Introduction to Research Methods PDF

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH METHODS  e s s e d IN THIS UNIT: tive s Ad d r Learning Objec is , a nd re s e a rc h goals...

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH METHODS  e s s e d IN THIS UNIT: tive s Ad d r Learning Objec is , a nd re s e a rc h goals e a rch m e th od s, including sc ie n ti fi c p ro cess, hypothes li ta tiv e a n d quantitative res 1.) Explain the n d a ti o n a l k n owledge of qua e cifi c research a te fo u ita ti on s se of sp 2.) Demonstr ca ti o n s, s tr e ngths, and lim ide ra ti on s tha t impact the u li their designs, app p o li tic a l, a n d feasibility cons ethical, tional, etc.) 3.) Discuss key m e n t, corre la e thods (e.g., survey, experi m  What is RESEARCH?  All sciences are founded on empiricism.  Empiricism is the view that information that is observed and collected by us is true, valid, and reliable.  The process of gathering information in this way is called research and it is the best way for us to learn about the unknown. SCIENTIFIC METHOD McCarthy, CATEGORIES OF RESEARCH METHODS McCarthy, What will we cover in RESEARCH METHODS I?  Qualitative Research  Research Methods II – Quantitative Research and Statistics  What is qualitative research?  Qualitative research refers to “a wide variety of approaches to and methods for the study of natural social life.  The information or data collected and analyzed is primarily (but not exclusively) non-quantitative in character, consisting of textual materials such as interview transcripts, field notes, and documents, and/or visual materials such as artifacts, photographs, video recordings, and Internet sites, that document human experiences about others and/or one’s self in social action and reflexive states.” (Saldaña, 2011, pp. 3-4)  What is qualitative research? “Qualitative research, broadly, is based on the methodological pursuit of understanding the ways that people see, view, approach, and experience the world and make meaning of their experiences as well as specific phenomena within it.” (Ravitich & Carl, 2016, p. 7)  Who cares?  Do we Really CARE ABOUT qualitative research?  Who cares?  Let’s first ask if we care about research of any kind:  Do we? Absolutely!!!  Discussion Why do we care about research? What have you learned that has come from research? Where do we see the results of research? An example of the importance of research  Research Researchers have many responsibilities Can you think of some?  Research One fundamental responsibility?  Errors Many types of potential errors: Population Error: It can occur when we incorrectly choose the population of people we want to observe for our study. Ifa researcher is not examining the correct group of people for a specific behaviour, event, belief, etc., then the information gathered is not useful, and instead provides inaccurate information about a topic.  Errors  Sample Error: It can occur when we run a study using participants who have been incorrectly selected from a correct population.  Given that it is not always possible to include the entire population of interest in a study, addressing sample error is important to ensure that information gathered accurately reflects the larger population..  Errors  In research, the sample must be representative of the larger population we are interested in examining. To be representative of the population, a sample must be similar in make up in all key demographics, such as age, education, gender, etc. to the population.  When a sample is representative of a population, the information gathered from the sample can be generalized to the population. This means that we can say the behaviours seen in the sample are what we would see in the larger population of interest.  Errors  Measurement Bias: It can occur when we use tools or methods to gather information that are not valid and reliable.  A tool is valid, if it measures what it is supposed to measure.  A tool is reliable if, under the same conditions, it gives the same results for a specific participant every time it is used. In research, using a tool that is not valid or reliable will lead to incorrect information on a topic.  Errors  Observer Bias: It occurs when we see what we expect to see. The observer bias is dangerous because it causes us to miss information on a topic while focusing only or primarily on information that is consistent with our beliefs about a topic.  In research, the observer bias can lead to an incomplete and inaccurate explanation for why and how something happens.  Errors  Hindsight Bias: It is the false belief that you always knew something. We experience hindsight bias only after an event has occurred.  When we look at the event, it is easy for us to believe that we always knew or predicted it was going to happen.  The danger of hindsight bias is that researchers may miss key information, or may incorrectly categorize information as common sense, or may develop preconceptions about how and why something happens.  Errors  False Consensus Effect: It is the false belief that people share our beliefs and behaviours.  The false consensus effect can lead to the incorrect and dangerous belief that people think and behave as we do, and in research it can lead to an inability to recognize individual differences in key psychological processes such as motivation, learning, social interactions, and mental health.  Errors  These are just some of the biases and errors that can occur in research.  Mistakes can differ depending on the type of research method used.  Analysis  Analysis is the synthesis of data, reconfigured into new formulations of meaning as key ideas related to a specific line of inquiry.  