Quantitative Research Methods in Communication

The Power of Numbers for Social Justice

Erica Scharrer, Srividya Ramasubramanian

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000380217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This textbook is an advanced introduction to quantitative methods for students in communication and allied social science disciplines that focuses on why and how to conduct research that contributes to social justice.

Today's researchers are inspired by the potential for scholarship to make a difference for society, to push toward more just and equitable ends, and to engage in dialogue with members of the public so that they can make decisions about how to navigate the social, cultural, and political world equipped with accurate, fair, and up-to-date knowledge. This book illustrates the mechanics and the meaning behind quantitative research methods by illustrating each step in the research design process with research addressing questions of social justice. It provides practical guidance for researchers who wish to engage in the transformation of structures, practices, and understandings in society through community and civic engagement and policy formation. It contains step-by-step guidance in quantitative methods—from conceptualization through all the stages of execution of a study, including providing a detailed guide for statistical analysis—and demonstrates how researchers can engage with social justice issues in systematic, rigorous, ethical, and meaningful ways.

This text serves as a core or supplementary textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in research methods for communication and social sciences and fills a gap for a methods text that is responsive to the desire of scholars to conduct socially impactful research.

1 Foundations and Definitions

All around us, there are serious social issues facing our global community. Injustices and inequalities span a whole spectrum of topics from everyday sexism, food insecurity, homelessness, and forced migration to bonded labor. For instance, about 40.3 million people are owned by an employer who treats them as property to be sold or bought through human trafficking (Walk Free Foundation, 2018). Over 79.5 million people have been forced to leave their homes due to conflict and persecution, and over 40% of these people are children (United Nations Refugee Agency, 2020). One in nine people around the world do not have enough food to lead an active and healthy life (Food Aid Foundation, 2019). In the United States, working women make only 81 cents to the dollar compared to men (United States Census Bureau, 2020), and systemic and institutionalized racism continues to produce conditions in which prisons are overpopulated with men of color (The Sentencing Project, 2019). Only 23.7% of U.S. congressional seats are held by women, and women make up just 29% of holders of statewide elected executive offices (Center for American Women and Politics, 2020).

Each of these startling figures that we have shared is brought to light due to quantitative research, a way to produce knowledge that uses scientific methods to observe particular phenomena. Yet, alongside the distressing numerical estimates described here, community members have also used their assets and resources to resist, challenge, and resolve social injustices and inequalities in powerful ways. The high school student survivors of the Parkland school shootings in Florida have used their voices powerfully and raised over three million dollars to challenge the role of the National Rifle Association in U.S. politics. The Women’s March in 2017, as the largest single-day protest in recorded history, was a worldwide movement to bring attention to human rights and women’s health, education, racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, employment, wages, and other gender-based discrimination. LGBTQ+ activists have fought inside and outside courtrooms to battle homophobia, and same-sex marriages are now legalized in many countries around the world. The Black Lives Matter movement has succeeded in challenging the discourse surrounding police violence against people of color and has brought the language of systemic racism and anti-Black racism into the mainstream. Many institutions and organizations took steps toward anti-racism commitments and actions in the aftermath of the gruesome murder of George Floyd in the U.S. in 2020, an event that led to a global uprising. Quantitative research has documented each of these phenomena, as well.

We raise these opening points to make three observations. First, statistics can be powerful tools to use to bring sobering inequalities and injustices to light. Second, statistics and the quantitative research that produces them can mark and measure progress made toward equality and justice, as well. Third, however, as powerful as numbers such as these may be to document injustice and inequality and study steps toward change, statistics can also be considered only a partial truth. There is always more to the story than statistics can convey.

In quantitative research, numbers have a key role to play, as statistics are used to describe and explain what researchers have observed. Numbers can indeed be powerful, since they can be used to convey a broad set of truths experienced by many, as you can see in the figures and estimates we have shared. Numbers can shape public opinion, organizational decision-making, community priorities, and public policies. Of course, numbers can be fabricated, decontextualized, and misinterpreted, too. Therefore, having the ability to interpret, discern, design, and apply quantitative research is an important skill to learn as Communication scholars and practitioners.

Enter the researcher into the scene. As scholars and researchers, what is our role in addressing issues of social justice? How can we make this world a better place to live in through our scholarship and research? We believe it is important for researchers to use scientific knowledge to address important social problems at the local, national, and global levels. Developing a social justice mindset, applying it to research design, and using research results to intervene in forces and factors that create and maintain injustices is vital. Indeed, stories shared about anti-Black racism via #CommunicationSoWhite and also the #BlackintheIvory campaign started by two Communication scholars, Shardé M. Davis and Joy Melody Woods, reveal the racial injustices and White supremacy, among many other inequalities, that need to be dismantled even within academia. Rather than being out of touch with the realities of people’s lives, the “power of numbers” approach ensures that researchers and the knowledge they produce are a resource for the betterment of marginalized groups, especially when stakes are high, whether inside or outside of university settings.

