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I just received an email alert from SAGE publications about its offer for free online trial to its  journals in Communication and Media Studies. SAGE is currently offering free full-text access to 25 key journals for two months until 31st December 2009.

All you have to do is register here. Once registered you will be able to browse abstracts, perform quick or advanced keyword searches, and download full-text articles from all of the journals listed below (some of which are ISI ranked):

APA publication manual

APA publication manual, 6th ed.

With the Internet just a few keystrokes away, many students often refer to online sources for their thesis research.  As thesis adviser, I encourage my students to refer to journals, books, and other printed materials to beef up their Introduction and Review of Literature.  Easy access to the web points up the serious issue of plagiarism. My advice to students is:

  • Cite all references for borrowed ideas.
  • Paraphrase or restate borrowed ideas and cite source.
  • If the text is not paraphrased, put them in quotation marks.

How should then one cite online sources? In the social sciences, most of us refer to the American Psychological Association (APA) formatting guide. In its 5th edition, the APA suggests the following style for information obtained from electronic sources:

The source may be aggregated databases, online journals, Web sites or pages, newsgoups, Web- or e-mail based discussion groups or Web or e-mail based newsletters. Pagination in electronic references is unavailable in many cases, thus left out of the citation.

The publication date should be the year of publication or the most recent update. If the date of the source cannot be determined, place (n.d.) after the author’s name. Since web sources can change, provide the date of your search. The reference includes the URL that will direct readers a close as possible to the information cited. The best way to make sure that the URL is entered correctly is to copy it from your browser and paste it into the reference.

The path information should be sufficient for someone else to retrieve the material. For example, specify the method used to find the material: the protocol (Telnet, FTP, http://, etc.), the directory, and the file name. Do not end the path statement with a period. When possible, give the URL of the document used, rather than a home page. If the URL leads to information on how to obtain the cited material, enter “Available from” instead of “Retrieved from.”

Online periodical

Muilenburg, L., & Berge, Z. (2000). A framework for designing questions for online learning. The American Journal of Distance Education. Retrieved February 21, 2006, from: http://www.emoderators.com/moderators/muilenburg.html

Online document

Devi, S. S. E., & Ramachandran, V. (2002). Agent based control for embedded applications. Retrieved December 16, 2006, from http://www.hipc.org/hipc2002/2002Posters/AgentControl.pdf

No Author. When there is no author for a Web page, the title moves to the first position of the reference entry:

New child vaccine gets funding boost. (2001). Retrieved March 21, 2001, from http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/story_13178.asp

No author, no year.

GVU’s 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved September 19, 2001, from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1997-10/

Style list for references. (n.d.). Retrieved January 1, 2001, from http://www.apa.org

Citing computer software

Arend, D. N. (1993). Choices (Version 4.0) [Computer software]. Champaign, IL: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research Laboratory. (CERL Report No.CH7-22510)

Article in an Internet-only journal

Kawasaki, J. L., & Raven, M. R. (1995). Computer-administered surveys in extension. Journal of Extension, 33, 252-255. Retrieved June 2, 1999, from http://joe.org/joe/index.html

Article in an Internet-only newsletter

Waufton, K. K. (1999, April). Dealing with anthrax. Telehealth News, 3(2). Retrieved December 16, 2000, from http://www.telehearlth.net/subscribe/newslettr_5b.html#1

Internet technical or research reports

University of California, San Francisco, Institute for Health and Aging. (1996, November). Chronic care in America: A 21st century challenge. Retrieved September 9, 2000, from the Robert Wood Foundation Web site: http://www.rwjf.org/library/chrcare

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (2001, March 14). Glacial habitat restoration areas. Retrieved September 18, 2001 from http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/hunt/hra.htm

Read more ….

