Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with research

Indian consumer-oriented research service?

blue andrea — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:59:09 -0800

I'm looking for a company based in India, cited in a story I heard on NPR sometime in the past week or so, that handles a given number of Joe Consumer research queries per month for a flat fee. The reporter in the story used the example of calling the service around 5pm on a Friday, trying to find a part for a bike, just wanting to know who locally had the part, how much it cost, and if they could set it aside for him to pick up; the service was able to accomplish this in a short period of time.

Normally I can find these stories searching the NPR or WBUR site, but not even Google is helping me this time.

Where are those danged gold plates?

Ambrosia Voyeur — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:11:31 -0800

Help! I need reference texts about Mormonism: the beliefs, the texts, the politics, the economy, everything. I'm a non-Mormon and don't know a whole lot about the church.

I'm ghostwriting a novelized memoir for a guy whose version of history has a lot of conspiracy theory in it, and the novel concerns the Mormon church, they Mormon-Mayan mythos and lots of shady government dealings. Yes, I'm the next Dan Brown, assuredly. But I need to get the right foundation set so these flights of fancy can take off properly.

I need to learn the fundamentals, find out as much as I can about the politics, past and present, that surround the church and the meaning of the content of the Book of Mormon.

So, non-biased, factual, academic quality writing about the LDS Church and its oeuvre, with less emphasis on caffeine and polygamy and underwear, and more on the contents of the Book of Mormon, the activities of Deseret and the political power of the church, its structure, and ties to government.

On the other side of the coin, any hinky nutbar conspiracy theories involving the church will also be helpful. I just need to be able to tell them apart from the real information.

Sleep, perchance to sleep cooly, like Sam Cucumber Marlow

oxford blue — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:06:26 -0800

Will an Ikea Sultan Erfjord latex mattress bake me as I sleep? I'm thinking about buying an Ikea Sulant Erfjord latex mattress.

Doing some quick research on the web it seems some people have problems with latex mattresses being too hot during the night. Are latex mattress (a lot) hotter than traditional spring mattresses?

The Ikea website mentions the choice of materials circulates the air, and from what I remember of the in store display there are numerous holes in the latex body of the mattress for (one assumes) air circulation.

By way of context, I tend to be a warm sleeper (I rarely need more than a sheet and a light blanket or two. I recently bought a new doona/duvet and find it's often too warm for me) and when I get hot it takes awhile for me to cool down.

Two additional bed temperature questions; will my choice of mattress pad/mattress protector effect the overall temperature? One I was looking at (the Sultan Timan) has a foam/wool filling; would this make the bed hotter or cooler? Similaraly would a mattress protector (cotton, or a cotton/* blend) make the overall temperature hotter or cooler?

More generally, does anyone have any experience with this bed, latex beds, ikea latex mattresses, or ikea mattresses? As a poor student it's a fairly sizable chunk of change, and having a goodnights sleep is important for me, so I want to make sure this is the right decision.

Help me decide what to research.

acidic — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:46:10 -0800

I'm in need of ideas for a year-long research topic in economics, preferably relating to feminism, technology, or both. I'm about to embark on a sort of informal thesis, which will occupy about 1/6th of my academic time for the next year, relating to economics. Since it's a bit of a capstone project, I'd like it to involve my other main interests, feminism and the internet. Unfortunately, I haven't had the opportunity to take many classes which involve either of those interests as my program is quite standardized, but I'm eager to learn and throw myself into a passion project.

Certainly labor economics is a possibility, e.g. the wage gap, but I thought I would open the question up to the hive mind to see if there are any unanswered questions, creative viewpoints, or any other ideas which might be interesting.

A good example, which I'm already exploring, is a the research exploring the effect of online pornography on the incidence of rape. My perspective is somewhat snarky, a little bit "Freakonomics," and I just really don't want to spend a year, like, rating index funds!

How do I find the lack of radio waves?

mdbell79 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:06:24 -0800

What town in the United States has the lowest amount of detectable radio waves? Obviously, there are a lot of places (or used to be, anyway) where you can't get anything to come up on the radio dial. Which of those places would have the absolute least radio? As in, even though there are maybe hundreds of remote locations in the US (and let's say the continental US, because Alaska is probably the winner here anyway) where it's impossible to pick up anything listenable, would there be any place where there wasn't any radio that could even be detected?

Is there even a way to find this out?

Even better, is there any way to find out what the answer would have been in 1970? 1980?

