- Find a topic to study
- Develop research questions and hypothesis
- Specify how to measure the variables in your hypotheses (operationalize)
- Design a questionnaire
- Develop a sample
- Collect data
- Prepare a code book and data file
- Enter survey results in the data file
- Analyze data statistically
- Write up and present the results and conclusions
A little update on my progress. It's been a little slow.
But basically, the topic was given to me. :)
I have been spending the past days thinking about my research questions and came up with two:
1. What are the attitudes and perceptions of Singaporeans towards biological conservation?
2. What are the predictors of attitudes and perceptions towards biological conservation?
And I am doing literature review now. And trying to read up more about statistical research from some books.
I am currently quite interested in quantifying attitudes under attitudes, concern and behaviour through asking questions that might reveal those 3 aspects. (Hunter, 2000)
But there is also another method of classifying attitudes. Kellert's 9 basic attitudes (Kellert, 1993) include:
Aesthetic
Dominionistic
Ecologistic
Humanistic
Moralistic
Naturalistic
Negativistic
Scientistic
Utilitarian
And some researchers even created their own scales to test attitudes after failing badly using Cronbach's alpha to check consistency. (Caro, Pelkey and Grigione, 1994)
So there you have it. Some factor analysis. Some Cronbach's alpha. Many ways to quantify attitudes and that's what I'm doing, exploring the written literature, to find out what others have already done, how they did it, to get ideas how I can do mine. Many new terms and ways of thinking encountered so far. But greatly appreciate this opportunity to at least think with the mind of a Scientist.
References
Caro, T.M., Pelkey, N. and Grigione, M. 1994. Effects of Conservation Biology Education on Attitudes Toward Nature. Conservation Biology 8: 846-852
Hunter L.M. (2000) A Comparison of the Environmental Attitudes, Concern, and Behaviors of Native-Born and Foreign-Born U.S. Residents. Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 21:565-580
Kellert, S. R. (1993) Values and Perceptions of Invertebrates. Conservation Biology 7: 845-855
4 comments:
Wow, this is very impressive!
I'm quite heartened to see you're looking at invertebrates as well. Many people don't really appreciate this group that makes up like 99% of life on the planet...haha!
Looking forward to your project!
Thanks Ria! :)
I'm not really looking specifically at invertebrates but there are people in NUS who are researching a lot into them! :) But that paper I mentioned is quite interesting. If you're interested, I could find it and send it to you. :)
Hey thanks for the offer!
But it's OK, I'm terrible at reading scientific papers. I leave it to you to incorporate into your project and I read the simple English version :-)
All the best for the project!
very seldom find a biologist doing a social science type study. there are already a lot of literature out there on environmental perception. im sure you can find some concepts you can borrow from there. did you try to look for papers written on singaporean's attitude to nature / environment, etc?
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