Purpose of Social Science Research

Research methods are techniques and approaches used to produce knowledge. Knowledge, for its part, can be created in a number of ways, each with its own underlying assumptions, values, and internal logic. There are many types of research, but this book will focus on social science research methods. Social science research methods focus on producing knowledge that helps us understand the social world around us.

Whereas basic research is mainly motivated by researchers’ curiosity and interest in producing and theorizing knowledge, applied research seeks to solve real-world practical problems. Basic research often assumes a traditional scientific model where the focus is on scientific discovery and curiosity. Applied research focuses on how new knowledge is connected to the outside world in ways that are useful to the community. However, the relationship between basic and applied research is often quite close, with each side potentially informing the other. Not all applied research, though, can be called social justice research, unless the research is explicitly applied toward identifying and/or reducing social inequalities. As you will see later in this chapter, social justice research is focused expressly on challenging imbalances in power, position, and privilege and the conditions that produce or maintain those imbalances.

When it comes to doing research for social justice, simply creating knowledge is not always sufficient. What do we do with what we know? Researchers working toward social justice also want research to inspire, facilitate, or inform action that could bring about positive changes. They can do so using research that is exploratory, descriptive, evaluatory, explanatory, or transformative in nature. Sometimes within the same project, there can be multiple goals and purposes at different stages of the research process.

• Exploration: Social research can help explore new or fairly under-studied phenomena and social issues. Reviews of research findings and personal insights can reveal existing gaps in social justice research that need to be filled.

  

  Figure 1.1 The idea expressed in this cartoon—that academics only study the world rather than try to save it—is an increasingly outdated notion

  Source: Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig

• Description: Social research can help provide detailed descriptions and systematic observations relating to social events, practices, groups, situations, beliefs, and behaviors. For instance, content analysis, a method you will read about in Chapter 7 of this book, can help to describe patterns within media content that exclude or misrepresent social groups.
• Evaluation: Social research can help assess the effectiveness of a program or initiative or policy. Within social justice research, especially in community-based interventions or organizational communication, this is an important purpose for doing social scientific research.
• Explanation: Social research can help explain why social phenomena occur. For instance, research methods like surveys and experiments—which you will also read about in chapters 5 and 6—help determine whether one point of view, experience, or phenomenon is related to another. If it is, we can say that knowing one helps explain the other.
• Transformation: Social research can be used for transformation and positive change through social action and activism to impact communities, organizations, and policies. Chapter 12 will give more detail about this.

Approaches to Social Science Research

There are many approaches to social research: (1) quantitative research, (2) qualitative research, (3) mixed methods research, and (4) community-based research. The two main types of approaches to social science research methods are quantitative and qualitative research (Figure 1.2). Mixed methods research combines qualitative and quantitative research. Community-based research involves the community as the primary setting and focus of research. There is considerable overlap among these various types of social research methods. Also, these are broad umbrella terms that encompass many specific types of methods.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research, the subject of this book, offers one set of tools and techniques to gather data and contribute to what we know as well as what we do with what we know. It focuses on measuring variables, testing hypotheses, and explaining relationships. This approach emphasizes numerical data, categorization of data, the principle of objectivity, deductive reasoning, representativeness, and generalizability of findings, all of which are explained further in this chapter and/or throughout this book. Some examples of quantitative research methods are content analysis, lab-based experiments, field experiments, and survey methods, and each of these methods will be discussed in detail in this book as well. In the process of carrying out research with an eye toward social justice, quantitative methods pose both real challenges as well as quite fruitful opportunities. Quantitative methods have a number of distinguishing characteristics that set them apart from other ways of knowing, as you will see later in this chapter.

Figure 1.2 Quantitative vs. qualitative research

Source: Emily Riewestahl

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research focuses on subjective experiences and meaning-making to understand and describe social phenomena. It generally uses an inductive approach to research where the ideas about what will be discovered or observed as well as the design are flexible and not fixed ahead of time (with “ahead of time” often being noted as a priori). The emphasis of qualitative research is on in-depth knowledge, “thick” or rich descriptions, and sense-making of the complex social world around us. This research approach includes methods such as textual analysis, ethnography, focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, case studies, and arts-based research methods. More details about qualitative research methods are covered in Chapter 10, the chapter on mixed methods.

Mixed Methods Research

Mixed methods research combines quantitative and qualitative methods into a single project. Quantitative and qualitative methods could be used sequentially at different stages of the project or can be integrated simultaneously at the same stage of the project. Mixed methods approaches are commonly used in social justice research to explore, understand, evaluate, and bring about collective action and social change. We will return to mixed methods research in Chapter 10.

Figure 1.3 Quantitative research identifies numerical patterns across many cases

Source: Matt Lavoie

Community-Based Research

Community-based research uses the community as the place or setting for knowledge creation rather than in a university, corporation, or government agency. It can incorporate quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches. Community-based research typically involves researchers forming community partnerships and collaborations. The community is ...