View from Chicago Navy Pier.  Photo credit:  www.flickr.com/photos/randz

A view from the navy pier, Chicago. Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/randz

As well as other registered users of SAGE Journals Online, I received this reminder that we still have access to SAGE must-have content on SAGE Journals Online, including:

  • more than 260,000 articles from 500+ journals
  • content back to 1999
  • one of the largest and most powerful collections of business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technical, and medical content in the world
  • more than 25 research methods journals–from qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods to evaluation
  • 273 journals ranked in the 2008 Journal Citation Reports® including those from the 10 disciplines where SAGE publishes the most ranked titles: Communication, Criminology & Penology, Special Education,Industrial Relations & Labor, Political Science, Mathematical Psychology, Social Issues, Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, Sociology, and Urban Studies

Hurry and take advantage of this rare opportunity to download relevant materials for your thesis or research paper.

escalada award

On 9 October, the College of Development Communication Alumni Association of the University of the Philippines at Los Baños (UPLB)  honored me with the Distinguished Alumna in Research and Development award during its 91st Loyalty Day celebrations. This year is UPLB’s centennial and I am deeply honored to have been recognized by my peers in development communication.  To my fellow alumni at CDC, thank you.

The citation read:

“for actively spreading the art, science, and practice of development communication in Southeast Asia through her participatory research and extension projects; advocacy, consultancy, and training activities; internationally awarded publications; and highly informative Devcom web site.

The farmers’ participatory research on pest management that she spearheaded in Vietnam spread throughout Asia and received various international awards from the U.S. and UK for best agricultural innovation, science communication, and environmental achievement.”

Read the details in the IRRI Bulletin 2009.40 (19-23 October 2009)

Chicago Botanic Garden. Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/randz

Chicago botanic garden. Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/randz

In 2000,  Malcolm Gladwell released his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.  The tipping point is that dramatic moment when little causes drive the unexpected to become expected and propel the idea of radical change to certain acceptance.  It is a social epidemic of sorts, requiring:

  • Contagious agents to spread the message
  • Sticky ideas/messages/productions
  • An environment allowing the epidemic to spread

The tipping point is defined as the point at which a slow, reversible change becomes irreversible, often with dramatic consequences. After the tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state occurs.

In this post, I use the term, tipping point, to refer to that moment when a student decides to seriously work on his thesis, applying himself to whatever it takes to finish it. After the tipping point has been passed, a dramatic change in the student’s behavior occurs where he becomes so driven that his single-minded purpose is to finish his thesis.

A major reason for delays in finishing the thesis is largely due to time management issues. Some of my students spend more time with the university choir or social networking activities than revising their thesis outlines. As thesis adviser, I could only push so much, else I might be seen as being persistent.

I  spent my Saturday in the office working with four of my thesis advisees. One has collected his thesis data and running some analysis — creating new variables,  transforming and computing new variables, defining multiple response data sets, and running parametric and nonparametric correlations. The others were revising their questionnaires,  editing their reference list to conform to the APA format, and tightening up their arguments for their study.  They will have to develop their PowerPoint slides for their undergraduate seminar tomorrow, Monday.

I asked one student while he was running his data analysis:  When was the tipping point in your thesis? When did you decide to focus on the work at hand and be serious about it?  His answer:  ”When you left word to send you our thesis outlines by domestic courier. I thought, this is for real, I must work on my thesis…”  Others said that it was the the undergraduate seminar scheduled tomorrow that forced them to set aside their distractions and carve time for their thesis.

I have asked Jerwin to write a piece for Devcompage about his tipping point so that other communication students who are in the throes of finishing their theses might be inspired by what he has to say. He promised to write it after he has written the first draft of his manuscript.

What about you? If you’re a graduating student, have you reached a tipping point in your thesis work or are you still into all kinds of avoidance tactics?  What obstacles are stopping you from completing your thesis? I would love to hear from you.  Please post your comments here.

For Manila-based readers who leave a comment, I promise to buy you coffee and a slice of classic chocolate cake at the Starbucks  in The Columns, Ayala Avenue, Makati.

A view from the Navy Pier, Chicago. Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/randz

A view from the Navy Pier, Chicago. Photo credit: www.flickr.com/photos/randz

My student, Gabriella Marie Benico, has written her thesis outline on “Coverage and treatment of climate change stories in leading online Philippine newspapers”.  In her research, she will find out how climate change stories are given attention in the page lay out, determine the frequency, placement, treatment and type of stories of each online source, and compare and contrast the coverage and treatment of climate change stories in three leading online Philippine newspapers.

I reviewed her thesis outline just after SAGE publications had  sent me an alert about giving free access to its journals until 31st October 2009.  From where I was,  I searched the journals and found the following articles that could beef up her literature review.   I also advised her this:

You need to reduce your pages of text on “climate change” and instead focus on the climate change communication and content analysis results on related areas such as environmental reporting. You need to approach it from a science communication angle. Here are materials I downloaded for you which are not referred to at all in your outline. Check out the list of materials below too. To have access to it, read the current post in Devcompage about free access to SAGE journals.

