PRACTICAL RESEARCH Flashcards
a word that refers to your method or process of selecting respondents or people to answer questions meant to yield data for a research study. The chosen ones constitute the sample through which you will derive facts and evidence to support the claims or conclusions propounded by your research problem.
Sampling
Slovin’s Formula
n= N/(1+Ne^2)
involves all members listed in the sampling frame representing a certain population focused on by your study. An equal chance of participation in the sampling or selection process is given to every member listed in the sampling frame.
Probability Sampling or Unbiased Sampling
the best type of probability sampling through which you can choose sample from a population. Using a pure-chance selection, you assure every member the same opportunity to be in the sample. Here, the only basis of including or excluding a member is by chance or opportunity, not by any occurrence accounted for by cause-effect relationships.
Simple Random Sampling
For this kind of probability sampling, chance and system are the ones to determine who should compose the sample.
Systematic Smapling
The group comprising the sample is chosen in a way that such group is liable to subdivision during the data analysis stage. A study needing group-by-group analysis finds stratified sampling the right probability sampling to use.
Stratified Sampling
disregards random selection of subjects. The subjects are chosen based on their availability or the purpose of the study, and in some cases, on the sole discretion of the researcher. This is not a scientific way of selecting respondents, neither does it offer a valid or an objective way of detecting sampling errors (Edmond 2013).
Non-Probability Sampling
when you think you know the characteristics of the target population very well. In this case, you tend to choose sample members possessing or indicating the characteristics of the target population. Using a quota or a specific set of persons whom you believe to have the characteristics of the target population involved in the study is your way of showing that the sample you have chosen represents the target population of such characteristics.
Quota Sampling
Since the subjects you expect to participate in the sample selection are the ones volunteering to constitute the sample, there is no need for you to do any selection process.
Voluntary Sampling
You choose people whom you are sure could correspond to the objectives of your study, like selecting those with rich experience or interest in your study
Purposive or Judgmental Sampling
The willingness of a person as your subject to interact with you counts a lot in this non-probability sampling method. If during the data-collection time, you encounter people walking on a school campus, along corridors, and along the park or employees lining up at an office, and these people show willingness to respond to your questions, then you automatically consider them as your respondents.
Availability Sampling
Similar to snow expanding widely or rolling rapidly, this sampling method does not give a specific set of samples. This is true for a study involving unspecified group of people. Dealing with varied groups of people such as street children, mendicants, drug dependents, call center workers, informal settlers, street vendors, and the like is possible in this kind of non-probability sampling. Free to obtain data from any group just like snow freely expanding and accumulating at a certain place, you tend to increase the number of people you want to form the sample of your study (Harding 2013).
Snowball Sampling
a technique of gathering data whereby you personally watch, interact, or communicate with the subjects of your research. It lets you record what people exactly do and say in their everyday life on Earth. Through this data gathering technique, proofs to support your claims or conclusions about your topic are obtained in a natural setting.
The observer, who is the researcher, takes part in the activities of the individual or group being observed. Your actual involvement enables you to obtain firsthand knowledge about the subjects’ behavior and the way they interact with one another.
Participant Observation
This type of observation completely detaches you from the target. of your observation. You just watch and listen to them do their own thing, without you participating in any of their activities. Recording of non-participation observations happens through the use of a checklist. Others call this checklist as an observation schedule.
Non-participant or Structured Observation
This observation method makes you see or listen to everything that happens in the area of observation. For instance, things happening in a classroom, court trial, street trafficking, and the like, come directly to your senses. Remember, however, that to avoid waste of energy, time, and effort in observing, you have to stick to the questions that your research aims at answering. What you ought to focus your attention to during the observation is specified by your research problem in general as well as your specific research questions.
Direct Observation
This method is also called behavior archaeology because, here, you observe traces of past events to get information or a measure of behavior, trait, or quality of your subject. Central to this method of observation are things you listen to through tape recordings and those you see in pictures, letter, notices, minutes of meetings, business correspondence, garbage cans, and so on. Indirect observation takes place in the following ways (Peggs, 2013; Maxwell, 2012):
Indirect Observation
you observe to evaluate the way people deal with one another. As such, this is the main data gathering technique used in behavioral psychology, where people’s worries, anxieties, habits, and problems in shopping malls, play areas, family homes, or classrooms serve as the focus of studies in this field of discipline.
Continuous Monitoring or CM
This was done first by behavioral psychologists in 1920 with a focus on researching the extent of children’s nervous habits as they would go through their regular personality development. For a continuous or uninterrupted focus on the subjects, you record your observations through spot sampling in an oral manner, not in a written way. Named also as scan sampling or time sampling, spot sampling comes in two types: time allocation (TA) and experience sampling. In TA sampling, what goes into the record are the best activities of people you observed in undetermined places and time.