I'm thinking mainly commercial AM/FM radio, and I don't even have a clue how to start looking into this. I figured that if anybody could help me figure it out, it'd be the metafilter crowd. If you need more information about what I'm looking for before you can help, I'd be glad to offer what I can. This is research for a project I'm working on, and although it's not vital it's a detail I'd like to be able to incorporate.

Survey research: How can I create a meaningful index from a diverse set of items?

proj — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:18:40 -0800

SurveyResearchFilter: Creating an index when response items are on different (and somewhat non-sensical) scales. I am working with a large survey data set. There are several questions that are of interest to me and these questions hang quite well together in a principal-components factor analysis; therefore, I'd love to make an index of the responses to this question to use a single dependent variable. Unfortunately, the questions are on different scales and some of the scales don't make sense. Two of the questions are dichotomous (agree/disagree). Two of the questions are on a semi-Likert-style scale (1: Strongly agree - 4: Strongly disagree --- I know, it is weird not to have a neutral middle point). One question has the scale 1: Agree, 2: Disagree, 3: Depends.

Obviously, I can't just throw all of the items into an index because the Likert-style questions would be weighted more heavily than the dichotomous or trichotomous questions. Further, I can't really tell what I should do with the trichotomous scale to make it make more sense. Interestingly, there exists a good deal of research using these exact questions and, puzzlingly, this methodological problem has not occurred to previous authors.

How can I create an index from these items while maintaining their respective proportional impact and, further, how can I make that trichotomous scale make sense?

How likely is MY bank to fail in the coming months?

croutonsupafreak — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:11:52 -0800

How can I evaluate the financial health of a US bank using publicly available records? I know that I'm being paranoid, but the news that the failure of a single US bank could wipe out 10 percent of FDIC's deposit-insurance fund, and that more banks are expected to fail in the coming year, has me worried about the safety of my heard-earned dollars.

I'd like to get a feel for which banks have the most exposure to subprime loans and financial shortfalls because of the housing downturn. Not sure if there's anything else I should consider as I begin my research. How do I begin?

How do you make your indie films?

seeminglee — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:13:50 -0800

What are the challenges that independent filmmakers + people working in the industry (actors, crew, etc) face today? What tools do you use currently for the different stages of your production? What do you like about them, what do you wish for? I am currently conducting research to understand the landscape of independent filmmaking, and where solutions / hacks exist for filmmakers in dealing with the problems.

Baby You Can Drive My Car

seawallrunner — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:15:27 -0800

What happens to concept cars unveiled in Auto Shows? Are they street legal? Are they even drivable - or for display only? If they are for display only - then what is the bare-minimum set of car features, that allows a car to be shown at a show? On the other hand, if the cars are street legal, are they ever made available for sale, and how can ordinary mortals not connected to the auto industry purchase such a car?

What can you tell me about 'Poe(t)heory'?

0bvious — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:51:54 -0800

What can you tell me about 'Poe(t)heory'? I have found little online regarding Poetheory, but it seems to be interchangable with the title 'Theorypo'. How separate a distinction is it from merely 'postmodern theory and poetry'? What sources of info should I be seeking?

Marjorie Perloff and Peter Jaeger are names that crop up regarding poetheory. Anyone else you know of or any related disciplines/schools/concepts?

Thanks

Qualitative Data Analysis... 101?

tybeet — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:23:15 -0800

ResearchFilter: How does one go about covering bases and exploring fundamentals of qualitative research? I'm working on a Psychology research project this summer with some professors, and neither me nor they have done any sort of qualitative data analysis. The bulk of our thesis is based on quantitative data measures, so it's not like we're up a creek here, but we've decided to undertake the task of implementing some questions that will be open-ended (i.e. a "Explain your thoughts/feelings regarding X" question) and will require some qualitative analyses and I was just wondering if there are any 101 sources or essays (or even scholarly journal articles which have used these methods that could serve as an example) on the subject?

