Understanding Communication Research Methods

Stephen M. Croucher is a Professor and the Head of the School of Communication, Journalism, and Marketing at Massey University, New Zealand. He is also Lead Research Fellow at the National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Russia. He serves on the editorial boards of more than 10 journals and served as the editor of the Review of Communication (2022–2025), Frontiers in Communication (2019–2022), Journal of Intercultural Communication Research (2010–2019), and Speaker & Gavel (2010–2015). He has held and holds various leadership positions in the National Communication Association, the International Communication Association, and the World Communication Association. He serves as President of the World Communication Association from 2019–2023. Daniel Cronn-Mills is a Professor and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA. He has authored and co-authored three books, five book chapters, and a stack of journal articles. He served for more than a decade as the editor of Speaker & Gavel (1997–2010) and has served on the editorial board of 11 scholarly journals. Dan has served in numerous leadership roles from local to national levels including the National Communication Association, the American Forensic Association, and the Communication and Theatre Association of Minnesota.

Section 1: Research Paradigms 1. Introduction and Ethics 2. The Social Scientific Paradigm 3. The Interpretive Paradigm 4. The Critical Paradigm Section 2: Research Design 5. Data 6. Evaluating Research – Warrants 7. Hypothesis and Research Questions Section 3: Research Methods 8. Ethnography 9. Interviewing 10. Focus Groups 11. Content Analysis 12. Discourse Analysis 13. Surveys 14. Descriptive Statistics 15. Inferential Statistics 16. Experimental Design 17. Mixed Methods 18. Rhetorical Criticism 19. The Process of Critique 20. Methods of Performance