Methodology, Selection of

The Breadth of Communication Research

Communication research entails posing and systematically seeking answers to questions about communication. Communication scholars use a wide range of methods in their work, including but not limited to the following: content or textual analysis, surveys, experiments, interviews, focus groups, case studies, and ethnographic or field methods.

As these examples illustrate, selecting a methodology involves decisions about what types of information to gather (data collection), how to analyze that information (data analysis), as well as broader assumptions about the research process (philosophy of communication research). Consider a researcher who wants to understand common stressors that U.S. military families face when a parent is deployed to a war zone and how communication may assist or hinder families in coping with stressors. What types of data should the researcher gather to address these questions? Should they carry out in-depth interviews with military service members, spouses, and/or children conducted shortly after the service member returns home? Is it appropriate to rely on online blogs posted by spouses during the service member’s deployment? Or should they rely on surveys with military family members conducted prior to, during, and after the service member’s deployment? In addition, researchers must also consider how to approach the data once collected. What themes, or repeated patterns of meaning and language choice, are present in the data? Can a statistical analysis of associations between concepts be measured or coded from the data? Finally, to what extent should the researcher’s own background and values be taken into account? Should researchers attempt to maintain a stance of objectivity, such that research findings are not influenced by their personal or political views? Or should they explicitly discuss their positionality, arguing that interactions with research participants and interpretation of data inevitably are influenced by one’s background and beliefs?

Broadly speaking, communication research methods can be described as quantitative or qualitative, though variation exists within each group. Quantitative research aims to identify cause–effect relationships, such as clarifying the conditions under which independent variables (causes) impact a dependent variable (effect) as well as mechanisms by which independent variables influence the dependent variable. Quantitative researchers often work in a deductive fashion, applying theory to make predictions (research hypotheses) about when and how variables are associated. In the preceding example, a quantitative researcher might predict that military couples who engage in communal coping (i.e., who view deployment-related stressors as “our” problem) during a service member’s overseas deployment will be more satisfied with their relationship compared to couples who do not cope communally (i.e., who view stressors as “your” or “my” problem). To test this prediction, the researcher would need to select or develop reliable and valid measures of key variables (communal coping, relational satisfaction) as well as show that communal coping predicted relational satisfaction after other factors (e.g., length of deployment, family income) were controlled. Finally, the researcher would likely explore mechanisms by which communal coping impacted relationship satisfaction. For example, couples who view deployment stressors as “our problem” may be more likely to use constructive conflict management strategies when discussing disagreements compared to couples who do not cope communally.

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