4b - Methodological issues – How has age been researched, how successful has this been?

Question 1

William Foot Whyte - mixed methods

Answer 1

interviewed ‘Doc’, a leader of the street-corner gang he was studying, while also using participant observation. Sometimes research might employ one main method but find that this leaves gaps in the data which need to be filled. For example, ethnographers doing participant observation might also carry out interviews to find out about aspects of the social group and its history that they have been unable to observe. This gives it high validity

Question 2

Stephen Ball - mixed methods

Answer 2

In some circumstances quantitative methods are used to study the more stable aspects of social life while qualitative methods are employed to study changes. For example, Stephen Ball in his study of ‘Beachside Comprehensive’ (1981) used questionnaires to determine friendship networks and observation to examine how the children progressed through schooling.
reliability

Question 3

Involving Chinese older people in policy and practice.

Published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (mixed methods) - 1

Answer 3

This study aimed to enable Chinese older people to influence policy and practice. The first involved group discussions with older Chinese people to formulate a joint statement. They carried out a pilot study which gained the trust of their participants, to relax them and help train them to become active, engaged members of the group discussion - validity and ethics.
The second part was the establishment of three local working groups with the assistance to seek resources to set up a home care project for frail Chinese older people.

Question 4

Involving Chinese older people in policy and practice.

Published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (mixed methods) - 2

Answer 4

The final part was the exploration of older people’s views on involvement and their evaluation of the effectiveness of the methods applied in this project. Focus groups were organised at different stages of the project with a questionnaire to collect information about experiences of involvement. In order to ensure high levels of validity the researchers used respondent validation. This involved asking the participants from the research to check through the conclusions of the research to ensure the researchers had correctly interpreted and presented the older Chinese people they had studied. - Objectivity