CHD4630 Final

Question 1

Semi-structured Qualitative interviews

Answer 1

-Most common type of interview
-Structured list of questions to cover the topic
-Relies on a list of open-ended questions that include follow-ups
-Flexibility to adapt as issues come to light during the interview
-Don’t need to ask questions in order; natural, conversational tone that addresses your research interests
-Allows your participants to answer freely based on personal reflection, knowledge and experiences
-Interviewer and participant work together to develop a shared understanding of the topic under discussion

Question 2

When is it useful to use a semi-structured qualitative interview?

Answer 2

when exploring a little-known topic because you can follow up interesting issues as they arise

Question 3

Strengths of Semi-structured qualitative interviews

Answer 3

-Detailed understanding of experiences
-Intensive focus on one individual’s perspective
-Ability to change direction as research unfolds
-Opportunity to clarify and explain what you are looking to understanding during live conversations with participants
-Opportunity to ask follow up questions
-Positive experience for participants

Question 4

Weaknesses of Semi-structured Qualitative Interviews

Answer 4

-Expensive and time consuming
-Dependant on skills and interests of researcher conducting data collection
-Samples are relatively small
-Researcher identify and demeanor can strongly affect participant responses
-Can be difficult to compare results from different interviews or focus groups

Question 5

Focus groups

Answer 5

-Brings sets of participants together for a structured or semi-structured discussion about a chosen topic
-They provide an informal and supportive setting to discuss specific topics where participants can use their own frames of reference and vocabulary
-The group interaction can help bring out new perspectives on issues as participants challenge, persuade and influence each other
-Guide the discussion with little intervention and letting the group take charge so that the issues discussed are based on what they think is most important or relevant
-They can be successfully used beyond social science research (e.g., political discussions)

Question 6

When is it useful to do Focus groups?

Answer 6

repeat focus groups with the same participants over time to see if any interesting shifts in opinion have occurred

Question 7

Strengths of Focus groups

Answer 7

-More depth as participants interact, building on each other’s ideas
-Allows disagreements to be discussed
-Rewarding intellectual and social experience

Question 8

Weaknesses of Focus groups

Answer 8

-Greater administrative preparation required
-Responsibility for a broad range of activities including managing group dynamics
-Fast-moving conversation may make it difficult to follow individual perspectives
-Some people may be quiet
-Transcriptions can be particularly challenging

Question 9

Important features both interviews and focus groups share (choosing qualitative data collection methods)

Answer 9

-Limited repeatability
difficult for interviews or focus groups to be replicated
-Constructive remembering
participants remembering things that happened in the past cannot be treated as an innocent record of objective reality
-Over disclosure
participants can disclose things they wished they hadn’t
they must be provided with an opportunity to withdraw consent for personal information to be used in your research

Question 10

Steps of planning for your interview

Answer 10

1-Follow your research question
2-Know the research field
3-Consider your participants
4-Begin crafting your interview questions
5-Test the questions

Question 11

What is one’s role in a Focus group design?

Answer 11

-To act as the ‘moderator’
provide the topic or specific questions to ask, allow all participants to have the opportunity to speak, and know when to intervene in discussion or recode into the background

Question 12

Focus group design involves

Answer 12

-Advanced planning is very important
-Controversial issues or sensitive issues should only be introduced after you and your supervisor have thought through all the challenges and alternative approaches
-Ensure you have enough time to secure an appropriate venue and allow time for advertising, recruiting and briefing relevant participants
-You can run a focus group with between 3 and 12 participants
if you are moderating for the first time, you should work with a smaller group
-Focus groups typically last 2-3 hours

Question 13

Concluding slide of Qualitative Data Collection Chapter

Answer 13

-It is always important to select methods that will be appropriate for your research question
-The ebay qualitative research allows for emergence, where information gained during the initial stages of data collection can hone, alter, or otherwise influence your research focus
-Qualitative methods require a substantial investment of time, energy, and specialized skill in your chosen method
-However, the insights that emerge from such research can more than justify this investment, providing you with a real window into the lives and thinking of others