Qualitative analysis doesn't happen very often in Psychology it seems

Should scientists be working out how to kill people?

greytape — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:57:58 -0800

Is defence R&D more productive for economic development than non-defence R&D? So I was talking with a fairly well-informed friend last night and he said that defence R&D is so productive in terms of commercial spinoffs, the internet, nuclear power, radar etc, that it is better for the economy than civilian R&D. Now this just seems ridiculous to me. Surely if you want civilian appllications you're best served by directly researching them. However my friend insisted that he had statistics to back up his claim, regarding the relative level of innovation created by Japan and Germany with their low levels of defence R&D spending (but high levels of civilian R&D), compared to the US and UK.
I didn't have anything to back up my argument beyond the fact that it seems intuitively correct. He is an economics teacher and has studied the subject with his class, so I deferred to him and am now in the process of researching the issue.
Now I don't know if his basic assertion is true as I haven't been able to find either his figures or anything to refute them. Strikes me though that Germany and Japan have been fairly innovative over the last 50 years (German engineering, Japanese hi-tech), so if anyone had any evidence to showed Germany and Japan were technological innovators that would be very welcome.
However I get the sense that rather than being an issue of defence vs. civilian, this is actually an issue of state provision vs. free markets. Japanese and German R&D spending, despite being high, mostly comes from the private sector. I found this link which shows this, here is a quote:

In fiscal 2003, R&D investment totaled 16.8 trillion yen,
of which 79.5% (13.36 trillion) came from the private sector and 20.2% (3.39 trillion) from the
public sector (Fig. 4). The private sector plays a greater role in R&D investment in Japan than in
major Western countries (Fig. 5). This is because Japanese investment in defense-related R&D is
quite small, while private-sector investment is quite strong.

Perhaps this accounts for the productivity of US/UK innovation, in that commerical R&D tends to be more short-termist, while governments can afford a long-term perspective. If this were true though, it would in no way support high-levels of defence spending, just a larger allocation of government funds to civilian research.

So comments from anyone who knows about this issue would be extremely welcome. I'd imagine that this is a fairly controversial area without any obvious answers, but I'm working from a fairly uninformed position so anything would be helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Yes, I really DO want to read your dissertation--please?

rhoticity — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:23:16 -0800

Is it in bad form to ask an author directly via email for an electronic copy of a dissertation or non-refereed academic article, if I, as a student, have no other method of access to the resources? I am in the process of writing a term paper for a college course and have run across citations for a dissertation and a presented paper at a conference, both by the same author (a professor at a school across the US from where I am.) Is it presumptuous of me to assume that it would be easy and normal for this professor to simply email me a copy of these two pieces of writing, without expectation of royalties or anything else? They're clearly for academic research purposes only, are extremely recent (no reason they would not be in electronic form, in other words), and are unavailable to me via any other modality.

Anyone have any tips as to things I should include in this email, provided I do end up sending it?

Experts are good at recognizing each other. Reference, please?

mausburger — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:55:40 -0800

I once read that said experts were good at identifying each other. Can you help me find a reference to this factoid? The study (at least, I think it was a study) was on the problem of identifying experts in any particular field. The criteria can be fuzzy and difficult to operationalize. The study said that experts could quickly identify each other, often in conversational settings. Non-experts don't have this ability. What I've described is the gist of the study, and I very likely have gotten details wrong.

I don't remember what field the paper was from, but I have a feeling it wasn't psychology. I'm not sure if I read the paper or read about the study elsewhere, e.g. a magazine article or a book. I have looked at the entry on expertise on wikipedia, and while it was very interesting, it didn't help.

Any pointers that can get me closer will be useful and I can do more digging.

Looking for detractors of Literary Darwinism

0bvious — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:45:07 -0800

Literary Darwinism: A relatively new field of evolutionary psychology / literary theory. What has recently been written in argument against it? I have read through some of the works of:

Joseph Carroll
Ellen Dissanayake
Jonathan Gottschall
Robert Storey
Michelle Scalise Sugiyama

...and a few others, yet I am having a hard time finding critical work designed to bring down the arguments of Darwinian Literary Studies. It appears that the field of Poststructuralism is one of the main targets of Literary Darwinism's (Lit-Dar) proponents.

Has anyone attempted to re-address the balance?

I have found little in Lit-Dar writings about specifically text and textuality, something the Postmodernists very much conern themselves with. Surely there is some work on the subject that addresses its absence from Lit-Dar writings?

(I am not interested in the critique of Evolutionary Psychology - of which there is plenty - unless it specifically addresses the Literary and Textual concerns of Darwinian Literary Studies.)

Thanks a lot

Is tv really and truly bad for toddlers or am I believing the hype?

taff — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:31:32 -0800

Where are all the research papers that say television for children under two is bad? I stormed out of mother's group in high dudgeon today (well, actually, I quietly left, but I wanted high dudgeon!) as one of the mums turned on the bloody Wiggles. Everything I've ever read has stated that tv is bad for munchkins under the age of two. But nobody really cites anything.... my baby book does, but it says it's a flawed study and doesn't really say what the study is.

