Chapter 1. Flashcards
What is the general objective of qualitative researchers?
To discover meaning
What types of meaning are there?
Social meaning and “material” meaning
What is the main type of data gathered in qualitative research?
Words, texts, and images
Do qualitative researchers use numbers?
Sometimes. It depends on the research methodology chosen
What is the main form of study associated with quantitative reearch?
Hypothesis testing
What is a paradigm?
A researchers view of social reality.
What are the philosophical components of a paradigm?
Ontology and epistemology.
What is ontology?
A philosophical belief system about the nature of social reality.
What are the three major ontological positions in qualitative research?
Positivism, interpretivism, and critical perspectives,
What is epistemology?
a philosophical belief system on who can be a knowledge-builder
What does a positivist epistemology privilege?
The researcher as the knowledge builder. due to objective stance or Stan dard measurement instrument.
What does and interpretivist epistemology privilege?
A cooperative approach between researcher and research participation in the knowledge-building process.
What is the focus of a critic al approach?
How power is infused in the knowledge-building process.
What does the philosophical foundation of the research project affect?
Every aspect of the research project!
What is a methodology?
A theory, strategy, or plan for how a study will be executed.
Where does a researcher’s methodology come from?
The ontological and epistemological beliefs of the researcher
What does research methodology bridge in the research process?
Philosophical assumptions together with research design
What research position is associated with a survey methodology
positivism
What does epistemology determine?
Determines the theoretical perspectives chosen.
Determines the type of research problems selected.
What are research methods?
Techniques for gathering evidence. Arguably either listening to (or interrogation), observation, or examining traces and records.
What is the most important factor in selecting a research method?
A close correspondence between the purpose or question and the method selected
What is the danger of becoming too familiar with one particular method?
It will skew the kind of data you collect and affect your ability to answer your research question
What does a holistic approach require of researchers?
To be cognizant of the relationship between epistemology, theory, and methods, and to look at research as a process.
Does a holistic research approach require researchers to disavow their belief systems?
no
What is the ontology found in quantitative methods?
there is an objective truth waiting to be found
What is the epistemology found in quantitative methods
Social reality is knowable. Research must be objective and not allow values and attitudes to enter into research inquiry.
What is the ontology found in qualitative methods?
Assumes a reality where there are multiple truths and privileges multiple realities and constructions
What is the methodology of quantitative approaches?
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.
What is the epistemology of qualitative approach?
Social reality is knowable but subjective. Goal is to understand the intersubjective nature of reality.
Way is the methodology of a qualitative (interpretive) perspectives?
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.
Way is the methodology of a qualitative (critical) perspectives?
Ask questions regarding power relationships that hold dominant socially constructed points of view in place such that they seem to be truths
what are the methods used in a quantitative approach?
Creation of measurable variables to create testable hypotheses.
How do quantitative methods analyze and interpret data
looks for causal relationships outside of the individual that can predict human behaviour. Employs statistical analysis with the goal of generalizing research findings
What are the methods used in a qualitative approach
Emphasis is on capturing subjective meanings. seeks research methods that can enable understanding lived reality from multiple perspectives
How do qualitative methods analyze data.
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
Inductive research
Begins with specific data out of which more general ideas or theories are generated. The goal is exploratory and not confirmatory.
Deductive research
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
Qualitative research is typically deductive or inductive?
inductive
What are the three kinds of research purposes?
Exploratory, descriptive, explanatory
What is exploratory research?
Finding information on understudied areas. Typically involves “what–?” questions
What kind of research design might exploratory research use?
Unstructured interviews or focus groups. Or perhaps ethnography, We want to gain insights into a population we know very little about
What is descriptive research?
Seeks to describe the aspect of social reality under investigation, usually through thick description methods. This is the “How–?” question.
What kind of research design might descriptive research use?
In-depth interviews, observations, or oral history interviews.
What is the design of explanatory research?
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.
What is Critical realism?
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.