Question 14

Challenges of existing data

Answer 14

-Creatively identify promising data sources
-Find a workable research question
existing data will only be available for certain topics
you may need to reverse the normal order of the research process by first identifying available data and then finding a viable research question
-Ensure quality
you will need to critically evaluate any available descriptions of the primary research
seek out additional information if necessary
-Format the data
you may need to convert the data into a useable format

Question 15

When evaluating the primary research

Answer 15

-It is up to you to ask critical questions about the data
do the numbers and approach make sense?
is this how this kind of research is normally done?
are key steps that would normally be reported left out of the report?
-There may be key bits of information that primary researchers failed to include
try to ask primary researchers about additional details you need to know
even if you cannot find the information out, you can still use the data (just acknowledge this limitation)
-You can also supplement the data you’re using with new primary data collection to gain a more robust angle on your research topic

Question 16

Using online content as data

Answer 16

-As people make their way around the web, they leave all kinds of digital traces that can be analyzed
ex: large interest in using people’s conversations on Twitter/X
-Same issues of sampling and representativeness still apply to web-based content
-There are new analytic options that are more feasible due to ‘born digital’ nature of online data
-Start by thinking about where online conversations relevant to your topic are most likely to take place
some kinds of social media data may be unique to the online setting
this is still interesting and valuable to explore for social research purposes but be sure this is accounted for in the limitations

Question 17

Challenges in secondary data analysis

Answer 17

-Some individuals may be over-represented in the data
ex: if you were using tweets, prolific Twitter/X users will have a much greater representation in large aggregated datasets
-Some individuals may have been excluded from the sample
ex: those who don’t use Twitter/X at all would be entirely absent from a study using existing data on Twitter/X
so you would need to be careful about using Twitter/X data to make claims about larger populations
-When analyzing existing data, one has to make the best of what is available
this can result in analyses that don’t account for all relevant predictor variables, which in turn can lead to inaccurate causal inferences about relationships between variables (e.g., the true cause may be outside of the researcher’s view)

Question 17

Data management

Answer 17

keeping track of the information you collect and storing it efficiently and organizing it for easy data retrieval

Question 18

Function of data management

Answer 18

-It can help you avoid
snowballing small mistakes into big ones
spending considerable amount of time and effort to locate and undo the mistakes
lost productivity
difficulties in maintaining error-free analysis

Question 19

Data management requirements

Answer 19

-A detailed and comprehensive accounting of your data
-Tracking the reasons behind data collection and organization decisions
-Systems that enable centralized, consistent and easy data retrieval
-Robust and simple data organization that allows you to cope with even large, unwieldy or complex datasets

Question 20

Steps for Data Management

Answer 20

-Document your research questions and Establish a planned timeline
timing: begin at the outset of research project
frequency: ongoing
-Organizing, storing, and arranging data
timing: as you collect data
frequency: ongoing
-Compile and check data
timing: near the end of data collection
frequency: during data collection phase
-Prepare data for analysis
timing: after data collection has begun (qualitative) or completed (quantitative)
frequency: once you have completed data collection

Question 21

When organizing and arrangin your data, ensure you know

Answer 21

Location of data
What you have ready
What is missing

Keep a ‘raw’ copy and multiple working copies of your data stored in separate locations using different methods

Question 22

Raw data

Answer 22

Information that comes directly from the respondent
Unaltered in any substantive way, such as by editing or file format conversation

Question 23

Distinctive considerations for qualitative resarch

Answer 23

a major time commitment in transcribing and quality checking audio or video recordings

Question 24

Distinctive considerations for quantitative survey resarch

Answer 24

‘data coding’ (turning ‘raw’ data into standardized numbers)

