Qualitative Research Flashcards
What are the 3 basic positions of the theoretical approaches to “qualitative research” approaches?
1) Symbolic Interactionism (Subjective meanings, individual meaning making)
2) Ethnomethodology (Routines of everyday life and their production)
3) Structuralist or Psychoanalytic Positions (Psychological or social unconsciousness)
What is the philosophical origin of symbolic interactionism?
American pragmatism, and the theory and method of the ‘Chicago School’ sociologists
According to Blumer, what are the three basic assumptions of the symbolic interactionist approach?
1) The first premise is that human beings act toward things on the basis of the meanings that the things have for them … .
2) The second premise is that the meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with one’s fellows.
3) The third premise is that these meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative process used by the person in dealing with the things he encounters.
According to the Thomas theorem of symbolic interactionism?
When a person defines a situation as real, this situation is real in its consequences, leads directly to the fundamental methodological principle of symbolic interactionism: researchers have to see the world from the angle of the subjects they study.
Define post-positivism
In philosophy and models of scientific inquiry, postpositivism (also called postempiricism) is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism. While positivists believe that the researcher and the researched person are independent of each other, postpositivists accept that theories, background, knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed.[1] However, like positivists, postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases.[1]
Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations, but rather upon human conjectures. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assertion of these conjectures is warranted, or more specifically, justified by a set of warrants, which can be modified or withdrawn in the light of further investigation. However, postpositivism is not a form of relativism, and generally retains the idea of objective truth.
Postpositivists believe that a reality exists, like positivists do, though they hold that it can be known only imperfectly and probabilistically.[1]
Define epistemology
Epistemology Listeni/ɨˌpɪstɨˈmɒlədʒi/ (from Greek ἐπιστήμη (epistēmē), meaning “knowledge, understanding”, and λόγος (logos), meaning “study of”) is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge.[1][2] It questions what knowledge is, how it is acquired, and the possible extent a given subject or entity can be known.
Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to connected notions such as truth, belief, and justification.
The term was introduced by the Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier (1808–1864).[3] The field is sometimes referred to as the theory of knowledge.
Define ethnomethodology
Ethnomethodology is an approach to sociological inquiry introduced by the American sociologist Harold Garfinkel. Ethnomethodology’s research interest is the study of the everyday methods that people use for the production of social order (Garfinkel:2002). Ethnomethodology’s goal is to document the methods and practices through which society’s members make sense of their world.[1]
Define post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of mid-20th-century French and continental philosophers and critical theorists who came to international prominence in the 1960s and ’70s.[1][2][3] A major theme of poststructuralism is instability in the human sciences, due to the complexity of humans themselves and the impossibility of fully escaping structures in order to study them.
Post-structuralism is a response to structuralism. Structuralism is an intellectual movement developed in Europe from the early to mid-20th century. It argued that human culture may be understood by means of a structure—modeled on language (i.e., structural linguistics)—that differs from concrete reality and from abstract ideas—a “third order” that mediates between the two.[4] Post-structuralist authors all present different critiques of structuralism, but common themes include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of the structures that structuralism posits and an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute those structures.[5] Writers whose work is often characterised as post-structuralist include Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva.
The movement is closely related to postmodernism. As with structuralism, antihumanism is often a central tenet. Existential phenomenology is a significant influence; Colin Davis has argued that post-structuralists might just as accurately be called “post-phenomenologists”.[6] Some commentators have criticized poststructuralism for being radically relativistic or nihilistic; others have objected to its extremity and linguistic complexity. Others see it as a threat to traditional values or professional scholarly standards. Many theorists who have been called “post-structuralist” have rejected the label.[7]
Define verstehen
Verstehen (German pronunciation: [fɛɐˈʃteːən]), in the context of German philosophy and social sciences in general, has been used since the late 19th century – in English as in German – with the particular sense of the “interpretive or participatory” examination of social phenomena.[1] The term is closely associated with the work of the German sociologist, Max Weber, whose antipositivism established an alternative to prior sociological positivism and economic determinism, rooted in the analysis of social action.[2] In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others.
