Methods & Survey Research Designs - Coursework Example

? Advanced Qualitative Research Methods & Survey Research Designs Affiliation with more information about affiliation, research grants, conflict of interest and how to contact Advanced Qualitative Research Methods & Survey Research Designs Short Answer Identification: Triangulation: Triangulation is a great technique that facilitates justification of data through cross authentication from two or more sources. In particular, it signifies the appliance and amalgamation of several study methodologies for the learning of the same phenomenon. Positive Relationships: Positive relationship is a relationship that signifies a direct relationship among two variables. That is, when there is an increase in one variable, the other variable is also likely to increase and when one variable decreases, the other also decreases. Negative (Inverse) Relationships: A negative relationship means that increase in the value of one variable leads to decrease in the value of the other variable and vice versa. This relation is also known as an inverse relationship. Pilot Test: A pilot test is a minor version of a large survey test and it is carried out to get an idea of the real test. It involves prior testing of a research tool, for instance, a new information gathering method, and it can also be used to test a hypothesis or design. Critical Theory: It is a social theory aiming toward analyzing and critiquing the society as a whole, in disparity with traditional theory aimed only to explaining it. Critical theories intend to dig under the shell of social life and expose various theories that render a true and fuller understanding as to how the world works. Cultural Portrait: Cultural Portrait can reflect high moral and spiritual human qualities. It also has the capacity of honestly revealing the negative qualities of the subjects under study. Cultural portraits are mainly common in satirical portraits and caricatures. Bounded System: A bounded system has territories with identifiable edges between the interior and exterior, as well as spaces with different functions happening in different spaces. Examples include an organization, a family, a program or a class in school etc. Discriminate Sampling: It is a procedure which decides the group to which a person belongs according to his or her individual characteristics. Gatekeeper: A gatekeeper in traditional research methodology is a person with whom the researcher has to negotiate entree to participant subjects. The role implies a related position such as, stewardship, ownership or other executive authority along the lines of the presented cultural standards of the research setting. In Vivo Codes: In vivo codes are the factual terms used by researchers mostly as well as the expressions used by various actors also. They tend to be the behaviors which will provide details to the analyst about the methods in which the basic problems of the actors is determined. Memoing: Memoing is the process of recording reflective notes concerning what the analyst learns from the data. Memos accrue as written records or ideas regarding concepts as well as their relations. Progressive-Regressive Method: The progressive regressive method includes a movement in two guidelines. The progressive stage starts with what is clear to examination and the regressive stage returns back to its older roots. Inductive Reasoning: The term inductive reasoning means to analyze starting from bottom up. It takes exact data and creates a broader overview that is considered possible, allowing for the information that the end may not be precise. Field Notes: Field notes refer to different notes recorded by researchers throughout or after their study of a specific subject they are engaged in. They are mainly treasured in descriptive sciences that have high implications in this area. Field Journal: The field journal is a notebook that a researcher uses to record personal notes, observational notes, sketches, lists of terms, ideas and so on, when he or she is engaged in a field study. Collective Case Study: Collective case study includes a case that can or cannot be physically collocated with other cases. It can be performed at one site by examining many different regions or other parts at that particular site. Triangulation: Triangulation is used by researchers to verify and establish validity in their studies by examining a research question from several perspectives. It may be used to expand the analyst’s understanding of the problems and maximize their confidence in the result of the studies. Social Desirability Effect: The social desirability effect may play a huge role in the results of research. It may affect the extent to which research outcomes are obtained and how they reflect participant’s behavior and true perception. Reciprocity: Reciprocity means the practice of interchanging things with others for mutual advantage, particularly the rights granted by one organization or country to another. For example, the proposal calls for reciprocity in employment relations. Typology: A typology normally consists of a group of descriptive names, joined to thumbnail plans of typical attitudes and behavior for every group. Typologies may be based on several detailed behaviors of participants or on their answers.  