Hey there! Here’s my video on my research design as we hit the halfway point on this research project! Hope you enjoy.
–Nathan
Hey there! Here’s my video on my research design as we hit the halfway point on this research project! Hope you enjoy.
–Nathan
I really like the idea of your project, I think any research that addresses things that have highly tangible implications for quality of life is incredibly valuable. I agree that Large-N is the way to go for your project, but I am a little confused by the fact that you said you would be selecting four metro systems using Mill’s Method of Difference. Were you saying that you would choose those four systems just for the part of your project that you envision to be more Small-N? If not, then I am wondering what your cases will be for your Large-N analysis. Are you going to just do every system there is? Are you going to have a regional focus? Is there data for all of your variables for all of the systems you might want to cover? Additionally, and this may be more my opinion, but I would caution you against trying to do a hybrid model of Large and Small-N. It just seems like it might get too complicated, and be hard to do and explain well in a single semester, especially given the fact that, presumably, this will be your first time doing either method. It might be doable, and it might offer a unique insight that would be lost if you just picked one method, but I think a hybrid model would bring a lot more challenges for you.
For when you look into how the GDP of a nation affects the operational hours of a metro system, how are you going to take into account countries like the United States which have many different metro systems but only one national GDP? Would you then look at the operational hours of each metro system in relation to the GDP of its respective state or city?
Also, I’m not entirely sure that I would segment your project into two distinct parts, the analysis of all the numbers and then the interviews. I think it might be more helpful to do them both simultaneously, so that you can use what you are learning from the interviews to potentially include more variables to investigate doing your large-n analysis.
I know that you didn’t delve into a lot of the variables which you will be analyzing simply because of the time constraints of this presentation, but do you know yet what your control variables will be in this research?
Overall, I’m excited to see you progress through this research and continue to be super enthusiastic about metro systems!
Nathan,
Your topic seemed very interesting at the start of the semester, and only seems to get more interesting as we hear more about it. I think you did a great job of explaining your approaches to how you will examine your sources and operationalize your variables, but I think it would have been helpful to hear more in relation to your hypotheses and control variables for this project. Specifically in regards to your hypotheses, I would suggest keeping in mind the key criteria of validity, reliability, and falsifiability as you move forward with your FNP and research. This will allow for others to see a successful implementation of the course readings and the design concepts into your own work.
Otherwise, this still seems like a super interesting topic and it looks like you’ll be off to a running start!
Nathan — you have a very good start to your project here. I do think that grounding the *puzzle* of variation in metro hours in a theoretical conversation a bit more would be good. There might not be a lot of literature specifically on the variation in operating hours, but you could and should zoom out a bit and think about the larger phenomenon or phenomena at work here and why the fact that different metro systems have different operating hours is, in fact, a compelling and burning puzzle. What is happening, in general, that we wouldn’t expect given existing theory/research (or what *isn’t* happening that we would expect)? You have a number of other excellent suggestions from your peers here, and I would certainly make sure to follow up on them — especially in terms of defining and operationalizing key variables — as you work on your Final Narrative Paper and continue with your research into SISU-306.