing style.
Research Question(s) and Hypothesis(es): Your report will address a research question of your choice. You are free to suggest a research question around a topic of your choice as long as it respects the following criteria:
- Your research question will ask about a specific political behaviour, opinion or attitude. This will be your object of study and it will become the dependent variable in your analysis.
- Your research question will be addressed at analysing two variables (bivariate analysis). The independent variable will be either gender or age. You will explore differences between men and women OR differences between age groups.
- Your unit of analysis will be individual.
- Your research question will be explored using one of the surveys you have been analysing in this module (more details about data and variables below).
- Your research question will also be addressed conducting a qualitative in-depth interview and applying a mixed-methods design.
- You will NOT suggest a research question that has already been explored as an example in lectures, tutorials or Report 1. You are encouraged to use these examples to guide your own choices but in this report you are expected to explore a NEW question.
You should provide at least one hypothesis, but you are not limited to just one hypothesis. You can choose to have a main research question and a sub-question and/or a main hypothesis and a sub-hypothesis.
Remember to justify your choices. The introduction is the section where you discuss your research question(s) and hypothesis(es).
Attachment:- Making Sense of Politics Assignment File.rar