Question 25

Advantages & Disadvantages of transcribing your own data

Answer 25

Advantages
-set your own pace, control the quality level
-avoid spending money
-will know your research data better

Disadvantages
-time consuming
-exhausting

Question 26

Advantages & Disadvantages of using a professional transcription service

Answer 26

Advantages
-time-saving

Disadvantages
-quality problems
-$$

Question 27

Advantages & Disadvantages of training others to trascribe your data

Answer 27

Advantages
-closely involved to monitor quality
-less expensive than profession transcription services

Disadvantages
-time consuming to train and monitor the transcribers

Question 28

Develop your codebook

Answer 28

-Your guide for entering and ‘decoding’ your quantitative data and the range of responses
-Contains a list of your research questions followed by the possible answers for each question
-Essential to ensure you enter survey data consistently and interpret statistical result accurately
-Your codebook will undergo considerable editing, especially in early phases-> word-processing software like Microsoft Word is best for intuitive and flexible layouts

Question 29

Data coding: useable numbers for analysis

Answer 29

-Means of making responses to particular survey questions consistent
-Assigning standard numbers to each response option or grouping related open-ended responses and then converting them into numeric data

Question 30

Steps to develop a detailed codebook

Answer 30

-Be familiar with your data
spend some time getting a sense of the range of responses to each survey question and the frequency with which they occur
-Enter key information into your codebook for each survey question
accurately reproduce the survey question
enter a short and unique variable name
add a variable label
assign variable number to identify each variable
-Capture the range of responses in your data
proceed survey question by survey question
assign numeric data codes for the range of responses

Question 31

Explaining context (qualitative data)

Answer 31

-With a qualitative project, your analysis begins in the methods section; you explain who you collected data from and why, in what circumstances, and over what period of time
-This context orients your analysis and establishes the boundaries of the kinds of knowledge claims you can make
-Gathering data for qualitative research relies heavily on the researcher’s subjectivity, so the analysis often needs to address the way that the researcher influences the results
-The identity and demeanor of the person(s) collecting the data can be a key aspect of context, affecting how data generated

Question 32

Analyze the patterns in data through coding

Answer 32

-Pattern analysis is a widely used approach
-Categorize words and images using codes, which are specific groupings of your data
-You can use your codes to develop comparisons and connect your data to relevant theoretical concepts you’ve located in your literature

Question 33

We advocate following Kelle’s six steps when coding with qualitative analysis software:

Answer 33

-Format textual data
-Open code of data
-Memo writing
-Compare text segments that have been assigned the same code
-Integrate codes, and attach memos to codes
-Developing a main theme

Question 34

Memos

Answer 34

-Keep noting down analytical thoughts that occur to you during the coding process, however, raw or incomplete the thought might seem
-By recording these ‘memos’ within your qualitative data analysis software they will all be in one place, and you can electronically connect them to the piece of data that sparked the thought within the software
-You will be grateful for this easy access to your memos when during the write-up phase

Question 35

Connect to theoretical concepts

Answer 35

-During the coding process, think about how you can connect your finding to theoretical concepts
-If existing concepts don’t help explain your data, then you may need to develop new or adjusted concepts to explain your findings
-Qualitative analysis must draw upon, modify or create theoretical concepts that are useful in developing explanations that may be applicable beyond the immediate context of the project
-Never cherry pick your data extracts based on what fits your pre-existing assumptions about a topic

Question 36

Choosing and writing up your data

Answer 36

-As you begin laying out the elements of your analysis on the page, ensure that you clearly link your reported findings to your data
-Provide specific representative examples from the data to illustrate your analysis
-If you find that you lack the material to support your conclusions, this can be a clue that you need to rethink your analysis or find more data
-If you are having a hard time deciding which parts of your data use in your research report, remember that you only need content directly relevant to your reported findings
-If you have a lot of similar examples, summarize them and pick only the most interesting to illustrate your key statements (as long as the most interesting is representative of the others)

