Methods

Question 1

Interviews (qualitative)

Answer 1

Advantages
face to face - phone or online
-questions (semi structured and open minded)
-goal in mind (research question)
-meaning or experiences
-in depth info about a relatively group of people or sample
- in depth info
-better understanding

disadvantage: only from small groups
- interviews take long
- cost

Question 2

Questionnaires (quantitative)

Answer 2

mail-out online

• questions: structured and close ended
• goal of presenting results in the form of numbers
• how we measure things
• standardized

Advantages:
cost and time

Disadvantages:
do we really have an understanding of the meaning and experiences they have?

Question 3

Field research (qualitative)

Answer 3

case studies
participant observation vs non-participant observation
-adopt the same job
-same roles as your subjects

-exploratory interviews
-Quality of the data largely depends on how good a researcher us conducting the observation
-observing rather than participating
Goal: want to be there to experience what they’re doing but often off to the side

When you know you are being observed you may act or say things you wouldn’t normally

Question 4

Secondary analysis or available data

Answer 4

existing statistics or documents
-quantitative: how many times they referred to something

Content analysis
-Newspaper articles, diaries, mins of professional association

Historical-comparative research

Carried out on large data sets, and over time
Questions being asked are those that haven’t been answered in pre-existing documents
-secondary source - identity

Question 5

Mixed methods

Answer 5

Both qualitative and quantitative methods

May be carried out simultaneously

One method its usually more dominant than the other

offers a more comprehensive understanding

Question 6

Experimental design

Answer 6

collecting everything at once
-specific way in which we can look at a question and be more confident that the causal relationship we are interested in
Make sure we can rule our alternate explanations

Great for demonstrating casual relationships

Experimental group: how to cope with stress

• exposed to the intervention or the stimulus variable
• exposed to your key independent variable
• control group- hypothesizing no change

Criticisms

• Only look at a small amount of variables
• in a lab settings, when you know you are in an environment will you be acting differently
• a lot are done on campuses involving student - not representative of the general pop