Spot Sampling
-It uses simple data collection technique and data recording method.
-It is inclined to realizing its objectives because it just depends on watching and listening to the subjects without experiencing worries as to whether or not the people will say yes or no to your observation activities.
-It offers fresh and firsthand knowledge that will help you come out with an easy understanding and deep reflection of the data.
-It is quite valuable in research studies about organizations that consider you, the researcher, a part of such entity.
Advantages of Observation
-It requires a long time for planning.
-Engrossed in participating in the subjects’ activities, you may eclipse or neglect the primary role of the research.
-It is prone to your hearing derogatory statements from some people in the group that will lead to your biased stand toward other group members.
Disadvantages of Observation
is a data-gathering technique that makes you verbally ask the subjects or respondents questions to give answers to what your research study is trying to look for. Done mostly in qualitative research studies, interview aims to knowing what the respondents think and feel about the topic of your research.
Interview
-This is an interview that requires the use of interview schedule or a list of questions answerable with one and only item from a set of alternative responses. Choosing one answer from the given set of answers, the respondents are barred from giving answers that reflect their own thinking or emotions about the topic. You, the researcher, are completely pegged at the interview schedule or prepared list of questions.
Structured Interview
-In this type of interview, the respondents answer the questions based on what they personally think and feel about it. There are no suggested answers. They purely depend on the respondents’ decision-making skills, giving them opportunity to think critically about the question.
Unstructured Interview
-The characteristics of the first two types are found in the third type of interview called semi-structured interview. Here, you prepare a schedule or a list of questions that is accompanied by a list of expressions from where the respondents can pick out the correct answer. However, after choosing one from the suggested answers, the respondents answer another set of questions to make them explain the reasons behind their choices, allowing freedom for you to change the questions and for the respondents to think of their own answers (Rubin, 2012; Bernard, 2013).
Semi-Structured Interview
-Only one respondent is interviewed here. The reason behind this one-on-one interview is the lack of trust the interviewees have among themselves. One example of this is the refusal of one interviewee to let other interviewees get a notion of or hear his or her responses to the questions. Hence, he or she prefers to have an individual interview separate from the rest. This is a time-consuming type of interview because you have to interview a group of interviewees one by one.
Individual Interview
-In this interview approach, you ask the question not to one person, but to a group of people at the same time. The group members take turns in answering the question. This is also called as focus group interview. The chances of having some respondents getting influenced by the other group members are one downside of this interview approach (Denzin, 2013; Feinberd, 2013).
Group Interview
-No face-to-face interview is true for this interview approach because this takes place through electronic communication devices such as telephones, mobile phones, email, among others. Though, mediated interview disregards non-verbal communication.
-It is a synchronous mediated interview if you talk with the subjects through the telephone, mobile phone, or online chat and also find time to see each other (Goodwin, 2014; Barbour, 2014).
Mediated Interview
- Getting to know each other
- Having an idea of the research
- Starting the interview
- Conducting the interview proper
- Putting an end to the interview
- Pondering over interview afterthoughts
Steps in Conducting Interview
is a process of understanding data or known facts or assumptions serving as the basis of any claims or conclusions you have about something.
Data Analysis
- an act of using symbols like letters or words to represent arbitrary or subjective data (emotions, opinions, attitudes)
Coding
- a way of bringing together the coded data
- giving the data an orderly appearance is puttingthem in a graph, specifically a table of responses
Collating
-In qualitative research, you analyze or study data that reflect the respondents’ thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or views about something. These are subjective data to understand how related or relevant they are to your research problem or specific research questions.
-Analysis of data is done through the use of thematic diagrams.
Qualitative Data Analysis
-is the process of identifying patterns or themes within qualitative data.
-It is the process of analyzing the raw data collected through the process of qualitative research in an attempt to identify the necessary information and trends from the collected data.
Thematic Analysis
When is a Thematic analysis used?
Qualitative Research
a type of inferential or interpretative thinking that derives its validity, truthfulness, or reasonableness from your sensory experience. Touching, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling things around you lead to a particular conclusion about each of those experiences. The results of your sensory experience are factual data to support the truthfulness of your conclusion.
Conclusion
The APA (American Psychological Association) is also called Author-Date Style. This is often used by the researchers in the field of natural science and social sciences. The economic reasons, more and more researchers, regardless of their area of specialization, prefer to use the APA style.
Referencing
The APA (American Psychological Association) is also called?
Author-Date Style
the items in References are arranged?
Alphabetically
should be on a separate page at the end of your assignment with the title “References” centered at the top, and in bold.
The Reference List
Components of Research
- Title
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Method
- Results and Discussion
- Summary, Conclusion & Recommendation
- References
- Appendices