Question 37

Thick description

Answer 37

=the use of extended verbatim extracts from the data, which empower the reader to either agree with the researchers conclusions or to come to different interpretations
-On a practical level, lengthy data extracts showing the basis for your analysis will need to be broken down into smaller segments that can then be discussed piece-by-piece

Question 38

Transparency and procedural clarity

Answer 38

-The adult trail also serves as key means of establishing quality in your analysis because it allows you, your supervisor, and potentially your readers to follow your analysis process
-In this way, an audit trail helps you establish the quality of your qualitative analysis
-Records are date and time stamped, allowing you to retrace your steps if necessary

Question 39

Lincoln and Guba highlight six categories to consider for your audit trail:

Answer 39

Instrument development information
Raw data
Data reduction and analysis products
Data reconstruction and synthesis products
Process notes
Materials relating to intentions and dispositions

Question 40

Concluding slide of Qualitative Analysis

Answer 40

-To support your qualitative knowledge claims, use quotes from research participants or written content, images and/or detailed descriptions of first-hand observations of the activities you’re studying further
-Good qualitative research links social scientific concepts to data at every stage
-Resist the temptation to select well-phrased quotations from your participants that don’t represent the overall pattern very well
Your goal should be to provide your reader with a general description for the pattern, and then a set of representative quotations (or image elements) that demonstrate the various facets of that pattern
-We advocate keeping an audit trail of your key research decisions and the rationale behind them
-Don’t assume you have your readers’ trust
present the context and evidence you’re using as the basis for your interpretations

Question 41

Quantitative analysis uses deductive reasoning:

Answer 41

-You first develop a hypothesis: an educated starting statement explaining the phenomenon you are going to research
-You then identify what results you would expect if the hypothesis is correct (‘expected results’)
-You then collect ‘observed data’ to tet its ‘fit’ with expected outcomes defined by the hypothesis

Question 42

Developing adn testing your models & hypotheses

Answer 42

-Instead of directly evaluating the accuracy of a hypothesis, statistical analyses operate by testing the opposite proposition, the null hypothesis
-If this opposite view (null hypothesis) is revealed to be unlikely to be true by the statistical analysis, then it is rejected and its alternative (the hypothesis, also know as the ‘alternative hypothesis’) is considered to be the likely truth

Question 43

Explanatory variables are known as

Answer 43

independent variables

Question 44

OUtcome variables are know as

Answer 44

dependent variables

Question 45

There are 3 different types of quantitative variables although they are sometimes referred to with different names

Answer 45

Categorical (Nominal) variables
Ordinal variables
Interval (Continuous or Scale) variables

Question 46

Look for the central tendency in your data

Answer 46

-When you have Interval data, identifying the typical pattern in the data can be very useful
this can be done by looking for the central tendency in the data
-The mean is probably the most commonly used measure of central tendency
can provide a general sense of the average pattern across the entire sample
-For variables that tend to have extreme values (such as income), the median is the more appropriate measure of central tendency because it’s not distorted by such extremes
-While the central tendency is an important part of the picture, it is also important to understand how your data is spread out
-If your observations don’t cluster tightly around your mean, then that indicates your mean is a poor summary of your overall results

Question 47

Inferential statistics supports…

Answer 47

generalization to a larger population from your sample with a quantifiable risk of error

Question 48

Parametric statistics are generally used with

Answer 48

probability (or near-probability) samples

Question 49

Common assumotions for parametric statistics

Answer 49

-One of the most common assumptions for parametric statistics is ‘normality’
you can run tests to confirm it
-Another common assumption required when using certain parametric statistics is that the levels of variability across all parts of the sample data are equivalent (‘equality of variance’)
-When comparing groups, this assumption ca be confirmed using an inferential statistic called ‘Levene’s test’

Question 50

Chi-square results tell you…

Answer 50

if there is a relationship between two variables (yes or no)

Question 51

When there is a relationship found in chi-square results, what is used to determine the strength of the relationship?

