Week Twelve Flashcards
What are the four social research philosophies
Positivism
Post positivism
Interpretivism
Constructivism
What is the positive philosophy
An objective reality exists apart from perceptions (empirical reality)
Goal of research is to study things in a way that helps discover or understand reality
What is post-positivism?
Empirical reality exists, but because of complexity of human behaviour and associations, we may not be able to understand it completely
Goal of research is to achieve intersubjective agreement because limitations in research techniques often prevent ability to perceive objective reality
What is interpretivism
No single empirical reality
People have different understandings of the situations
Research should study how people perceive reality
Participatory action research
Researcher collaborates with some of the persons studied
Develop valid definitions, bring unique insights and desire change in the organisation
What is constructivism
Extends interpretivism to emphasise the importance of how different stakeholders construct their beliefs
What is the principal orientation of quantitative and qualitative research
QUAN: deductive
Qual: inductive
What is the epistemological orientation of QUAN and qual?
QUAN: natural science model: in particular positivism
Qual: interpretivism
What is the ontological orientation of qual and QUAN
QUAN: objectivism
Qual: constructivism
What is operation and operationalisation
Operation: the procedure for measuring concepts - the identification of a value of a variable
Operationalisation: the process of specifying the operations (measures) that will indicate the value of a variable
What are the four categories of variables
Interval/ratio: regular distances between all categories in range
Ordinal: categories can be ranked but unequal distances between them
Nominal: qualitatively different categories: cannot be ranked
Dicotomous: only two categories
What is probability sampling?
Allows researchers to select study subjects to be statistically representative of population they want to learn about
The larger the same and the more homogenous the population, the more confidence we can have about sample representation
What are the four types of probability sampling
Simple random sampling
Systematic random sampling
Cluster sampling
Stratified random sampling
What is non probability sampling
Each member of population has an unknown probability of being selected
What are the four types of non-probability sampling?
Availability
Quota
Purposive:judgement
Snowball
What are the requirements for a true experiment?
At least one treatment group and one control group
Random assignment to the groups
Assessment of change in dependent variable in both groups after the experimental group receives the treatment