1.  Althaus, S.L. and Tewksbury. (2002). Agenda setting and the “new” news: Patterns of issue importance among readers of the paper and online versions of the New York Times. Communication Resarch, 29: 180-207.

2. Bowman, T.E. (2009). A turning point in climate change communication priorities.  International Journal of Sustainability Communication, 4: 64-77.

3. Dixon, T.L. and Linz, D.  (2000). Race and the misrepresentation of victimization on local television news. Communication Research, 27: 547-573.

4.  Grogan, R. (2009). Mass media pesentations of individual & societal-level solutions to global warming. International Journal of Sustainability Communication, 4: 94-112.

5. Illman, D.L. and Clark, F. (2008). Visibility of team science: A case study of media coverage of the NSF Science and Technology Centers. Science Communication, 30: 48-76.

6. Logan, Robert A. (2001). Science mass communication: Its conceptual  history. Science Communication, 23: 135-163.

7. McDonald, Susan. (2009). Changing climate, changing minds: Applying the literature on media effects, public opinion, and the issue-attention cycle to increase public understanding of climate change. International Journal of Sustainability Communication, 4: 45-63.

8. Miller, S. (2001). Public understanding of science at the crossroads. Public Understand. Sci., 10: 115-120.

9. Nisbet, M. C. and Kotcher, J.E. (2009). A two-step flow of influence?:  Opinion leader campaigns on climate change. Science Communication, 30: 328-354.

10.  O’Neill, S. and Nicholson-Cole, S. (2009). “Fear won’t do it”:  Promoting positive engagement with climate change through visual and iconic representations. Science Communication, 30: 355-359.

11.   Priest, S.H. (2009). Communicating nature: How we create and understand environmental messages. Science Communication, 29: 404-405.

12.  Weigold, M.F. (2001). Communicating science: A review of the literature. Science Communication, 23: 164-193.

13.   Zillman, D., Chen, L., Knobloch, S. and Callison, C. (2004). Effects of lead framing on selective exposure to Internet news reports. Communication Research, 31: 58-81.

The listing above is just a scratch on the surface. My student still needs to check out Communication Research. With free access to SAGE journals, my student’s thesis will definitely be more informed than what it was before.  So take advantage of this free resource while it lasts.

Maribago-1

Mactan, Cebu, Philippines

For many of students working on their theses, this is a timely opportunity to have access to SAGE Publications journals without having to pay per view.  You have until Oct. 31, 2009 to take advantage of this rare offer.  Register with SAGE and you will have access to more than 260,000 articles from more than 500 SAGE journals with content available from 1999-current in the following disciplines relevant to communication:

  • Anthropology & Archeology
  • Communication & Media Studies
  • Cultural Studies
  • Economics & Development
  • Education
  • Ethnic Studies
  • Gender Studies
  • Information Science
  • Language & Linguistics
  • Management & Organization Studies
  • Marketing and Hospitality
  • Politics & International Relations
  • Psychology
  • Public Administration
  • Public Health
  • Research Methods & Evaluation
  • Sociology

If you’re a communication student, you will find the journals below relevant to your studies and research. If you’re looking for thesis topics, starting on your thesis outline, or reviewing related literature, the journals below are a rich mine of information. Take advantage of this free online access while it lasts.

Communication Research

European Journal of Communication

Global Media and Communication

Health Promotion Practice

Ethnography

International Communication Gazette

Journal of Macromarketing

Journalism

Journal of Creative Communications

Management Communication Quarterly

Media, Culture and Society

New Media & Society

Public Understanding of Science

Science Communication

Television & New Media

To register, click here to go to SAGE journals online.

 Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Most of my students in in communication campaigns and evaluation of communication materials classes have conducted their needs assessment and audience analysis surveys. The guide below should help put them and other students writing up survey results on track.