Answer 51

Cramer’s V

Question 52

When writing up your chi-square and Cramer’s V results

Answer 52

-It is important to include information on both
-Avoid using contingency tables with internal variables (such as age in years), because the tables could be enormous and unmanageable

Question 53

Correlation analysis

Answer 53

=measures relationship between two interval variables
this form of analysis tracks whether deviations from mean ‘covary’ in a systematic way

Question 54

Pearson’s Sample Correlation Coefficient ®

Answer 54

-Represents both direction and strength of association between two numerical variables
-Pearson’s r standardizes raw covariance detected into a comparable statistic known as a ‘correlation coefficient’
-The closer r value is to 1 (represents a perfect positive correlation) or to -1 (represents a perfect negative correlation), the stronger the correlation

Question 55

If the difference between the samples we have collected is larger than what we would expect if the null hypothesis is true, then we can conclude one of two things:

Answer 55

There is no effect. Sample means in our population fluctuate and we have, purely by chance, gathered two samples that are not representative of the population from which they came
There is a statistically significant difference. In this scenario the difference between samples represents a genuine difference between the samples (and so the null hypothesis is false)

Question 56

Concluding the comparison of sample means

Answer 56

-In sum, the t-value is effectively the difference between what you would expect if the null hypothesis (identical means in population) is true and the actual sample data you’ve collected
-If the data you’ve collected indicates a large enough difference, you can reject the null hypothesis and say you have discovered a statistically significant difference between teh two means

Question 57

Concluding slide of Quantitative Analysis

Answer 57

-Quantitative analysis aims to create efficient descriptions and summaries of patterns using standardized data sets and statistics
-You can test hypotheses using statistics to calculate whether a result is ‘statistically significant’, that is, whether it points to a real pattern in the population
-Once a significant pattern is detected, you’ll need to determine the strength of association using a different test
-Statistical tests often have assumptions that must be met in order to use them

Question 58

How to write for an academic audience

Answer 58

-Generally expect organized, concise, and in-depth writing
-Want to know the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind your results, in a clear and thorough manner
-Your methods section should be detailed and rigorous, accounting for possible lines of criticism
don’t try to conceal your project’s weaknesses
all research involves compromises, show that you have thought about them, explain your decision-making around them and acknowledge limitations
-Don’t make claims that exceed your methods and evidence
-You can show your results clearly using visualizations such as maps, tables and graphs
tables provide important details from your results without bogging down the reader
maps with a layer of additional information from your research can show spatial patterns much more clearly than words
-Drawing upon your literature review and theory at multiple points during your report is another hallmark of academic writing
-The relevant research and theory you identified during your literature review needs to be applied to establish where you are making a contribution to your field
-Your readers will often be familiar with relevant literature, thus by referencing it you create a bridge of understanding between their base of knowledge and your work

Question 59

How to write for a non-academic audience

Answer 59

-When it comes to writing for non-academic audiences, less is more; Your writing needs to be highly accessible
this type of audience is usually uninterested in methodological detail, so no need to provide a full methods section
you need to summarize what methods you used and why, perhaps providing example questions, by not much more than that
-You can’t assume familiarity with academic jargon, so keep it to a minimum
-Make sure that your writing is clear, approachable, easy to read and to the point, even if that means sacrificing detail
-Your content needs to be much shorter and very direct in explaining key points throughout your report

Question 60

3 pieces of advice as you begin the writing up phase

Answer 60

Write the sections when you are ready
Keep returning to sections to refine them
Write outlines for each section

