lecture 1 - flirting with meaning Flashcards
Goodboy and Brann (2010)
“Single adults often seek successful flirtatious encounters; yet these encounters can sometimes be considered failures. However, little research has identified flirtation rejection strategies enacted by those not interested in reciprocal flirting. The purpose of this study was to examine behavioral and verbal flirtation rejection strategies among college students”.
Better to look at more narrow areas
What is qualitative research?
🞑 Aims, uses and ethical issues
🞑 What is qualitative research?
🞑 When to use qualitative methods
🞑 Ethical issues
How to develop qualitative research designs
🞑 The research question
🞑 The research protocol
🞑 A word on sampling
What is Qualitative Research?
- The ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ rather than ’how many’ or ‘how much’ - How might someone who identifies as an introvert approach flirting?
- It is a way of understanding belief systems, perspectives or experiences, or to think about unknown phenomena – like flirting.
- Its methods generate words as the data to be analysed, often into ‘Themes’ - New Rules; Flirting as fun; etc.
- Not trying to create a causal link it’s a different sort of inquiry, a different sort of set of aims and intentions
Transcripts is most common form of qualitative data - of conversations - code theses transcripts
Philosophical perspectives
Ontology – what is reality?
* Comes from the Greek: ontos = being and logos = study i.e. the study of being.
Epistemology – how do we know something?
* Comes from the Greek: episteme = knowledge and logos = study.
It gives confidence in knowing the type of claims that can be made about findings and the type of limitations
Ontologies – the nature of reality
Realist view of the world -
* Objects continue to exist irrespective of human experience
Relativist -
Multiple realities are acknowledged in relation to human experience. We may have a similar shared experience but we are going to have our own unique, individual way of making sense, a way of interpreting something.
Epistemologies – how do we know what we know
- Positivist – observable measurement informs knowledge generation
- Post-positivist – acknowledges contextual and interpretative factors
- Critical realist – acknowledges reality exists and is interpreted by people
- Constructivist – focusing on individual perceptions
Social constructionism – acknowledges co-constructions generated between people
in educational psychology
- how experiences, attitudes and life circumstances affect learning and behaviour at school
- people’s experiences of emotional needs of school, of learning and development within a context
- understanding different perspectives such as those of teachers, pupils and parents
the experience of a parent with a child on the autistic spectrum or how parents understanding presentation of autism in girls
Two Types of Qualitative Analysis - Content Coding
Categorizing, tagging of pre-defined content.
E.g., responses score ‘1’ if they mention ‘anger’, ‘0’ if they don’t.
Rinse/repeat with other anticipated categories.
Thematic Analysis
Examination of a number of narratives, seeking common themes across respondents.
“Tells a story” about dimensions of a phenomenon.
thematic analyses - example of use - Bartle and Trevis 2015
- an evaluation of group supervision in a specialist provision supporting young people with mental health needs - a social constructionist perspective
- psychologists facilitate different models of group processes with school staff
- data then gathered from a focus group
- data analysed using thematic analysis
- findings indicated - a positive impact on team communication and coherence, greater awareness of role and enhanced understanding of supporting mental health needs of young people
Got staff members of these specialist schools together in hour long sessions and had 4 different models of working with groups from psychologically formed perspectives to try and see what would happen if they offered up time to think about their experience in this role and what it might be like to come together to explore theme with ecah other. Ran for about a year then ptps invited back to do a focus group to ask how have they found these groups over the course of the year. Did thematic analysis - two researchers seperately then comapred. Found the sessions helped with their communication as a team and felt they worked togther more.
working with qualitative data
- Familiarisation of the data
- Coding the data
- Generating initial themes
- Reviewing and developing themes
- Refining, defining and naming themes
Producing the report
is qualitative research scientific
- Depends! (just like quantitative)
- Transparent - saying heres what I did how I got to these set of findings and how I got to this set of themes
- Trustworthiness - leave to reader to decide if they think it is trustworthy
- Triangulation - take one set of data and cross reference it with other sets. Also do this with the litertaure and see if findings link with whats already out there in terms of literature.
when to use qualitative research
understand ptp perspectives
explore the meaning they give to phenomena
observe a process in depth
Use qualitative data to exploe what it is that went on in people’s experience and what might we learn from that?
