Module 3 Summary

This module was concerned with the many research methodology choices faced by social work, social science, and behavioral science investigators. You read about the ways in which research questions lead to research approaches: specifically, about qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches. Next, you learned a great deal about different qualitative and quantitative research traditions and the many available options: each has different advantages, disadvantages, and goodness-of-fit with study aims to consider. In Chapter 4, you read about variables and their role in quantitative research. Next you learned about many different strategies that investigators use to collect data, and again learned about their relative advantages and disadvantages. Finally, you were presented with issues related to participants in social work, social science, and behavioral science research. This included issues of sample size and diversity, IRB concerns with involving humans as study participants, and issues in participant recruitment and retention (for longitudinal studies). This Module 3 content has great relevance to the next course module, Module 4, where we look at data analytic approaches.