After you have analyzed the survey data, your next task is to organize them into a coherent report. The purpose of a survey report is to tell the readers the following:

  • research problem
  • data collection methods used
  • findings
  • conclusions

Thus, like other research reports, the survey report should consist of these parts:

  • executive summary
  • introduction
  • methodology
  • results and discussion
  • conclusions

An important part of the final report is the executive summary. Busy decision makers may not read anything else in the report. The executive summary should describe the:

  • survey objectives
  • summary of the results
  • conclusions and recommendations

Immediately after the executive summary, you will find a table of contents. As the term implies, this section lists the key contents of the report and their corresponding page numbers. Appendices, which may be survey tables and graphs that were not integrated into the body of the report, are included as well.

The following are the major sections of the survey report:

1. Introduction

  1. overall background of the problem – describes the significance  of the problem to the country.  For instance, if the survey was on weed management practices of rice farmers, the introduction should deal with the importance of weed management in rice growing areas and the magnitude of yield losses due to weeds.
  2. general situation in the survey area -   provides a description of the survey area in terms of population, geographical location, major crops grown,  etc.  Here, present a location map of the survey area.
  3. objectives  of the survey -   presents the survey objectives.

2. Methodology

  1. survey population – describes the survey respondents, e.g., rice farmers, fruit growers, and from which province or district they come from.
  2. data collection method – explains how the survey was carried out and discusses the sample size and sampling procedure.
  3. survey questionnaire – presents the major sections of the research instrument.
  4. pretesting – describes the pretesting process and how the pretest results were utilized to improve the questionnaire.
  5. data analysis – explains the analytical tools used to describe the data.

3. Results – Survey results are usually organized around the major sections of the questionnaire.

4. Conclusions and Recommendations - The conclusions highlight your research findings.

5. Literature Cited

This section lists the sources of information and publications that you referred to or cited should be included.

Guidelines in writing up the survey findings

  1. Describe the data presented in tables and graphs.
  2. Highlight important findings and provide the supporting table immediately. The general rule is to place the text just before the table or chart being described.
  3. Describe the highest proportions in the table or chart first. If you look at the example in your handout, you will notice that the discussion starts with the highest proportion, i.e., “Own seed”.

Farmers obtained rice seeds for sowing from a number of sources but two-thirds of them (63.9)) relied on other own sources (i.e., from their previous harvests). Other farmers either obtained their seeds from the coop (24.1) or from their neighbors (10.6%). Farmers obtained seeds from these sources because they get better seeds (58.5%), or that it is cheaper to do so (30.48%), Table 29.

Table 29.   Sources of rice seeds and reasons for choosing these sources.

_________________________________________________

Item             Districts III & IV (%)    _________________________________________________

Sources

Own seed                   63.9
Coop                            24.1
Neighbors                 10.6

Reasons

They are better seeds      58.5
They are cheaper           30.4
_________________________________________________

2. Rationalize the results and bring out any underlying pattern in them, especially when discussing a two-way table.  Interpre­t the results but be careful not to go be­yond the results obtained.

To illustrate, consider this table and write up from the Report on the  KAP Study on the Strategic Extension Campaign on Integrated Weed Management in the Muda Irrigation Scheme, Malaysia:

Types of land tenure and size of land ownership

On the whole, the respondents were equally divided along the various tenurial categories found in the Muda region. This is to say that 37.9% of the respondents were owner-operators, 37.2% were owner-tenants (i.e., they own as well as rent the land from someone else), and 24.8% were pure tenants.

There were slightly more owner-operators and less owner-tenants in the southern districts (III & IV) compared to the northern districts (I & II) but the difference is not statistically significant (Table 5).

Among the farmers in both district clusters who own the land (operators and owner-tenants), majority of them did not own more than 10 relungs:  53.5% between 1 to 4 relungs, and 41% between 5 to 10 relungs.   Only 15 farmers (5.2%) in this study owned more than 10 relungs, one of whom owned more than 20 relungs.

Among the tenants and owner-tenants from both clusters, 44.9% of them rented between 1 to 4 relungs and 47.1% between 5 to 10 relungs.  Only 22 (8.1%) of the farmers in this study rented more than 10 relungs of paddy land, three of whom have more than 20 relungs.

3.    Describe relationships, don’t just symbolize them:

For instance, the statement below may not be easy to understand by the readers of a KAP survey report:

We found r = .72, which means that age explains about one-half of the variance (r2=.49) in scores.

Instead, one should write it up as follows:

About half of the differences in knowledge scores on weed management is accounted for by respondents’ education:   farmers with  higher level of education were more knowledgeable than those with lower levels of education.

