RM (Unit 1 & 2) Flashcards
Types of sampling in observation
- Time sampling
- Event sampling
- Situation sampling
- Subject sampling
Observation methods
Direct observation - intervention & non-intervention
Indirect observation
Observation with intervention
Participant observation - disguised & undisguised
Structured observation
Field experiment
Problems with observation
Reactivity
Demand characteristics
Combatting reactivity
- concealing observer’s presence
- adaptation (habituation, desensitization)
- indirect observation
Types of interview methods
- Completely unstructured
- Unstructured
- Semi-structured
- Structured
- Completely structured
(know each description)
Guidelines for designing an interview
Giving information at the start Assuring anonymity Achieving and maintaining rapport Using familiar language Neutrality and non-judgementality Active listening Showing interest Nonverbal communication Natural questioning
Basic components of TA
Transcribing textual material
- Put the verbal data into words
- Increases familiarity with the text
Analytic effort
- Becoming increasingly familiar with the text
- Detail with which the data is studied
- Extent to which researcher processes and reprocesses the data – to recheck themes found, etc.
- Presented with difficulties that must be resolved
- Check and recheck the fit of the analysis
Identifying themes and sub-themes
- Label categories of data that fit together and refine themes
Adv and disadv of TA
Good method for novices because:
- Atheoretical – no particular theoretical orientation is associated with it
- Flexible – freedom to perform analysis their own way; most accessible
- Contains the core elements of the data analysis procedure used in several other more complex qualitative approaches; base on which other analysis methods are developed
Disadvantages
- Lacks transparency – no steps to be followed; reviewers can’t check the processing of data
- Researcher may just point out obvious facts and exclude details
Stages in sophisticated version of TA
- Familiarization with data
- Initial coding generation
- Search for themes based on initial coding
- Review of the themes
- Theme definition and labelling
- Report writing
Content Analysis
- Quantify qualitative data so you can move ahead with analysis method
- Analyzing text to determine the frequency of appearance of words or their synonyms
- Roots remain firmly in a quantitative, positivist approach
- Used to test hypotheses, a lot in social psych
- Useful for large amounts of archival data
Coding units in content analysis
Item categories identified in qualitative data; provides rate of occurrence of diff sorts of content
- Words
- Themes
- Items
- Characters
- Time & space
Grounded theory
Consist of systematic inductive guidelines for collecting and analyzing data to build middle-range theoretical frameworks that explain the collected data. Throughout the research process, grounded theorists develop analytic interpretations of their data to focus further data collection, which they use in turn to inform and refine their developing theoretical analyses.
Features of grounded theory
- Theory development and data collection go hand in hand
- No preconceptions help while analyzing the data in the beginning
- Constant comparative analysis – researcher keeps checking and comparing data
- Reforming of the question based on the emergent theory
Emergent theory
What develops as the data are analyzed and as further data gathering proceeds as a consequence; analysis proceeds along with data gathering.
Define qualitative methods
- A set of procedures designed to describe and interpret the experiences of participants in a context specific setting
- Focusses on meaning of action in a social context and not isolated setting
Reflexivity
Researcher’s reflecting upon one’s own influence in the process of data collection and analysis
Features of non-experimental research
- Description & interpretation of behaviour
- Behaviour as holistic, not isolated
- Follows less rigid system
- Not interested in cause-effect; focus on ‘why’
- Inductive approach
- Relationship exists between researcher and participants
- Reflexivity
- Study new behaviour and then generalize
- Complete understanding of richness of data
Epistemology
Concerned with the theory of knowledge and how knowledge is constructed
Features of positivism
- Objective reality exists
- Observation of observable facts for valuable accumulation of knowledge
- Straightforward relation between the world, our perceptions and understanding it
- Root of scientific method
- Direct correspondence between things and its perception (what I see is what exists)
- Goal – to produce objective knowledge that is impartial and unbiased
Limitations of positivism
- Experiences of the world are not consistent or unchanging
- Our understanding of the world is actually partial and not JUST what we see
Features of critical realism
- There are different views of reality
- Reality is viewed through an infinite regress of windows (the windows is a social context through which reality is seen) (take it as a lens through which you see things)
- Interpret data to understand the underlying structures – go through the layers that could impact it
Features of phenomenology
- Reality is subjective
- Understand experience rather than what causes events; prime focus on what the participant says
- Role of researcher resembles that of a person-centred counsellor
- Interest in the experiential world of the participant
- The question you’re asking is – how is THIS participant experiencing the world.
- Belief that what can be the same event is experienced differently by different people.
Features of social constructivism
- Knowledge is constructed by society; reality is constructed
- Major importance on LANGUAGE and all human experience is mediated by language
- Because of devlp of language, diff world views were constructed
- Used to study a discourse that constructs reality, rather than reality constructing how we talk about it
- The way people talk about the world, leads to a construction of the social reality
Characteristics of a qualitative researcher
- They reject positivism
- They adopt relativist position of no fixed ‘reality’
- They use relatively unstructured data collection methods
- They are concerned to capture the individual’s perspective
- They use highly detailed data analysis methods
- They use richly descriptive data
- They take the postmodernist (who doesn’t believe in positivism) perspective in general
- They believe that reality is constructed socially/individually
- They choose rich and deep data rather than hard (numerical) data
- They tend to be closer to their research participants
- They often see themselves as insiders of what is being studied
- They are concerned with interpretation over causal sequences
- They largely reject hypothesis testing
- Their theory emerges from close analysis of data
- They take a idiographic approach which focuses on the individual
Stages in content analysis
- decide on what material to sample and code
- decide coding units
- rank and categorise items
Purposive sampling
Used in grounded theory
The researcher looks only for certain kinds of data from certain kinds of people
Negative case analysis
Used in grounded theory; search for cases with a poor fit to the category system, so that it can be further amended and refined
Implementing principle of falsification
Key components of grounded theory analysis
- Comparison
- Coding/naming
- Categorization
- Memo writing
- Theoretical sampling
- Lit review
Features of Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis
- Analyse and present an account of the ways in which people experience specific and important events in their lives, from the participants own perspective
- First-person account is always required; semi structured interviews (mostly)
- Depends very heavily on the philosophical principles of ‘phenomenology’
- Exploratory & relativist