In retrospect, I should have been more analytical of the research myself. I hate what tv does to kids, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to justify my abhorrence in the next few days.

I'm looking for published scientific method papers.... abstracts only if that's all we can view for free... but I guess I should stop with my proselytising till I've got the published facts to back me up.

(And if anyone wants to support me in my outrage that a host would turn on a television when ten 20month toddlers are playing in the room and two are expressly forbidden to watch tv.... please chime in, I'm feeling like a bit of a dickhead at the moment.)

Managing an Anothology Project

divabat — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:16:08 -0800

What should I take into consideration when spearheading an anthology project? What resources are out there for us? I'm organizing a book project to collect real-life stories related to the Others (non-Malay/Chinese/Indian, classified as "Other" on all official documentation) in Malaysia. This only started a few days ago, so it's all planning at this stage, but currently I've built up a great team and we're discussing issues on content, definitions, research, publication, and publicity.

While some of us in the group have some experience with publishing (as a writer, editor, or just part of the process somehow), none of us really have that much experience in starting, organizing, and managing such a project. I'm doing quite a bit of brainstorming to work out what we need to consider, but would like some ideas and tips in case I left anything out.

1. Publication - I've contacted a well-known socially-conscious (and somewhat alternative, but great for our target audience) local publisher, who is interested in looking at our manuscript when we're done. Their advice was to "just do it". This is great, but I'd also like Plans B, C, D, Etc.

How else can we find possible publishers, what should we look for in a publisher, and what should we ask them? Some in our group have suggested self-publishing - what should we take into consideration about this option? What other alternative options are there? (Malaysians, particularly our target readers, are quite web-savvy, but it is a bit difficult to purchase online due to Paypal/bank restrictions.)

2. Rights - how do we manage rights and contracts with contributors? I would like the contributors to keep the copyright to their works (and give an option for a Creative Commons license), but would this be a good idea overall? We're planning on field interviews (to get stories from people who won't necessarily write their own tales, such as older folk) and may possibly deal with translations - who gets the rights to those?

3. Finances - assuming we make money out of this, what would we do with the money? I don't think we'll ever make enough to pay each contributor individually (though that would be great!!). Donating the proceeds to an NGO would be great, but our topic is in-between niche and general and there isn't a specific NGO for Malaysian Others yet.

Also, I've heard a lot about how we shouldn't pay to get something published. If we're getting published through an established publisher, are there any costs we still have to look out for? We're thinking of possibly getting sponsorship - is it worth it? Would we need sponsorship? (Perhaps to cover costs of research and compilation?) Where would be good resources for money?

4. Timelines - what's a typical timeline for this project? I was thinking 6 months - get the Call for Submissions and guidelines ready within 3-4 weeks, get submissions for about 3-4 months, edit and compile and get everything ready for publication by Month 6. Is that realistic, or too short? What's normal?

5. Team needs - currently I'm scouting people for editorials, research/field interviews, publicity/promotions, website management, and logistics/finance/publishing. What other skills and roles would we need for a project like this?

Are there any resources for managing a project like this? I've seen plenty of books and articles on non-fiction writing, but those tend to assume you're the sole writer. Any resources on managing anthologies?

Thanks so much!

Best keyword research tool

Blue Buddha — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:22:11 -0800

What are currently the best keyword research tools or software? I'm looking specifically for something that can give me the amount of searches performed by keyword/phrase on major search engine, by time period, and by country.

For example: "2,020 searches for 'metafilter questions' in Google Canada for 2007". And of course, Yahoo! and MSN numbers would help, too, if possible. Thanks in advance.

I used Google's free keyword tools, but they don't offer concrete numbers.

Where can I find open GIS/location data on coal power plants?

OverlappingElvis — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:22:50 -0800

Is there open, free, or inexpensive comprehensive data on the location of coal-fired power plants in the United States available anywhere? I'm a senior political science student doing research on the health, environmental, and policy impacts of coal power plants on communities around the country and I'm looking for either (ideally) a GIS dataset of all coal plants or (less ideal but still workable) a flatfile list of coal plant locations. The data will be used for mapping and statistical purposes. I've looked through my school's resources, and they don't have what I need. I've also tried calling the Department of Energy, but they don't make that information available if they have it. This kind of data can be leased from Platts or elsewhere, but my budget is extremely limited (department isn't going to give funding to an undergrad). Any advice?

