Research Incubator: Purposeful Muddling through Myriad Methods

Communication is a diverse discipline that includes many social scientific, humanistic, and critical modes of inquiry. After elucidating several challenges to teaching a communication research methods course, this article describes a four-credit, one-semester “research incubator” that was piloted by two faculty members and seven students at a midsize, private, New England college in spring 2017. The incubator built upon the methods class, involving students in one of three projects: content analysis of race/ethnicity and character deaths in The Walking Dead, textual analysis of mortality and morality in The Walking Dead, and focus group analysis of podcast listener motivations. Assessment of students’ research and soft skills revealed that the course involved valuable experiences with methodological rigor as well as critical thinking, analysis, and group communication skills.