Understanding Our Process
We started seriously thinking about writing Quantitative Research Methods for Communication: A Hands-On Approach in Fall 2003. Jason Wrench was tasked with teaching his first course in quantitative research methods and set about creating a workbook for use in his own class. Wrench had been a doctoral student at West Virginia University, known for its quantitative communication research, and wanted to create a workbook that mirrored how he had learn research methods in the communication at both Texas Tech University and West Virginia University and the educational psychology and psychology departments at West Virginia University. As a long time mathphobe, Wrench realized that teaching quantitative methods could be both non-threatening and useful when approached in a student-friendly manner.
After using the workbook for about a year, he showed the workbook to his two mentors, Virginia Peck Richmond and James C. McCroskey, who saw the potential in Wrench's workbook as a full-blown textbook. Candice Thomas-Maddox, who was also a mentee of Richmond and McCroskey and a colleague of Wrench at Ohio University, was brought on board as one of the major shepherders of the project.
Four and a half years later, the book was finally published. Our goal was two-fold. First we wanted to write a textbook that was reader-friendly. We realized that a number of introduction books in quantitative research read like math textbooks, which tend to put-off many students. We wanted the focus to be on how we conduct quantitative research, not just on the math.
Second, we wanted to make sure that the textbook was a complete package including helpful resources. We got permission from the Eastern Communication Association to publish ten previously published articles. We’re the first book of its kind to have this kind of access to real samples from the scholarly literature. Next, we created a skeletal outline of the textbook for students. Skeletal outlines are useful when attempting to learn a book’s material on one’s own or when following along with a professor’s lecture. Lastly, we collected an original dataset for the textbook. We wanted to show students that answering communication questions is not only a theoretical endeavor, but also a concrete practice that leads to new understandings of how humans communicate.
Overall, we are very happy with how the project looks today. As of last count, over 50 colleges and universities across the United States had adopted the textbook. We hope that you enjoy this book and find it useful in all of your research endeavors.