COMM 2820

Research Methods in Communication Studies

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

Covers social scientific methods to solve communication research problems empirically. Topics include basic principles of social scientific research, random sampling, questionnaire design, experimental research design, focus group techniques, content analysis, and basic descriptive and inferential statistics. Students also learn basic data manipulation, presentation, and analysis techniques using SPSS and EXCEL.

Enrollment Information Enrollment limited to: seniors, juniors, and sophomores.

Distribution Requirements (DLG-AG, SBA-AG)

Last 4 Terms Offered 2026SP, 2025SU, 2025SP, 2024SU

Learning Outcomes

• Have an appreciation for how we do research in the field of communication and why it is important to understand research methods.
• Utilize a variety of communication databases to identify scholarly research related to a research topic of interest.
• Understand key concepts and vocabulary used to describe various research paradigms and designs.
• Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of communication research designs that utilize in-depth interviews, content analysis, surveys, and experiments.
• Apply knowledge and skills learned about content analysis to design a codebook to analyze newspaper coverage.
• Apply knowledge and skills learned about surveys to design an original questionnaire about media use and a sampling strategy.
• Analyze numerical data using descriptive and inferential statistics in EXCEL and SPSS.
• Convey statistical information through graphs, charts, and figures using EXCEL and SPSS.

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