Short Answer Identification: Conceptualization: The method of identifying and illustrating concepts by which one indicates what he or she means by making use of certain terms is called conceptualization. It is the process in which these conceptions are given meaning in theory. The procedure characteristically involves explanation of the concepts and theoretical terms abstractly. Operationalization: Explaining the social phenomenon and also testing hypotheses require the various concepts to be operationalized. Operationalization shifts the researcher from the conceptual level to the empirical level, where concepts are given more focus and priority rather than the variables. It signifies the operations or methods required to measure the concept. Measurement: Measurement is a set of quantitative data made by evaluating a quantity with a normal unit. While this assessment cannot be perfect, measurements essentially contain mistakes. Any measurement may be estimated by the following meta-measurement standard values, which involve stage of measurement, units, and uncertainty. They allow evaluations to be conducted among various measurements and decrease confusion. Response Set Bias: Response set bias is a kind of cognitive bias that may influence the results of a numerical survey if respondents reply to the questions in the method that they think the questioner needs them to answer, according to their right beliefs. This can happen if the questioner is clearly angling for an exact or precise answer. Short Answer Essay: 1. In qualitative research, validity refers to whether or not the findings of a research are accurate and certain. That is whether the findings of the research accurately reflect the position, and if research findings are supported by facts or not. Validity shows the extent to which a calculation or measure precisely represents the conception which it claims to measure. Reliability in qualitative research can be considered as the credibility of the data generated and the procedure. It decides the degree to which the outcome of a research or a measure is repeatable in diverse circumstances. It is the level of replicability which makes the researchers to attribute to reliability more when compared to validity. 2. Direct observables are mostly the by-products of a user’s interactions and behaviors and are formed as the user progresses in his or her research. For example, number of queries provided is considered to be direct observables. Indirect observables are those which may not be observed and that basically are a product of the thoughts of the researcher. For example is satisfaction that is characteristics of an individual as showed by answers specified in a self-created questionnaire. Constructs are academic conclusions which are derived from observations other and they cannot be observed indirectly or directly. An example is intelligence quotient (IQ). It is created mathematically from explanation of the answers specified to a number of questions in an IQ examination. Short Answer Essay: A. Throughout the 20th century, positivism became, and stayed for a long time, the leading philosophy of science. In the next half of the century, there was attack on positivism from internal sources, the external opponents and post-positivists and in the last part of the century, philosophical positivism started to deflate rapidly. Positivism has a few resemblances to data-oriented methods, especially the grounded theory. Social constructivism has gradually emerged as a significant perspective within social science and has also plays a major role in many areas. In general it has been said that for social constructivism, in disparity to positivism, reality is in particular socially constructed. The essential element for research as a result begins to be obtained is how these social constructions take place. This approach is not mainly theory-oriented. The spotlight is relatively on the ‘disclosure’ as to how social phenomena is socially constructed. Social constructivism is very rich and has many sides or perspectives to it. Therefore, what has been said so far is only a first sign of direction. Social constructivism has often been connected with postmodernism although their roots and basic doctrines are different. Social constructivism has also created an inroad to the grounded theory. If the positivists are of the belief that by using science one can measure, understand and classify, the post positivists put forward that this is right to a certain extent, but that one must be careful not to overlook that a lot of our analysis may be based on conjecture and assumptions and one must be aware of this. B. The problem of validation and reliability in qualitative research has been connected with the meaning of qualitative research and the likelihood to mirror this in application to craft a qualitative research appropriately valid and reliable. This creates both chances and challenges to qualitative researchers, however, by taking into account qualitative criteria in social research, attaining reliability and validity in qualitative research is not impractical. Even though problems of validation and reliability have been explored thoroughly by persons conducting experiments and other researchers, their handling by ethnographers has been haphazard and sporadic. Issues of validation and reliability in ethnographic design