Methodology

General Features of Methodology

Although specific methodologies require specific research procedures, most methodologies share several common features. The first issue in deciding any methodology that will be used is the determination of the research questions and hypotheses. Research questions are those questions that the study will answer. The research questions guide how the research will be done and which methodology will be appropriate in answering the questions. In political communication, research questions have ranged from questions about how media use affects political disaffection to how certain techniques or strategies in political advertising will influence a person's liking of the candidate. Hypotheses are more specific than research questions and usually predict the ways in which variables will be related. For example, in a study about how gender might influence attitudes toward candidates during a debate, one hypothesis might be that women will more highly rate a candidate who uses certain language and arguments during a debate.

A second important aspect of methodology is sampling or deciding what will be selected for studying. Samples can include content that will be analyzed or persons who will be selected to participate in a study. Quantitative studies always include an explanation of how samples are selected, and some qualitative studies also discuss how participants are selected or how material is selected for researching.

Another important component of any methodology is what variables will be measured or manipulated and how the variables will be operationalized and measured. Variables are those things that the researcher is interested in observing, manipulating, or measuring. Examples of some variables in political communication include attitude toward a candidate, intention to vote, demographic aspects of the subjects, how negative or positive an ad is about the candidate, the candidate's political ideology or party, and the argument style that the candidate uses during a debate. There are various types of variables. Independent variables are variables that may be manipulated or may vary. Researchers are interested in seeing what influence they might have one what's being studied. Independent variables are sometimes called “predictor variables.” Dependent variables (sometimes called “criterion variables”) are the variables that researchers are interested in seeing how they are affected by the independent variables. Although there are various ways of describing variables, two other ways of labeling variables are continuous variables (can include infinite number value, such as minutes spent looking at a candidate's Web site) and discrete variables (finite number of values, such as gender or political affiliation).

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