Verstehen is now seen as a concept and a method central to a rejection of positivistic social science (although Weber appeared to think that the two could be united). Verstehen refers to understanding the meaning of action from the actor’s point of view. It is entering into the shoes of the other, and adopting this research stance requires treating the actor as a subject, rather than an object of your observations. It also implies that unlike objects in the natural world human actors are not simply the product of the pulls and pushes of external forces. Individuals are seen to create the world by organizing their own understanding of it and giving it meaning. To do research on actors without taking into account the meanings they attribute to their actions or environment is to treat them like objects.[3]
Define Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics (/hɜrməˈnjuːtɪks/), broadly, is the art and science of text interpretation. Traditional hermeneutics is the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in the areas of literature, religion and law. A type of traditional hermeneutic is biblical hermeneutics which concerns the study of the interpretation of the Bible. In religious studies and social philosophy, hermeneutics is the study of the theory and practice of interpretation. Modern hermeneutics encompasses everything in the interpretative process including verbal and nonverbal forms of communication as well as prior aspects that affect communication, such as presuppositions, preunderstandings, the meaning and philosophy of language, and semiotics.[1]
Define Social constructivism
Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge that applies the general philosophical constructivism into social settings, wherein groups construct knowledge for one another, collaboratively creating a small culture of shared artifacts with shared meanings. When one is immersed within a culture of this sort, one is learning all the time about how to be a part of that culture on many levels. Its origins are largely attributed to Lev Vygotsky.
Social constructivism is closely related to social constructionism how?
Social constructivism is closely related to social constructionism in the sense that people are working together to construct artifacts. However, there is an important difference: social constructionism focuses on the artifacts that are created through the social interactions of a group, while social constructivism focuses on an individual’s learning that takes place because of their interactions in a group.[citation needed]
Define Critical Realism
In the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. Put simply, critical realism highlights a mind-dependent aspect of the world, which reaches to understand (and comes to understanding of) the mind independent world.
Contemporary critical realism most commonly refers to a philosophical approach associated with Roy Bhaskar. Bhaskar’s thought combines a general philosophy of science (transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical naturalism) to describe an interface between the natural and social worlds. Critical realism can, however, refer to several other schools of thought, such as the work of the American critical realists (Roy Wood Sellars, George Santayana, and Arthur Lovejoy). The term has also been appropriated by theorists in the science-religion interface community. The Canadian Jesuit Bernard Lonergan developed a comprehensive critical realist philosophy and this understanding of critical realism dominates North America’s Catholic Universities.
Define realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Realism may be spoken of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities (such as natural numbers), moral categories, the material world, and thought. Realism can also be promoted in an unqualified sense, in which case it asserts the mind-independent existence of a visible world, as opposed to idealism, skepticism, and solipsism. Philosophers who profess realism state that truth consists in the mind’s correspondence to reality.[1]
Realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality and that every new observation brings us closer to understanding reality.[2] In its Kantian sense, realism is contrasted with idealism. In a contemporary sense, realism is contrasted with anti-realism, primarily in the philosophy of science.
Define relativism
Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration.[1] The term is often used to refer to the context of moral principle, where in a relativistic mode of thought, principles and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited context. There are many forms of relativism which vary in their degree of controversy.[2] The term often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cf. cultural relativism). Another widespread and contentious form is moral relativism.
Anthropological relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or brackets) his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their local contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically with avoiding ethnocentrism or the application of one’s own cultural standards to the assessment of other cultures.[3] This is also the basis of the so-called “emic” and “etic” distinction, in which:
An emic or insider account of behavior is a description of a society in terms that are meaningful to the participant or actor's own culture; an emic account is therefore culture-specific, and typically refers to what is considered "common sense" within the culture under observation. An etic or outsider account is a description of a society by an observer, in terms that can be applied to other cultures; that is, an etic account is culturally neutral, and typically refers to the conceptual framework of the social scientist. (This is complicated when it is scientific research itself that is under study, or when there is theoretical or terminological disagreement within the social sciences.)
