Phase III: The Builder
Phase III: The Builder
Duration: Weeks 5 to 11 in MC 451, Weeks 5 to 10 in MC 501 (Book Parts II and III: Planning and Operationalization) Construct your research framework and measurement tools
Reading this page for MC 501? Use the Graduate edition control in the lower corner of the page. Phase III is where the two courses differ most, and your choice is remembered across the hub and the textbook. MC 451 students should leave it off.
Learning Objectives
By the end of Phase III, you will:
- Understand research ethics and complete CITI certification
- Apply theory to frame research questions and hypotheses
- Define variables conceptually and operationally
- Build a comprehensive codebook through qualitative immersion
- Design a sampling plan and pilot test your coding scheme
- Document edge cases, coding decisions, and codebook revisions
Phase III Overview
This is the longest and most substantive phase. You move from planning to building: choosing a theoretical lens, writing questions the data can actually answer, then working through the operationalization gap into a codebook you could hand to another coder.
The qualitative work you do here, immersing yourself in the data and noticing patterns before you count anything, becomes the first half of your final paper.
Reading map
| Chapter | What it gives you |
|---|---|
| Ch 4: Intelligence Gathering | Finding and reading the literature; the literature map |
| Ch 5: Theory as a Lens | Theory, variables, and hypotheses |
| Ch 6: The Prospectus | Research questions; the prospectus; pre-registration |
| Ch 7: Structured listening | Field notes; manifest and latent content |
| Ch 8: From vibes to variables | The operationalization gap; levels of measurement; reliability and validity |
| Ch 9: The rulebook and first workspace | Building and coding the codebook in R |
| Ch 10: The sample | Sampling strategies; the pilot; kappa and alpha |
Your course schedule is the authority on which week each chapter lands: MC 451, MC 501. Every assignment is due Friday of the week listed, by 11:59 PM.
Assignments (MC 451): 250 points
CITI Ethics Certification (25 pts), Week 5
Complete the CITI Program’s Social and Behavioral Research training and submit your completion certificate. This is due early because it gates the human-subjects reasoning you apply for the rest of the term.
Annotated Manuscript (25 pts), Week 5
Find and annotate one peer-reviewed research article related to your topic. Focus on the research gap, theoretical framework, method, findings, and limitations. Write a connection statement explaining how this article relates to your project.
Topic Selection and Research Questions (25 pts), Week 6
Submit your finalized topic, formal research questions (and hypotheses where appropriate), a variable preview, and a justification for why these questions matter.
Project Prospectus (25 pts), Week 7
Draft a one-page research plan: topic, theory, data source, preliminary research questions, and a rough timeline.
Definitions Practice (25 pts), Week 8
Define at least four variables with conceptual definitions, operational definitions, levels of measurement, coded values, and edge-case decision rules.
Codebook and Qualitative Memo (50 pts), Week 9
Submit your complete codebook (study overview, unit of analysis, all variables with decision rules) plus a 200 to 300 word qualitative memo describing the patterns you observed during immersion.
Sampling Plan and Pilot (75 pts), Week 11
Design your sampling strategy (search terms, date range, method) and pilot test your codebook on 10 to 20 items. Document edge cases, coding decisions, and any revisions.
This assignment is due the same Friday as Data Wrangling (50 pts) in the Analyst phase, so Week 11 is the heaviest week of the term. The extra week exists so the pilot is real work rather than rushed work. Draft the sampling plan during Week 10.
Assignments (MC 501): 325 points
CITI Ethics Certification (25 pts), Week 5
Complete the CITI Program’s Social and Behavioral Research training and submit your completion certificate.
Your ethics work also includes the non-human-subjects IRB determination you would actually file for this project. Drafting it builds familiarity with the protocol process you will need for doctoral study, even though a public-content content analysis is unlikely to require review.
Annotated Manuscripts, three articles (25 pts), Week 5
Find and annotate three peer-reviewed research articles related to your topic. For each, address the research gap, theoretical framework, method, findings, and limitations. Then write a single synthesis statement explaining how the three relate to each other and to your project. The synthesis, not the three summaries, is where the graduate work lives.
Topic Selection and Research Questions (25 pts), Week 6
Submit your finalized topic, formal research questions (and hypotheses where appropriate), a variable preview, and a justification for why these questions matter.
Research Proposal, sentence outline (75 pts), Week 7
A structured sentence outline that could serve as the front half of a conference paper: framing, theoretical positioning, the questions, and the proposed design. Every point in the outline is a full sentence carrying an actual claim, not a topic label.
This replaces the undergraduate one-page prospectus and is worth three times as much, because it is doing three times as much work.
Definitions Practice (25 pts), Week 8
Define at least four variables with conceptual definitions, operational definitions, levels of measurement, coded values, and edge-case decision rules.
Extended Codebook and Reliability Protocol (75 pts), Week 9
Submit your complete codebook (study overview, unit of analysis, all variables with decision rules) plus a qualitative memo describing the patterns you observed during immersion.
Your codebook adds a formal reliability protocol: the planned sample size for the reliability subset, the target alpha threshold, the coder training procedure, and the revision triggers that say in advance what you will do if the threshold is missed.
Sampling Plan and Pilot, 20 to 30 items (75 pts), Week 10
Design your sampling strategy (search terms, date range, method) and pilot test your codebook on 20 to 30 items, a large enough subset to compute a meaningful reliability statistic. Document edge cases, coding decisions, the alpha you obtained, and any revisions the pilot forced.