ReferenceLibrarianFilter

Countess Elena — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:45:00 -0800

Tell me what to call this topic I'm interested in, so that I know how to research it. It's somewhere within architecture and/or engineering. For a story I'm writing, I need to read up about the engineering, expense and logistics of early 20th century building techniques, as affected by water table levels in the soil.

For example, by the river in the Delta, where I grew up, nobody had basements -- and there were hardly any subterranean levels to buildings -- because the water table in the soil was so high. The cemeteries of New Orleans are built above ground for this same reason. I need to know more about this and about the limitations it has historically posed.

If I could put this in fewer words, I could research it in the library by myself. What should I be looking for?

Who is this guy?

amtho — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:52:18 -0800

Anybody read Polish? Or know about Stan Nonin? I'm in the middle of semi-giving a domain name to this guy - suddenly I figured I'd Google his name, and actually found that he buys domains, well, more than just from me. I found one message where someone was also asking about him, but no replies. The only other place discussing him is in (I think) Polish. Could be some other Eastern European language. Here it is:

link to Polish article

I'm now wondering if he intends to send spam from the domain or something. He seems reasonable enough -- said it was for some people with a band that are putting together a web site -- and my client has no use for the domain name anymore, their old business is no longer in existence (and I'm not comfortable profiting from domain name sales anyway).

Can anyone read the linked page and tell me what relevant info it contains? Thanks!

Using the word count (wd) in Gale PowerSearch

hobbes — Fri, 09 May 2008 13:59:30 -0800

Librarians / Researchers / Gale PowerSearch users/developers! How do I use the word count limit successfully? I'm trying to search for articles on "nafta" and "environment".

Without a word count, I get 141 articles:
CCL: (ke (nafta)) And (ke (environment))LIMITS:( (full text))

Restricting the word count to more than 600, I get 7 articles:
CCL: ((ke (nafta)) And (ke (environment)) And (wd >600))LIMITS:( (full text))

Searching for less than 600, I get 3 articles:
CCL: ((ke (nafta)) And (ke (environment)) And (wd <600))LIMITS:( (full text))>

I've also set the word count at a really high number (200K+) and it still only returns 10 articles. What am I doing wrong? And is there an easier way to go about finding longer full-text articles?

Visually exploring and representing survey data.

proj — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:45:08 -0800

Best ways to visually explore a large survey data set? My advisor has advised me to explore my data set visually before diving in statistically. It is a large (N = 180,000+) survey data set comprised of individuals in over 80 countries. Most of the responses are categorical or dichotomous in nature, taking the form "agree/disagree" or "yes/no/maybe." Some of them are Likert-style scales (1-5, Disagree-Agree). Many of the demographic variables are also categorical (for example, rather than asking income, "income level" is asked) but I do have a few continuous variables such as age. My dependent variable of interest is a scale composed of four survey items indexed to 100 (although the actual number of discrete values taken on the scale is rather low owing to the nature of the questions comprising the scale).

What would be some interesting ways to visually explore this data? Obviously, scatterplots (even with jittering) are not the way to go because of the highly redundant and categorical nature of the data. I have a few boxplots that I've generated (usually separating by gender or region). I am open to abstract suggestions or concrete suggestions using R or Stata.

Finding the Walls to Breakthrough

Rubbstone — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:31:51 -0800

What are the modern fields in science currently under crisis? I've been reading Thomas Kuhn, I am really curious as to if there are any areas in modern science where the models simply don't work any more. I'm mostly looking to see where I can fit my self into an emerging breakthrough

Donating body to cancer research

judith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:46:20 -0800

A dear friend's mother is dying of lung cancer. It's Stage IV metastatic lung cancer that has spread to her brain, bones and lymph nodes. She very much wants her remains to be donated specifically for cancer research and we're having trouble finding out how to do that. She and her family would prefer that her remains are not used for general medical school anatomy training, but rather that the tumor samples and specific pathology of her disease might help cancer researchers in some way.

Her own doctors have not been able to assist with this, and we are calling various willed body programs without having much luck. Our time frame is a few weeks, so we'd like to get this planned as soon as possible.

Might you know of a facility who would be interested in granting her wish and that would benefit from studying her body?