Question 61

Start writing up

Answer 61

-Don’t try to start at page one and work through your write-up from start to finish; doesn’t tend to flow in such a linear and convenient manner
-Instead, try to make break throughs wherever you can by beginning with sections (or even sub-sections) that you can complete relatively easily or that you are the most interested in writing
some people start with the methods section because it is relatively straightforward; it describes your research actions and decision-making
some start with a results section where participants’ quotations and your notes provide a jumping off point for the report
-We have advocated taking detailed notes about your ideas during the research process precisely to help you at this stage; much harder to start with a blank page than to have notes that you can use to flesh out a section (figures, tables and pages of detailed notes)
-Create a first draft that gets as many of your ideas as possible written down
-Between drafts, you can work on other sections, benefiting from seeing how the report as a whole is coming together
-In order to have a coherent, well-rounded and focused section, think in advance about how it will be structured
Prepare an outline that indicates the content of each section and its sub-sections, with some notes about the kind of content and some of the sources you’d like to use there
This way when you start writing you’re following a kind of roadmap to help you stay focused
-As you make repeated passes, also ensure that sections follow each other coherently and that your arguments build in depth and complexity as the writing evolves

Question 62

in successive passes, you refine the section over and over again
this is a vastly better way of writing because

Answer 62

it gives you time to gain perspective, see what can be improved and where the gaps are

Question 63

Suggested to write the introduction in 3 stages

Answer 63

Write some content for your introduction early (but not necessarily first) in your writing-up process. This way you can begin committing thoughts to paper and aligning the direction of your report
Return periodically to add content to the introduction as your other sections evolve
Ex: finish a sub-section in your results, you could go back to your introduction to make sure it accounts for this content.
Doing this for each new (sub-) section you complete means that you flesh out more and more of your introduction as you go
When you have finished writing all your other sections, including a first pass of your conclusion, go back to heavily revise your introduction to bring it close to a final stage

Question 64

Without repeating the abstract, your introduction should:

Answer 64

-Clearly identify the problem your investigating
-Contextualize your problem within the broader research context
-Acknowledging existing work on which you are building, including theoretical issues and major research, although hold the in-depth discussion for the literature review
-Define the scope of your forthcoming report. What will you be covering and why?
-Outline a roadmap for the rest of the report, so the reader knows what sections are coming up and how they are linked together

Question 65

Writing your introduction

Answer 65

-One of the most difficult sections to write
-It is worth over-investing in getting you introduction just right, as this will establish your readers’ initial impression of your report
-Keep your sentences short, minimize jargon and easy to understand

Question 66

Your literature review serves 3 main purposes:

Answer 66

1-Show your readers that you’ve read and understood the key relevant literature in your field
2-Demonstrate where your research fits in a broader field of study, why it is important and how you’re making an original contribution
3-Explain, evaluate and contextualize research and theory that you can engage with throughout your write-up to give your research broader relevance and importance

Question 67

Writing your discussion section

Answer 67

As with all sections, we recommend adding notes to the discussion section when ideas occur to you while writing other sections so that you have content to build from
Start preparing your first full draft of your discussions section when you’ve completed all your results sections, but just before you write your first full draft of your introduction
Your discussion section should begin by briefly re-stating the research problem and research question(s) you are investigating
You will then want to summarize the headline findings from your results sections
Strictly avoid introducing new evidence at this stage, but instead focus on developing clear statements about the significance and implications of your results
Think about whether there are any ‘take away’ points for readers from each individual finding as well as the project as a whole
The last part of the discussion section is a subsection called ‘conclusion’ which provides the closing argument you would like to make based on your research

Question 68

Social reseearch

Answer 68

Social research offers you the opportunity and privilege to develop knowledge about the rich and varied societies and cultures in which we live
As social researchers, we know how difficult the process can be especially for students new to research
It can be daunting to stand at the beginning of your research project and look at the path ahead with all the steps that you’ll need to take before submitting your completed work
This path may take you days, weeks, months, or years (in the case of doctoral dissertations)
If you are feeling uneasy about this journey, you’re in good company! The best researchers in the world have all felt this way at some point
You too will soon discover, however, that your curiosity, careful and continuous (re-) planning, creative problem-solving and relentless focus on your topic will be the keys to completing good researc=