are balanced to their counterparts in the experimental design. Pressure to the standing of ethnographic research is sum- categorized and summarized from field study methodology. Policies intended to improve credibility are incorporated all through the investigative process, that is, study design, collection of data, analysis of data, and presentation of findings. General approach to determining various kinds of contamination are demonstrated from the existing literature in educational ethnography. Creswell has identified eight strategies of validation which are commonly used in the literature. The three most commanding strategies a qualitative researcher may use in order to achieve larger validity of their results are a) triangulation) thick description and c) member checking. Triangulation is a better method because it strengthens and supports the study by combining methods. Thick description has been considered as a foundation for qualitative analysis. It becomes easier to build analytical explanations. Member checking can provide a valid purpose while exposing the researcher to different elucidation of the data. C. Grounded theory research consists of flexible plan for collecting and examining data that may assist ethnographers to conduct effective field work and make astute analysis. Ethnographers may take on and adapt grounded theory to raise the logical incisiveness of their studies. Grounded theory creates a symbolic interactionist theoretical viewpoint and constructivist methods that suppose the survival of multiple realities, the joint creation of information by analysts and aims to give interpretation in order to become aware of the world. A constructive approach to grounded theory harmonizes the symbolic interactionist perspective for the reason that both highlight studying how action and meaning are created. Grounded theory researches direct the study and investigator toward theory growth. In contrast, ethnography relies on raising a full description of a group of people and, therefore gives the details of their daily life. Both theories have taken birth from “Chicago school society with its pragmatist philosophical foundations” (Atkinson et al. 2001, p. 160). Ethnographic research is more inclined to contain priori concepts. The important advantage of utilizing grounded theory is that it encourages detailed, systematic analysis of the information and provides a process for doing so. The detailed direction gives a certain stage of comfort that information is being analyzed in a rigorous and systematic manner. This advantage is simultaneously its major disadvantage. The awareness to sentence and word level coding naturally helps the mind to concentrate on the details. This shows that it may be hard to scale up to better concepts and it may be hard to see the larger picture. One of the biggest advantages of ethnographic method is that because of the direct observation that is involved, usually conducted over a comprehensive period of time, the research may provide wide and in-depth findings regarding human behavior. Due to the fact that ethnographic research methods rely on examination, it frequently takes more time to create reliable and thorough results. D. Qualitative research is related to non-statistical approach of investigation and study of common phenomena. It draws on inductive procedures in which themes and groups emerge during analysis of information collected by methods such as observations, interviews, case studies and videotapes. Samples are generally small and are frequently purposively selected. It uses complete explanations from the viewpoint of the research members themselves as a means of investigating detailed problems and issues under study. The power of qualitative research is its ability to give complex textual explanations of how people experience a particular research issue. Some of the strategies utilized in qualitative research are stratified through purposeful sampling, maximum variation sampling and snowball sampling. Qualitative research generally includes lesser sample sizes than quantitative method. Qualitative research sampling is flexible and frequently continues until no latest themes emerge from the information, a point called data saturation. The most important task of qualitative research method is theme identification. Explicit explanations of theme discovery are barely ever explained in reports and articles and if so are frequently regulated to footnotes or appendices. Techniques are shared between small categories of social scientists and are frequently impeded by epistemological or disciplinary boundaries. The lack of obvious methodological explanations is most obvious throughout the grant-writing phase of research. Investigators resist clearly explaining and justifying strategies for discovering themes in the qualitative information. These issues are mainly cogent when funding reviewers is unclear with qualitative methods. Reference List Atkinson, P., Coffey, A., Delamont, S., Lofland, J., & Lofland, L. (2001). Handbook of Ethnography. A SAGE Publications Company. 160. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bHG8TUTZUzMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA160&dq=compare+and+contrast+grounded+theory+and+ethnographic+research&ots=cr_iUWHVP&sig=NZ1w9D12ppMnF37ywfLIoI_g_c#v=onepage&q&f=false Read More