Week 9 Flashcards
What is epistemology?
The assumptions that you make about the best way of
investigating the world and about reality
In short, the study of being and existence/
knowledge and justified belief
Two main schools of Epistemology?
Positivists - Believe in investigating the world through objective measures like observations, aligning with a realist ontology.
Social constructionists - Argue that reality is constructed by humans through beliefs, feelings, and communication, fitting with a relativist ontology.
What is the difference between methods and methodology?
Methodology is the strategies, plan of action and the way you group research techniques to make a coherent picture
Methods is what you actually do, the techniques and procedures to gather and analyse data/evidence
Different views of the world? What do they represent?
Realist ontology - world is real, single truth, with facts, all revealed through experiments and science
Relativist ontology - truth is constructed, scientific laws are created by people to fit their reality, multiple truths and facts are dependent on views of observer
Influences of methodology
Ontology and Epistemology
Approaches of different methodologies?
Realists have a positivist approach = gather quantitative data
Relativists have a social constructionist approach = qualitative data
Quantitative approaches?
Collect and analyse numerical data
Shows difference but doesn’t say why
Explain phenomena by numerical data analysed using statistical
methods
Randomised to reduce bias
Controlled to measure change
Qualitative approaches?
Uses words, pics/photos, videos, audio and word of mouth over numerical data
Usually starts with broad question and not hypothesis
Develop theory instead of starting with one
Qualitative data collection?
Focus is on collection of rich data to explore how and why things happened
No need for large sample sizes (in comparison to
quantitative research)
What to be careful of in Qualitative data collection?
Do respondents give accurate information or say
what they believe the researcher wants to hear
Can the researcher be objective/ What are ways to ensure that the data is trustworthy?
Types of qualitative data collection?
Interviews (structured, semi-structured or unstructured)
Focus groups
Questionnaires or surveys
Diaries, field notes
Qualitative vs Quantitative?
in terms of purpose, researcher subject, theory, strategy, findings, social reality and nature of data.
Understand vs Explain social life
Close vs distant
Emergent vs confirmation
Unstructured vs structured
Ideographic vs Nomothetic
Subjective, holistic, multiple realities vs Objective simple one truth
Rich, deep vs Hard, reliable
Barriers to community activity?
Environmental
Interpersonal
Personal
Difference between Qualitative and Quantitative data?
Qualitative is more context based, experiences and situations with observations given where as quantitative is numerical data and hypotheses where methods are repeatable
Or
Qualitative data is descriptive and non-numerical, focusing on understanding why and how through opinions, behaviors, and experiences, while quantitative data is numerical and measurable, emphasizing how much and how many through statistics.
Examples of Quantitative data methods?
Surveys/Questionnaires - if closed-end questions (open is for qual)
Radomised control trials / meta-analysis
Experiments
