chapter 6 Flashcards
What are Naturalistic Observations? What are the goals, strategies and issues to consider?
- What is it: It is when observations are made in a natural setting, done over a period of time. Typically done without hypothesis.
- Goal: to describe and understand where people live, work and experience their life and complete accurate analysis.
- Strategies: researchers immerse themselves in the situation, observation, interviewing informants, examining documents
Issues to consider:
*Participation & loss of objectivity:
- occurs when someone is fully immersed in their surroundings
- Concealment and ethical concerns
- Observing without informed consent?
- Make sure you respect reb
- Work with partner to check basis
- Limiting the scope of the study
- must choose specific behaviours to focus on if you want data to be meaningful
- Reactivity issues
- participants react to being observed and change their behaviour
- Cannot study well-defined hypothesis
- Exploratory (beginning stages of developing a theory)
- Time Consuming
- Watching behaviours takes time
- Complex Data interpretation
- Challenging to analyze and interpret data without bias (difficult to find patterns without imposing preconceived notions)
Systematic Observation
- Targets specific actions and is less global than naturalistic observations
- observations are quantifiable (makes it easier to quantify statistically)
- i - priori hypothesis first
ex.
Coding Systems: Systematic and formalized set of rules (clear and consitant to make sure observations are reported systematically) - Looking for: Presence or absence of behaviour
- Coding system becomes operational definition of IV
- Should be simple
- May be preexisting system Coding Systems (best if validated and reliable)
Issues:
- Reliability-make sure observations are constancy across time and between raters (inter rater reliability)
- Reactivity- participants change their behaviour when they know they are being observed
- Sampling Behaviour-decide which behaviours you are going to sample and how long you observe them
- maintain accuracy minimize baises throughout the crosses
case studies
In depth exploration of an individual or event
- perfect for highly specific or rare event
ex.
Phineas - guy who gets pole through his brain
- Psychobiography: special version - certain theories are applied to the guy’s life
- Common in Library search, interview, observation
- Common in neuroscience: focuses on in brain injuries and neurological issues
- rich in data
- Captures nuanced information
- rare and unusual conditions
- Often used in first step to build a hypothesis
- hard to generalize this highly specific information
Archival Research
- Use data that’s already been collected (can be qualitative or quantitative)
Three major sources:
* Statistical records-hospitals government, public records crime reports major sports leagues
* Survey archives-Consortium for Political
& Social Research, World Values Survey (help researchers understand cultural differences)
* General Social Survey
Survey Archives
- Written records- diaries, letters,
speeches, Social media, Mass communication: books, newspapers, magazine articles,
television programming - Used as a first step to justify a larger study
What is Qualitative Research?
A method of naturalistic enquiry
* Focus is on the meanings the
participants attach to their social
world (Bowling, 2002).
* Doesn’t usually involve counts or measures
* Mixed Methods is the gold standard (fuller picture)
ex. is there anything else you want me to know on this topic…
When To Use Qualitative Methods
- Exploratory Research (e.g., prison
study)- new or understudied phenomenon - Hypothesis generation
- Framing a research phenomenon
- Subjective Personalogical Research
- Real world, lived experience
- Participatory Action Research goal, involve participants so they are active in research
ex. provide opportunities to people in the community to be involved in research, they could be trained as recruiters… - Communities become integrated
Aims and Defining Features
Focus is on words, texts, images, etc.
* Exploring & uncovering meaning
* Understanding quality & subjective lived experience
* Not prediction vs. control
1 Hypotheses
2. methods selection
3. analysis
4. Interpretation
5. conclusion
Let data guide you go in knowing nothing
Designing a Qualitative Study, 2 questions you must consider.
What do I want to know?
* Why do I want to know it?
* Theory driven
* Practice or process-oriented
* Social change-findings should directly inform policies
* Formulating research quality questions (should reflect what you want to learn)
Sampling Strategies
Ask why you are using this population
* Purposeful: intentionally selecting based on experience or characteristic,
* Convenience: easily accessible participants
* Stratification: divide into meaningful subgroups (often used to compair experiences)
* Theoretical: Add more participants throughout
* Snowball: ask participants to refer others (useful for hard to reach pop)
Data Considerations
- How much data will I need and from
whom? - Saturation-reached when you keep hearing the same themes over and over, no new themes
- How will I collect my data?
- What is my role as the investigator
- Reflexivity-being hyper awear on how identity and biases might have an impact on your research (included in study publications)
Interview Methods
- Most frequent method of data collection in qualitative studies
- Most are semi-structured, face-to-face
- often used because it’s the most private
- Preparing an interview guide-structured or not could have specific probs or examples
*Typically start with something light build into heavier stuff end with high point
Life story interview-This is an interview about your life story. Trying to understand how people interpret their past and future - Preliminary work
- Earlier questions “light”
- Be clear
- End with resolution or
high point. - Using prompts/probes: ask them to reflect or add more
- Reflections
- Who is the interviewer?- What is background, identity and experience?
- Matched vs. non-matched- does the interviewer match the interviewy is it a good fit?
- Power-especially when mismatch
- Distress-Do you need a professional on call?
- General issues/concerns/logistics
Focus Groups advantages
Data collected from multiple participants at the same time.
* In person, face-to-face
* Unstructured, but guided: There is a topic but conversation flows naturally
* Expected or novel information
* Wide range of views: Fast way to gather lots of views
Disadvantages of Focus Groups
* Transcription issues
- No in-depth follow-up of individual
- Can be difficult to manage (off track discussions)
- Difficult to recruit and organize
- Inconvenience for participants
- Transcription issues (make sure you actually know who said what)
- Need trained facilitator
Issues to consider focus group
- Heterogeneity vs. homogeneity
- Sample size: What type of analysis and how many people should be involved
- Saturation: when nothing new is coming out of the data
Issues to consider - Design-how questions are framed
- Ethical Issues
Other Qualitative Methods
Arts-Based & Visual Methodologies
Photographs as research aids (makes participants more involved- helpful to raise awareness
- Blogs, Vlogs & Discussion Posts/Threads
- Video diaries give participants camera
record daily life or something that gives insight
Mapping help - illustrate journey merged identities, parelle maps
conflicting
offers insight into iner workings
