Today’s Plan:
- Drafting a Methodology Section
- For Next Session
Drafting Your Methodology Section
As an English major, I really can’t remember ever having to draft a methodology section. I didn’t do it as an undergrad, nor did I write one as an MA student. I think the first time I ever wrote one was during my PhD, in a qualitative methods research course.
Since then, I have written many of them–both for scholarly pursuits and as part of grant-research and/or assessment teams. Learning to write comprehensive yet concise methodologies is a valuable skill that will benefit you in a wide number of writing jobs. Put simply: before anyone gives you money to do anything, they are going to want detailed instructions on how you plan to spend that money: be it research, web design, grant writing.
Also, as a professional writer, it is not uncommon for you to enter into a project “mid-stream.” Projects will often have begun before you were a part of the team. You might be hired by a pharmaceutical company to write a progress report for a drug trial that started years before you were hired. Or you might be hired by a non-profit to secure a grant and expand an already existing program. In either case, you will likely be handed a pile of material and some data. You will likely have to work to create more data. So, I hope you see how this project prepares you to do that kind of work.
So, the goal for Tuesday is to draft a methodology section that comes in between 500 and 600 words.
A methodology section has a few key expectations:
- First, it needs to detail how you collected your samples/objects/texts (whatever things you analyzed). We analyzed job ads. We collected them. There were criteria for what kinds of jobs we collected. We did not specify a single site for collection. Can you invent a sophisticated yet non-chalant reason for why we were so sloppy? Maybe two sentences on that last point. Make it sound like we are smart and not like we don’t (which, um, means I don’t) have our/my shit together).
- Second, it needs to detail how you analyzed your data. What framework did we use? Does it have a history? Were changes made to the analytical framework in media res? Hint: yes.
- Third, it needs to detail how you ensured/checked the quality/integrity of your data.
Okay, now it is time for a little curve ball. Below I am going to give you some preliminary material for drafting not only the methodology section, but also the report. Some of it is intentionally misleading. Some of it is intentionally inaccurate. I am checking your attention to detail. I am also checking on your ability to distinguish critically important details from minor and less significant ones.
2023 Introduction to the Job Report Project
Our first major project acts as a follow-up to Brumberger and Lauer’s article 2014 article “The Evolution of Technical Communication: An Analysis of Industry Job Postings.” I will ask you to replicate their research methodology in small scale. I myself did this work when I was hired by UNC back in the summer of 2017. I was charged with developing 3 courses that would help both Writing minors and English majors be better prepared for the job market. This charge led me to research job advertisements for English majors, and, at the time, Brumberger and Lauer was the most recent and comprehensive study I found.
However, their article focuses on “technical communication.” This designation can have many meanings–sometimes it is merely a synonym for professional writing. But not in their case–they use it (as do I) in the more precise sense of developing documentation (instruction manuals), product testing (usability reports), and working with scientific experts to communicate scientific/technical knowledge. Their research speaks more to folks at large research institutions with Professional and Technical Writing major, more specialized faculty, and software licenses such as MadCap Flare or Adobe RoboHelp.Our department didn’t have anyone matching those specializations–so as much as I appreciate their research, I wanted something a bit more relevant to our department. We are a much smaller department. While we currently have 7 full-time faculty (myself, Dr. Wood, Dr. Austin, Dr. Ezzaher, Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Brownlee, and Dr. Golson) none of us, I think, would claim Professional or Technical writing as a core specialization–we have experts in Rhetorical Theory, Public Rhetorics, Cultural Rhetorics, Composition and Writing Studies, Rhetoric and Technology. So the question that drove my own research, which you will learn to recreate, is: what skills, technologies, characteristics can UNC focus on to maximize your preparation for today’s job market? How can we best tap into the specializations of our faculty to design both an intellectually rigorous and vocationally strategic program?
In answering that question, I’ve turned my attention to Professional Writing jobs outside of technical writing. During my research, I came across a specialized job listing site–mediabistro.com. From their “About Us” page:
Mediabistro is the premier media job listings site and career destination for savvy media professionals. Whether you’re searching for new job opportunities, striving to advance your career, or looking to learn new skills and develop valuable expertise, we are here to strengthen and support your professional journey. We have the tools and resources to help you navigate your own path and find career happiness.
In addition to job postings, mediabistro.com offers resume services and courses on professionalization and personal brand building. Rather than turning to a more popular site like monster.com, I used mediabistro.com because it focuses specifically on jobs involving writing and communication. I particularly valued it over, say, Indeed.com or Linkedin because of its specific emphasis on creativity. Many of the students taking this course would be English Literature majors; I wanted to do what I could to make sure the course surveyed jobs that a) they might want and b) for which they would feel more qualified.
I spent the month of June 2017 scanning every job ad posted to mediabistro.com. I filtered out jobs that:
- Called for experience in television production (especially those that required years of on-air experience)
- Called for extensive experience as a field journalist (although I retained jobs open to those without journalistic experience; a few jobs were looking for bloggers or content contributers)
- Required degrees in finance or accounting
- Required extensive experience with Google Ads and/or other Customer Relationship Management (CRM) softwares (Salesforce was particularly popular)
- Required applicants bring a client log with them
- Required management or hiring experience (the term management is quite slippery in adverts; sometimes it means “manage a team” and clearly indicates the need for leadership experience. Sometimes it means “manage our twitter account” and isn’t, per se, a leadership position)
- Required backend coding skills
- Required extensive graphic design portfolios (I did retain entry level graphic design jobs)
- Required 5 or more years of experience
- Telemarketing jobs, part-time jobs, or unpaid internships
After filtering out these jobs, I was left with a corpus of 375 jobs. After closer inspection of every add in the corpus, I coded 232 jobs. The data from this coding process can be found here.
I ran this project again in the spring of 2022. My research assistant, Jacob Rigsby, collected another 258 jobs from mediabistro.com. After closer inspection, we culled the corpus to 240 jobs. Jacob first coded 25 jobs from the 2017 corpus for norming purposes. After that practice run, Jacob and I coded every job in the 2022 corpus, meeting on Thursdays to compare results and discuss and rectify non-congruent codes. We made a few slight adjustments to the coding scheme. In particular, we changed “critical thinking” to “analytic and critical thinking” and stopped looking for Cascading Style Sheets and HTML, instead compressing both into one code.
When I ran this experiment for the first time in 2018, job ads were coded by groups of students in my ENG 201 Writing as a Job class. Those codes were compared to my own codes to produce a final coding document.
This document contains final results for both projects.
