Introduction to Research Methods

I'm not sure about everyone else here, but this is the first class on research methods I have ever taken. My undergraduate degree was in history, and as Luker suggests, history is a field in which one is expected to learn to do research, but without any formal training. While my fellow undergrads in psychology, sociology, political science, and various other fields took their own variations of research methods, I always that the course was actually something barely relevant to the history work I did, like statistical analysis. And they typically seemed so disinterested in the course that I was not rushing to find out more.

Of course, I'm not ignorant to the tenets of good research. I understand and am aware of things like selection bias, random sampling, and the murkiness of truth. You cannot write good research papers without understanding those concepts. I've simply never had it spelled out for me like this. These are things I have picked up over time, some of it via common sense, and much of it via class discussions and feedback on my early work.

In some ways I think I may have benefited from avoiding research methods in the past. Some of what Luker seems to suggest as a controversial new world view of conducting research seems so very obvious to me. Before I began her book, if someone had asked me if I prefer to use quantitative or qualitative methods of research, I would have asked why I have to choose one over the other. Why wouldn't I mix one with the other where justified in order to create the most complete method?

What are everyone else's educational backgrounds? Anyone with experience in studying research methods?

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A couple of random thoughts on the readings:

• I wonder if Luker would have written the first chapter in particular differently today, rather than in 2008, given the explosion of smartphone/tablet technology, and the instant, on-demand access to data at all times that they bring. Surely that has changed how we do research, and even what it means to do research, in some ways.
• I believe that I very much fit the new, twenty-first century way of thinking Luker describes. When she discussed canonical methods, my first thought was that no matter how hard one tries, you simply cannot have random sample surveys anymore. Every day more people abandon their home phone lines, meaning that the old polling standby of random phone calls becomes more biased by the day. I'm sure there are people far smarter than me analysing how to overcome this difficulty, but I simply don't see a polling method that will potentially include all groups anymore.

Addendum: I'm not sure if everyone has bought the Luker text, but if you've held out so far, it is available as a Kindle ebook for $9.99 US at kindle.com. This was the cheapest I could find it. If you don't have a Kindle, Kindle ebooks can be read on computers and certain web browsers (including Chrome), Android and iOS devices, and, with a little hackery, Blackberry Playbooks.