Competency L

Demonstrate understanding of quantitative and qualitative research methods, the ability to design a research project, and the ability to evaluate and synthesize research literature.

Section 1: Introduction

I entered this program with more research experience than many of my classmates, having completed an MA in sociology, including an original thesis, and spent seven years afterward analyzing survey data professionally at a market research firm. This background shapes how I understand this competency: having spent time working with both quantitative and qualitative research techniques, I see them as suited to different, but equally valuable types of research questions.

According to Iversen (2007), quantitative research relies on a specific logic: a researcher wants to draw conclusions about a population too large to study directly, so they collect data through random sampling or randomized experimental assignment, and then use statistical inference to generalize from that sample back to the population with a stated degree of confidence. This is the world I worked in professionally, tracking audience reactions to film and television content through structured surveys, where the value of a finding depended on whether the sample had actually been drawn correctly. Much of our time was spent weighting data to fit population benchmarks and comparing our findings against decades of historical research.

Though I learned both quantitative and qualitative methods during my sociology training, I mostly gathered qualitative data for my thesis work, which involves a different set of assumptions than quantitative research. Westbrook (2010) describes qualitative, or naturalistic, research as treating reality as holistic, rooted in individual and community perception, and continually changing, meaning the research goal centers on understanding, discovering, and explaining a phenomenon rather than predicting or testing it. My own thesis, built on interviews and participant observation with moviegoers and cinema programmers, relied on this kind of approach. Understanding both kinds of research will serve me well in answering different types of questions as an information professional. For example, a quantitative study can tell you how many library users report feeling anxious about a new interface, but a qualitative study can help explain what that anxiety feels like and how users actually experience the interface.

Neither approach, on its own, fully addresses something important to many practicing information professionals: research conducted specifically to solve a real problem in your own workplace, rather than to generate knowledge that generalizes broadly. Connaway and Powell (2010) describe this as action research, “participative organizational research, focused on problem definition and resolution,” which differs from research aimed at improving the broader profession because it “has direct application to the immediate workplace of the researcher” (p. 72). This was the focus of my INFO 285 class, and is closer to the kind of research I expect to do as a working archivist than either my thesis or my market research job was: less concerned with producing generalizable knowledge than with answering a specific question in the context of a specific institution.

Competency L has three components: understanding what quantitative and qualitative approaches can and can’t tell you, being able to critically evaluate and synthesize what other researchers have already found on a topic, and knowing how to design and carry out a research project that fits the specific environment and problem in front of me. The artifacts below each illustrate one or more of these components.

References

Section 2: Evidence

My understanding of research methods comes from a combination of academic training before this program, coursework designing and applying specific research methods, and hands-on volunteer research work.

My first piece of evidence is a research paper from INFO 200, in which I synthesized literature from library and information science, cultural studies, film studies, market research, and computer science to build a picture of cinephiles’ information behaviors. I organized the literature around Hektor’s (2001) typology of information activities, using it as a common framework to connect findings from very different fields, including studies of record collectors’ search behavior, streaming platform recommendation algorithms, and cult film fanzines’ gatekeeping practices. In one instance, I identified a conflict between two sources: Margree et al.’s (2014) finding that record collectors relied on simple search terms directly contrasted with Hartel et al.’s (2016) claim that serious leisure practitioners typically possess advanced Boolean search skills, a tension I flagged as an open question worth further research. My methodology section also documents my research strategy, beginning with keyword and controlled vocabulary searches in a specialized database, then using citation chasing, following which later sources cited an already-identified key work, to substantially expand my source base after initial searches returned few relevant results. This artifact demonstrates my ability to evaluate research literature critically, including noting disagreements, and to synthesize findings across different fields into a coherent argument.

My second piece of evidence is a research proposal from INFO 285, in which I designed a mixed-methods study comparing two approaches to training volunteers in metadata creation at a regional historical society. The quantitative component used stratified random assignment to control for participants’ prior cataloging experience, and measured outcomes by coding participants’ metadata records against a benchmark for specific, defined error types, an approach directly grounded in the logic Iversen (2007) describes: comparing outcomes across randomly assigned groups to support a statistical claim about which training method worked better. The qualitative component used structured post-training focus groups to gather participants’ own accounts of their experience, aiming for the kind of contextual understanding Westbrook (2010) describes as appropriate to qualitative methods, since a participant’s error count cannot capture why a specific step in the training may have felt confusing or unclear to them. This artifact demonstrates my ability to design a single research project that deliberately combines both quantitative and qualitative methods, using each for what it does best.

My third piece of evidence is a card sorting project from INFO 202, in which I applied a qualitative research method to develop a content organization scheme for a family memorial website, working with nine participants. This artifact demonstrates my ability to apply an appropriate qualitative method in a design context: card sorting allowed me to directly observe how participants grouped and made sense of content, and thus what kind of information architecture might make sense for organizing the information in a website. I reflected critically on the methodological differences between conducting this research in person versus remotely, including what each format made easier or harder to observe. This assignment taught me about a type of methodology I had not previously been familiar with, and one I may well apply in future design projects.

My fourth piece of evidence is qualitative coding work I conducted during volunteer user research in the Library Technology Integration Lab at San Jose State. I analyzed open-ended question data from a preliminary study assessing library students and professionals’ past experiences with virtual reality. I independently developed my own coding scheme and applied it to survey responses across three separate questions, what participants liked about their past VR experiences, what they disliked, and what had prevented non-users from trying VR at all. I identified and calculated the frequency of codes like “immersion,” “motion sickness/dizziness,” and “cost/access barriers,” reflecting the positive and negative aspects of VR identified by participants, across dozens of responses. This artifact demonstrates the kind of action research Connaway and Powell (2010) describe: rather than seeking broad, generalizable findings about VR, this survey research and analysis was conducted specifically to inform decisions about a particular VR space our own team was developing and evaluate the interests and pain points of our user base.

Section 3: Conclusion

These four pieces span the full range covered by this competency: synthesizing existing research literature across disciplines, designing a study that combines quantitative and qualitative methods, and applying specific qualitative methods, once in a classroom project and once in a volunteer research setting. In my future career, I intend to treat research as an expected part of my routine work, not just something reserved for academics. This may mean evaluating a program’s effectiveness, understanding how researchers actually use a collection, or testing whether a new system serves patrons’ needs. To stay current in this area, I plan o follow two peer-reviewed journals focused on applied, practitioner-relevant LIS research: Library & Information Science Research, which centers on LIS research methodology, and Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, which regularly features research contributed by information professionals.