Lecture 28: Against Methodolatry

Question 1

What is epistemology

Answer 1

Branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge; how/what can we know —> which epistemology is used is different for the type of research

Question 2

What is positivism

Answer 2

It states that the relationship between world and our perception of the world is straightforward

Question 3

What is empiricism

Answer 3

The knowledge of the world must arise from collection and categorization of our observations of it

Question 4

What is hypothetico-deductivism

Answer 4

Developing hypotheses from theories and testing these hypotheses —> involves deductive reasoning.

Question 5

What is qualitative research

Answer 5

Research based on words instead of numbers, concerns individual experiences instead of differences between groups and is unstructured and more flexible

Question 6

3 approaches to qualitative research

Answer 6

1. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: goal is to get a detailed picture of how an individual gives meaning to events, the role of the researcher is crucial —> how do they make sense of the participant making sense of the world
2. Grounded theory: used when one has really no idea about a theory, unique or new situations - focuses on bottom-up thinking and going back and forth from theory to data and back again
3. Discourse analysis: social reality is constructed by the way we communicate - research into how people talk about their thoughts/feelings/experiences which creates their social reality (not so much focused on the feelings etc themselves)

Question 7

What are 4 criticisms of qualitative research

Answer 7

1. Appealing to anecdotal evidence in the sense that we base our conclusions on what people think they think/feel/experience etc, but is that actually what’s going on (could argue this for quantitative as well)
2. Generalizability: very low because conclusions are usually specific to one person in one situation, also makes it very hard to prove wrong (falsify), which is crucial in research
3. Subjectivity: the central role of subjectivity might imply that the influence of the researcher’s bias is even greater —> confirmation/perseverance bias, prepresentativeness heuristic
4. Relativism: a relativistic approach might imply that its impossible to be wrong —> this is why we carry out quantitative research; to check whether we are right or wrong

Question 8

What are 4 criticisms of qualitative research

Answer 8

1. Does quantitative research not also depend on qualitative measures? —> surveys/questionnaires also depend on how people think they feel/behave etc
2. Generalizability: most samples in psych research consist of WEIRD (white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) people, you could say this is also not very generalizable
3. Reflexivity: its impossible to be completely objective, is it possible to be as clear as possible about this subjectivity?
4. Theory: do we have any really strong theories in psych? Isn’t it more useful to have a more explorative bottom-up approach for psych research?

Question 9

What are the 4 evaluative criteria for qualitative research according to yardley

Answer 9

1. Sensitivity to context
2. Commitment and rigour
3. Transparency and coherence
4. Impact and importance