I’m starting to love my early mornings kudos of jet lag. I wake up around 4 am or so, make tea and avo toast, and then settle down to learn. It’s one time of the day I find it easy to concentrate as no one else is awake, including the birds. There’s simply nothing to distract me.
Today, I logged in to my site (here) and Coursera, so I could jot down notes and thoughts as I learned.
Though I took a course titled “Research Methods in Psychology” in my undergraduate years when I was hopping from course to course trying to figure out what I wanted to do, I can’t say that I remember a whole lot from the class. We did design and run experiments (that was fun if I recall) but we also did a lot of stuff with statistics which is far less memorable. And, to be perfectly honest, though I’ve studied engineering-level calculus (yes, I once thought I wanted to be a programmer), I have never taken a class dedicated to statistics.
Obviously, I need to be able to hit the ground running if I’m going straight into a Masters program. That means having a solid grounding in research, statistics and study design. At least according to one of the programs directors at a UK university I reached out to.
To bone up, I’ve decided to take a series of courses on Qualitative Research Methods in Psychology specialization on Coursera. I settled on this series because it was created by the American Psychological Association and if they don’t know what they’re talking about, who on earth does?
I expected the course to be completely dry and have so far been pleasantly surprised to find it interesting. In the back of my head the storyteller in me can’t help but think qualitative research is quality research because it relies on stories…and, well, because it’s in the name. Also, in some form and fashion, as a digital marketer for many years, I had to do a bit of it in order to develop user personas—the fictional characters marketers make that are intended to synthesize some segment of a user group or audience profile. Usually they come packaged with stupid names such as Savvy Sally (an accountant who likes to do her research before making a purchase), or Adventurous Andy (a tech nerd who makes more emotional purchases and who is swayed by energetic and heartfelt language).
Anyway, you get my drift, qualitative research feels familiar.
At one point in module 3, the course talks about the philosophical underpinnings of qualitative research and presents this lovely image that I believe perfectly illustrates the magic of research and how much there is to it, though most people only ever see the tip (the techniques used, or the method). I wanted to share it here. I’ve no idea who designed this illustration unfortunately as there’s no credit given. But, given this article is just for me and just for educational purposes, I’m going to hope it’s okay to share.
I did, however get really hung up on the philosophy section focused on ontology, axiology and epistemology as it was very poorly explained.
And then…well, after muddling through that, I decided to take a break and switch to a cup of coffee and actual paid work.
Balancing (quiet and secret) future plans is one thing but I still have to pay the Coursera bills!