Ye Sun | Associate Professor | Dept of Communication | University of Utah
ye.sun@utah.edu | Office Hours: 3-5 pm Tue (LNCO 2617) or by appointment
“But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves– of having utter scientific integrity– is, I’m sorry to say, something that we haven’t specifically included in any particular course that I know of … The first principle is that you must not fool yourself– and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists.” (Feynman, 1974)
This course is about learning how to not fool ourselves or other scientists in doing quantitative social science research (See Feynman’s quote). Recent discussions about the reproducibility, transparency, and openness of science have been vibrant in our neighboring social science fields (e.g., psychology) but seem to be largely absent in communication science. Awareness of and reflections on the crises, pitfalls, problematic practices, systemic flaws in the scientific enterprise, and our own cognitive constraints are key to science’s self-correction. As students of social science research, we all bear the burden of responsibility in improving the rigor and integrity of science. If anything, this class is to make you become a better scientist who approaches research– whether it’s your own or others’ – with reflexivity, vigilance, and non-abiding aspirations for better practices.
Overall, the class aims to achieve the following:
Recommended books (not required for this class):
Attendance at all class meetings is taken for granted. You will be graded on regular, active participation in class discussions. Active participation includes asking questions for clarification, making substantive comments about the reading materials, sharing your own perspectives and responding to others’ which you may agree or disagree with, discussing how the readings relate to your work and to the communication discipline as a whole, and in general, making the class more engaging and intellectually stimulating! Your attentive work during the in-class, hands-on activities is also part of the participation grade.
You are expected to submit 8 response papers throughout the semester. Each response paper should be 1-2 pages, single-spaced, with appropriate font and margins. Your response should address all the required readings for the week and describe and discuss what you think are the most important points made by the readings.
Your response paper must end with two to three discussion questions about the week’s materials, and you will be expected to raise these questions during class. Please make sure that you have spent time thinking through your questions. Questions are considered high quality if they can spark a productive conversation. Avoid questions that you could answer yourself with some additional research.
Your response paper should be posted on Canvas by noon on the day of class (i.e., Tuesdays). Please also bring a hard copy of your paper to class.
Throughout the semester, we will collectively build a glossary of the key terms used in the readings. It is intended to function as a useful “dictionary” for us all to share. I will creat a Google doc and invite you to join so that you can start editing the document. It may look like something like this:
| Term | Definition/Explanation | Source (with page number) | Additional notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| concept | “The quoted definition” | Sun (2019, p. 23) | Different from Smith (2013) |
Your contributions will be reflected in the editing history of the shared Google document and will be assessed accordingly for this part of the course grade. I will not assign specific weeks/readings to individual members and will be looking for roughly equal contributions from everyone at the end of the semester. Often definitions of a term can differ across articles, so feel free to compile multiple entries for the same term as you encounter them. Making additional notes or annotations also counts as contributions.
In this project you will select a (small) body of quantitative research reports (by topic, researcher, or source) and assess one or two aspects of the research practices and/or findings reported in these papers. You can think of this project as a small-scale “meta-research” practice where you perform an empirical synthesis to diagnose the validity/integrity of the chosen body of research. The class will supply the necessary knowledge, methods, and tools for you to think about and conduct this project. At the end of the semester, you will present your project in class (April 21) and turn in a written report (April 28).
Important!
* Required: You need to pre-register the plan for your study by March 31 (10% for this component)
* Your project idea(s) should be submitted to me via email by March 8.
Here is a preview of the major steps of the project (more specific instructions will be given out during the semester):
[compiled by Dr. Michael Kate, University of North Carolina, Greensboro), accessed on 01/02/2020]