Chapter 1.

Question 1

What is the general objective of qualitative researchers?

Answer 1

To discover meaning

Question 2

What types of meaning are there?

Answer 2

Social meaning and “material” meaning

Question 3

What is the main type of data gathered in qualitative research?

Answer 3

Words, texts, and images

Question 4

Do qualitative researchers use numbers?

Answer 4

Sometimes. It depends on the research methodology chosen

Question 5

What is the main form of study associated with quantitative reearch?

Answer 5

Hypothesis testing

Question 6

What is a paradigm?

Answer 6

A researchers view of social reality.

Question 7

What are the philosophical components of a paradigm?

Answer 7

Ontology and epistemology.

Question 8

What is ontology?

Answer 8

A philosophical belief system about the nature of social reality.

Question 9

What are the three major ontological positions in qualitative research?

Answer 9

Positivism, interpretivism, and critical perspectives,

Question 10

What is epistemology?

Answer 10

a philosophical belief system on who can be a knowledge-builder

Question 11

What does a positivist epistemology privilege?

Answer 11

The researcher as the knowledge builder. due to objective stance or Stan dard measurement instrument.

Question 12

What does and interpretivist epistemology privilege?

Answer 12

A cooperative approach between researcher and research participation in the knowledge-building process.

Question 13

What is the focus of a critic al approach?

Answer 13

How power is infused in the knowledge-building process.

Question 14

What does the philosophical foundation of the research project affect?

Answer 14

Every aspect of the research project!

Question 15

What is a methodology?

Answer 15

A theory, strategy, or plan for how a study will be executed.

Question 16

Where does a researcher’s methodology come from?

Answer 16

The ontological and epistemological beliefs of the researcher

Question 17

What does research methodology bridge in the research process?

Answer 17

Philosophical assumptions together with research design

Question 18

What research position is associated with a survey methodology

Answer 18

positivism

Question 19

What does epistemology determine?

Answer 19

Determines the theoretical perspectives chosen.
Determines the type of research problems selected.

Question 20

What are research methods?

Answer 20

Techniques for gathering evidence. Arguably either listening to (or interrogation), observation, or examining traces and records.

Question 21

What is the most important factor in selecting a research method?

Answer 21

A close correspondence between the purpose or question and the method selected

Question 22

What is the danger of becoming too familiar with one particular method?

Answer 22

It will skew the kind of data you collect and affect your ability to answer your research question

Question 23

What does a holistic approach require of researchers?

Answer 23

To be cognizant of the relationship between epistemology, theory, and methods, and to look at research as a process.

Question 24

Does a holistic research approach require researchers to disavow their belief systems?

Answer 24

no

Question 25

What is the ontology found in quantitative methods?

Answer 25

there is an objective truth waiting to be found

Question 26

What is the epistemology found in quantitative methods

Answer 26

Social reality is knowable. Research must be objective and not allow values and attitudes to enter into research inquiry.

Question 26

What is the ontology found in qualitative methods?

Answer 26

Assumes a reality where there are multiple truths and privileges multiple realities and constructions

Question 26

What is the methodology of quantitative approaches?

Answer 26

With a positive perspective, the goal is to describe causal relationships framed with a variable language.

Stresses causality and a deductive world of inquiry

Seeks confirmation through testable hypotheses. Refers to social facts instead of meanings.

Question 27

What is the epistemology of qualitative approach?

Answer 27

Social reality is knowable but subjective. Goal is to understand the intersubjective nature of reality.

Question 28

Way is the methodology of a qualitative (interpretive) perspectives?

Answer 28

Stresses the importance of induction as a mode of inquiry. Seeks to generate theories about the social world. Asks how the world is experienced subjectively by a range of others.

Question 29

Way is the methodology of a qualitative (critical) perspectives?

Answer 29

Ask questions regarding power relationships that hold dominant socially constructed points of view in place such that they seem to be truths

Question 30

what are the methods used in a quantitative approach?

Answer 30

Creation of measurable variables to create testable hypotheses.

Question 31

How do quantitative methods analyze and interpret data

Answer 31

looks for causal relationships outside of the individual that can predict human behaviour. Employs statistical analysis with the goal of generalizing research findings

Question 32

What are the methods used in a qualitative approach

Answer 32

Emphasis is on capturing subjective meanings. seeks research methods that can enable understanding lived reality from multiple perspectives

Question 33

How do qualitative methods analyze data.

Answer 33

Use analytical methods that get at subjective understanding, such as grounded theory, with the goal of generating theory. Interpretive techniques privilege lived experience and retain the worlds of participants’ narratives with the goal of getting at the process of a given issue or problem under study

Question 34

Inductive research

Answer 34

Begins with specific data out of which more general ideas or theories are generated. The goal is exploratory and not confirmatory.

Question 35

Deductive research

Answer 35

Begins with a theory from which a specific set of hypotheses are derived and tested with the goal of confirming basic tenets of the theory

Question 36

Qualitative research is typically deductive or inductive?

Answer 36

inductive

Question 37

What are the three kinds of research purposes?

Answer 37

Exploratory, descriptive, explanatory

Question 38

What is exploratory research?

Answer 38

Finding information on understudied areas. Typically involves “what–?” questions

Question 39

What kind of research design might exploratory research use?

Answer 39

Unstructured interviews or focus groups. Or perhaps ethnography, We want to gain insights into a population we know very little about

Question 40

What is descriptive research?

Answer 40

Seeks to describe the aspect of social reality under investigation, usually through thick description methods. This is the “How–?” question.

Question 41

What kind of research design might descriptive research use?

Answer 41

In-depth interviews, observations, or oral history interviews.

Question 42

What is the design of explanatory research?

Answer 42

Structured interviews asking a range of specific questions. Might also combine survey research with in-depth interviews to get broad and specific. Could also use content analysis.

Question 43

What is Critical realism?

Answer 43

A critical realist holds on to a positivist view of the social world, namely that there is a real world “out there” independent of subjective knowledge, and at the same time is aware of and more accepting of the fact that human knowers must still socially construct a view of this world filtered through a subjective (constructivist) lens.