4.  Put your results in context by comparing them with previous research or with existing theory in order to explain them.

5. Give reasons to account for differences between your research and previous research or existing theory, or to explain unexpected results.

Jinhua-students-3

Jinhua College students

Many students find writing the theoretical framework one of the most challenging chapters to write in a thesis outline.  In fact, if you scroll down the Thesis/research coach page, you will read students’ comments asking for advice on their theoretical framework. So what is a theoretical framework and why should researchers bother to write it?

A theoretical framework guides research, determining what variables to measure, and what statistical relationships to look for.  Trochim (2006) in The Research Methods Knowledge Base, states that there are two realms involved in research—theory and observation.  Theory is what goes on inside the  heads of scientists while observation is what goes on in the real world or measures and observations.  In conducting research, one works between these two realms. Theory guides every aspect of research, from formulation of the research question through operationalization and discussion.

Uses of theoretical framework

In “How to Write a successful Research Grant Application: A Guide for Social and Behavioral Scientists, Gregory Herek writes that the theoretical framework strengthens the researcher’s research in several ways:

1. Explicit statement of the theoretical assumptions permits them to be evaluated critically.

2. The theoretical framework connects the researcher to existing knowledge. Guided by a relevant theory, researchers have a basis for their hypotheses and choice of research methods.

3. Articulating the theoretical assumptions of a research study forces the researcher to address questions of why and how. It permits researchers to move from simply describing a phenomenon observed to generalizing about various aspects of that phenomenon.

4. Having a theory helps to identify the limits to those generalizations. A theoretical framework specifies which key variables influence a phenomenon of interest. It alerts the researcher to examine how those key variables might differ in varied populations

How to develop the theoretical framework

To develop the theoretical framework, here is a useful guide that I have shared with my students:

1. Examine your thesis title or topic and research problem.

Example:  Farmers’ comprehension of usage instructions on pesticide packaging

2. Brainstorm on what you consider to be the key variables in your research. Answer the question:  What factors contribute to the presumed effect (dependent variable)?

In our example above, it is:  What are the determinants of farmers’ comprehension of usage instructions? What factors influence the way farmers understand usage instructions on packaging (boxes, bottles)?

3. Read and review related literature to find answers to your research question.

4. List list the constructs and variables that might be relevant to your study. Group  variables into independent and dependent.   In our example thesis topic above, these would be:

Dependent variable:  Farmers’ comprehension of usage instructions
Independent:  Farmers’ sources of pest management information, perceived credibility of source and frequency of exposure

5.  Review the social science theories (communication, psychology, sociology, anthropology) and choose the theory that can best explain the relationships between the key variables in your study.

6. Discuss the assumptions or propositions of this theory and point out their relevance to your research.

Some tips

It is easy to err in the choice of appropriate theory.  Read the theories carefully and make sure they make sense to your proposed research. Consult your thesis adviser, research instructor or favorite instructor about your choice of theory.

The theoretical framework is not a stand-alone copy and paste operation where you Google the theory and voila you copy and paste what wikipedia churns out.  A theory is selected on the basis of how best it can explain the relationships among the variables.  There should be a connection between the theoretical framework, conceptual framework,  operationalization, and instrument.

To learn more,  read Julieann Aguilar’s theoretical framework and Buen Josef Andrade’s chapter.

Jinhua College students during survey procedures training

Jinhua College students during survey procedures training

One of the frequently asked questions in Thesis/Research Coach of this blog is how to develop a framework — conceptual and theeoretical — for a thesis outline. Here’s the advice I have always given my own thesis students …

A framework is simply the structure of the research idea or concept and how it is put together.  A conceptual framework elaborates the research problem in relation to relevant literature. This section may summarize the major (dependent and independent) variables in your research. The framework may be summarized in a schematic diagram that presents the major variables and their hypothesized relationships. It should also cover the following:

  • Existing research and its relevance for your topic
  • Key ideas or constructs in your approach
  • Identify and discuss the variables related to the problem.
  • Conceptualized relationships between variables
  • Independent variables (presumed cause)
    Dependent variables (presumed effect)
    Intervening variables (other variables that influence the effect of the independent variable)

  • Present a schematic diagram of the relationships between key variables and discuss the relationship of the elements/variables
  • Statement of hypotheses

For sample conceptual frameworks, click here and here .

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