IS4800 Empirical Research Methods for Information Science

Fall 2009, Prof. Carole Hafner
Contact Info: hafner@ccs.neu.edu   tel. 617-373-5116
Office Hours: Tues, Fri 5:30 -6:30, Thurs. 12:30-2:00

Introduction

Weekly schedule of topics and required readings

Course administration and rules

Class notes and other materials

I. Introduction

This course provides an introduction to methods for conducting empirical research within the field of Information Science. These methods help provide objective answers to questions about the usability, effectiveness, and acceptability of systems and their impact on individuals, work groups, organizations and society.

The first half of the course covers the basics of the scientific method, building bottom-up from a survey of objective measures to the fundamentals of hypothesis testing using relatively simple research designs. The second half of the course alternates between team projects encompassing the design, conduct and presentation of small empirical studies and lectures covering more advanced research designs and methods.

Prerequisites: IS 2000, Statistics, and either IS 3500 or IS 4300

Textbooks: Bordens & Abbott, Research Design and Methods, 7 th ed, 2007, McGraw Hill (BA)
                    Aron, Aron & Coups, Statistics for Psychology, 5 th ed, 2009, Prentice Hall. (Aron)
Additional readings will be provided online. We will be using SPSS 16.0 for data analysis.

Note: Some of the materials (lectures and assignments) for this course have been borrowed or adapted from the same course taught in Spring 2008 by Prof. Tim Bickmore.

II. Weekly Schedule of Topics and Assigned Readings

WEEK TOPICS                                                                                
Reading Assignment
1
9/11

2
9/15&9/18

3
9/22&9/25 


4
9/29&10/2


5
10/6&10/9

6
10/13&10/16

7
10/20
10/23

8
10/27
10/30

9
11/3&11/6

10
11/10 & 11/13

11
11/17 & 11/20


12
11/24

13
12/1
12/4
 Introduction and course overview;


The  scientific method; Human subjects research
Examples from the business world


Developing good research questions; Choosing a method
Conducting an experiment

Data Collection: Objective measures
Descriptive Statistics using SPSS;


Chi-square


Hypothesis Testing; t-test


T-test for independent means
Survey research


MIDTERM exam
Power and effect size


Power and Effect Size (cont). ANOVA


Qualitative Research: Ethnography




Qualitative research: case studies
Student presentations of 1st team project


Participant Observation


Analyzing Qualitative Data
Data Mining


BA Ch. 1, 6, 7
[MIS1][MIS2][MIS3][MIS4] (read any two)


BA pp. 53-66, Ch. 4
Nielsen Ch 6

BA Ch. 5, Ch13 to p. 403, SPSS tutorial(s),
Aron p. 68-73(76-80)

Aron Ch. 13


Aron Ch. 5, 7


Aton Ch. 8
BA Ch. 9



Aron Ch. 6


BA Ch 14, pp. 428-438
Aron Ch. 9 (pp. 310-328, 365-368)

BA Ch. 8
Fetterman, Kindberg,



Tellis , Herbsleb



FHI article


Seidel article
Introduction; Overview of Techniques
14
12/8
Last class:  Student presentations of 2nd team project
Final Exam
 December 11, 2009  1:00 - 3:00 p.m.

III. Course administration and rules

There will be a 10 minute quiz at the beginning of class every Friday, 3-4 individual homework assignments, and 2 hands-on projects where students will conduct small fieldwork studies and present them to the class. The student's grade will be based on the quizzes (10%), individual homework assignments (25%), a midterm and final exam (30%), hands-on projects (25%), and class attendance/participation (10%).  The lowest quiz grade will be dropped in calculating the students' grades.

Academic Honesty: Work assigned to an individual or a group must be done ONLY by that individual or the people in that group.  When material is copied or derived from outside sources. those sources must be given the proper credit.  Plagiarism or cheating will result in an official University disciplinary review.

Late Homework:  Assignments will be submitted using Blackboard, unless otherwise stated.  Homework may be submitted up to 24 hours late without penalty.  Other late homework will be penalized 10% of the maximum grade per week.  To implement this policy in Blackboard, each assignment will be represented by two Blackboard assignments -- one for on-time work (with an enforced deadline) and one for late submissions.

Missed exams: There are no makeup exams in this course.  An unexcused absence for an exam results in a grade of 0. If a missed exam is excused for legitimate medical or family emergency reasons, the course grade will be based on the student's other work in the course.

Last modified: November 10, 2009