Research problems & Theory and research Wk3 Flashcards
Because quantitative researchers use numeric data in their analyses, they need to
quantify or operationalise their conceptual or theoretical ideas
When researchers convert a ‘concept’ into something that is measurable and testable, it becomes a
‘variable’
A variable has
attributes, i.e. categories or values that depict its characteristics
What is a ‘proposition’
logically joins two or more concepts,
When a proposition is converted to a something that is measurable and testable, it is called a
‘hypothesis’
A theory is
an idea
knowledge is
a tested and verified idea
A conceptual definition gives:
meaning to a particular concept, is typically what you would find in a dictionary, is usually easily communicated to other people, and remains abstract (i.e. it gives no indication of how the concept could be measured)
An operational definition:
clearly identifies how a concept can or will be measured and any information that may need to be collected to make those measurements
In an operational definition, the measurement is taken from the researcher’s perspective and thus is only applicable in
quantitative research
A variable is an operationalised concept that can be
measured, and whose characteristics (or attributes) can vary
There are three types of variables in quantitative research:
independent, dependent, and extraneous (or confounding)
independent variable (IV) is
what the researcher expects to “cause” or predict something
dependent variable (DV) is
the “outcome”, “consequence” or “effect” that the researcher is interested in measuring/observing,
extraneous/confounding variables are
ALL THE OTHER REASONS THAT COULD CAUSE THE IV OR DV
A hypothesis is:
(i) a testable proposition and therefore can be measured, and (ii) is a formal and logical statement that identifies the proposed relationship between the IV and DV, in the population of interest
There are two main types of hypotheses:
i) a research (or scientific) hypothesis, and (ii) a statistical (or null) hypothesis
The main difference between a scientific and statistical hypothesis is
that a scientific hypothesis states the expected relationship, but the statistical hypothesis states that there is no relationship, between the IV and DV
A null hypothesis is symbolised as
H0
A research hypothesis is symbolised as
Ha or H1
There are two types of research hypotheses:
(i) directional, and (ii) non-directional
Directional hypotheses state
the direction in which the IV and DV are expected to be related to one another,
a non-directional hypothesis only states that
the IV and DV are related, and not the proposed direction of this relationship
There are two opposing philosophical paradigms that influence the methods researchers use and how they make sense of the findings:
(i) positivist, and (ii) interpretive
the positivist (or empirical paradigm) assumes there
is a single reality; uses both inductive and deductive reasoning; seeks the objective truth; believes that to know the whole it only needs to know the parts; assumes the world is stable and predictable; and uses an etic (or outsider) approach to understand the world
the interpretive paradigm assumes there
are multiple realities; uses only inductive reasoning; seeks to understand subjective experiences; assumes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; assumes the world is always changing; and uses an emic (or insider) approach to understanding the world
CONFOUNDING VARIABLE:
An extraneous variable. A variable that is so closely linked to the variable a researcher intends to measure that their independent effects can not be established ALL THE OTHER REASONS THAT COULD CAUSE THE IV OR DV