writing a research question
Good research questions should be:
* Clear
* Specific
* Answerable
They help to:
* Define the project
* Set boundaries
* Give direction
Define success
types of data generation
- Individual interviews eg may want to know about a particular life event, a disability, good ethics = confidentiatlity
- Group interviews eg may be more valuable or representative
Contextual data - look at info eg govn policy documents and how its writtena dn the type of language used in the document. Look at phenomenon in media reports - look at way people are constructed in the narratives
a word on sampling
types -
convenience sampling
snowballing
stratified purposeful sampling
purposive sampling
principle 1 - justifying sample size
principle 2 - representativeness
Principle 3 - convenience?
ethical issues - core principles
- Respect
- Competence
- Responsibility
- Integrity
- British Psychological Society Code of Ethics and Conduct (2018)
Code of Ethics and Conduct (2018) | BPS
Protected characteristics and ethical considerations
It is against the law to discriminate against someone because of:
- Age
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Race
- Religion and belief
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
These characteristics are protected under the Equality Act 2010
example study - goodboy and Brann 2010
“Single adults often seek successful flirtatious encounters; yet these encounters can sometimes be considered failures. However, little research has identified flirtation rejection strategies enacted by those not interested in reciprocal flirting. The purpose of this study was to examine behavioral and verbal flirtation rejection strategies among college students. stemming from a grounded theory methodology and a focus group method, 21 college students shared their experiences in focus group discussions. Thematic analysis yielded five behavioural rejection strategies (ie departure, friendship networks, cell-phone usage, ignoring, facial expressions) and four verbal rejection strategies (ie significant others, brief responses, politeness, insults) and sex differences in their usage. results suggest that both men and women posses a predictable arsenal of available rejection strategies”.
key words = flirting, courtship, rejection, focus group and grounded theory
a research protocol
Protocol is the idea of defining what are the aims of your study, the research question or questions, ontology, epistemology, the plan. Its the research plan - who are the ptps. About offering reasoning and recognising limitations of the choices. About how your gathering data, what data analysis, ethical considerations
goodboy and brann 2010 - background, RQ and methods
Background: Flirtation is important, but little is known about how flirtation attempts backfire.
RQ1 - what are behavioural rejection strategies college students engage in to indicate disinterest in unwanted flirtatious communication
RQ2 - what are verbal rejection strategies college students engage in to indicate disinterest in unwanted flirtatious communication?
RQ3 - what sex differences, if any, influence these strategies?
Method: 21 students (7 men, 14 women), “Eastern” American university, range of years into degree, Ps were relative strangers but from same classes.
Three hour-long focus group sessions. (Why? What possible issues?)
Mixed-sex and same-sex groups. (Why? Then: What really happened?)
goodboy and brann script
Interview schedule - made before data gathering - try to still be flexible eg could have a set of qus, one qu and prompts and probes, let ptps lead you and tell their story
opening
1 - tell us your name, major and mention if you are single or not
introductory
2 - how often do people flirt with you?
3 - where do you get hit on? is this a question you made up, or did you get it someplace? the phrase ‘hit on’ seems leading in a way
transition
4 - how often are you disinterested in flirting back?
key
5 - what are some things you say to show you are not interested in flirting
6 - what are some things you do to show you are not interested in flirting
7 - if you had to pick one strategy that was the most effective in showing you are not interested in flirting, what would it be?
8 - what are some things you have seen other people say or do eg friends to show they are not interested in flirting
ending
9 - what are some reactions people have when you indicate you are not interested in flirting
10 - I wanted you to help me understand what people say or do when they are hit on and they don’t want to be. is there anything I missed? is there anything else you want to say that you haven’t?
analysis of goodboy and Brann 2010
Thematic analysis: Transcriptions prepared. First author coded each response. Line-by-line analysis with open + axial coding.
Open: “broken down into discrete parts, closely examined, and compared for similarities and differences.”
Axial coding: “grouped similar codes together to develop categories… modified categories to best reflect the data by comparing within and across categories and added new categories when the data did not fit an existing category.”
Creation of themes: Lump together similar categories to make themes.
Creation of codebook: After grouping coded responses by commonality, created themes for men and women. Second author coded everything with codebook: 94% agreement.
There are smallQ and bigQ approach
examples of themes - behaviours
- departure
- friendship networks
- cell-phone usage
- ignoring
- facial expressions
themes - verbal expressions
- significant other
- brief responses
- politeness
- insults