Qualitative analysis is an active process with one’s mind and body to find patterns in data and to articulate their interrelationships.  Five Fundamental Analytic Skills 1. condensing large amounts of data; 2. noticing patterns in textual and visual materials; 3. unifying seemingly different things; 4. understanding social processes of human action, reaction, and interaction; and 5. interpreting the routines, rituals, rules, roles, and relationships of social life.  Skill 1: Condensing Large Amounts of Data  Condensing large amounts of data is a necessary analytic task because a writer cannot report to readers absolutely everything gathered during the investigation.  We present selected facets of the inquiry determined to be the most important for others to know, and which provide sufficient evidence for the case.  Skill 1: Condensing Large Amounts of Data  An individual researcher or even a multiple-member research team cannot possibly keep every single datum (the singular form of data) coherently organized and accessible in their heads.  The human mind, even with computers, can retain only so much information. Our brains are hardwired to summarize and symbolize vast amounts of information in order to work more efficiently.  Skill 2: Noticing Patterns in Textual and Visual Materials  Patterns are human constructions and concepts, meaning, we notice repetition in human actions and thus label them as routines, rituals, or rules. Roles and relationships (e.g., parent–child, customer–salesperson, citizen–government) also maintain repetitive actions according to function and purpose.  Skill 2: Noticing Patterns in Textual and Visual Materials  People do most things over and over out of need, habit, adherence to tradition, responsibility, socialization, or because the routine has proven to generate successful results. Sometimes, though, patterns can consist of bad habits or destructive actions.  Noticing patterns gets researchers closer to finding answers about the human condition—why we do the things we do.  Induction, Abduction, and Deduction 1. Induction is open-ended exploration of a problem, going into an inquiry to learn-as-you-go, formulating answers as more information is compiled. 2. Abduction examines an array of possibilities in order to select the most likely, plausible, or “best” one. 3. Deduction is a culminating process and product, derived from inductive and/or abductive thinking. It is the conclusion drawn after considering all the evidence or data.  Skill 3: Unifying Seemingly Different Things  Another facet of qualitative data analysis is constructing relationships between different condensed forms of data and the patterns observed.  This goes beyond finding what different things have in common; it’s unifying them in some way through the analysis and description of their interrelationship or how they connect.  Unity is a design principle in which seemingly disparate things or elements harmonize. Unity is an aesthetic that suggests, “these things belong together, go together, or work together.”  Skill 3: Unifying Seemingly Different Things 1. Sometimes, what unifies elements of a research study is that they are all distinct yet interrelated facets of the same experience or phenomenon. 2. Sometimes, unity is achieved by connecting elements of an analytic storyline together. 3. Another way unity is achieved in research is finding a central or core category that functions as an umbrella for all of the study’s constituent elements.  Skill 4: Understanding Social Processes : Action Reaction Interaction  Action, Reaction, and Interaction 1. Action is what a person does (thinking, speaking, and moving are considered actions). 2. Reaction is response to an action—to someone else’s or one’s own action or given circumstances. 3. Interaction is the collective back-and-forth sequences of action and reaction. These three terms and concepts constitute the cyclical process of humans engaged with social life.  Action When an action occurs in everyday life, fieldworkers observe it and make note of its meaning—that is, its reason, motive, drive, purpose, objective, goal, intention, and so forth.  Reaction Reactions suggest much about how people perceive and respond to others and the world around them and, like actions, offer a window into their values, attitudes, and beliefs. Even thoughts kept inside the mind (imagining, fantasizing, and meditating) are considered actions and reactions because they are purposive.  Interaction Interactions, or collective exchanges of actions and reactions, compose units or moments for analysis. Researchers infer and interpret the sometimes hidden, subtextual agendas within and between humans as they act, react, and interact. They also infer and interpret broader social meanings about these moments of interaction patterns. It is a complex interplay of communication that observers attempt to understand through disciplinary lenses, filters, and angles—that is, the way each researcher perceives the social world.  Skill 5: Interpreting the 5 Rs  Routines  Rituals  Rules  Roles  Relationships of Social Life  Routines  When researchers look at the properties of life qualitatively, they examine what patterns of action and reaction reoccur.  Routines are actions that take care of the everyday business of living; symbolize people's self-cultivated and socialized habits; and meet our human need to create a sense of order. As life is analyzed, observe what people seem to be doing again and again and, perhaps more important, explore why they are engaging in consistent action patterns.  Routines  Research gets enriched not only from examination of routines but from the breaches or conflicts that interrupt the flows of daily life.  We learn much from how people handle, avoid, and prevent the glitches that come their way.  We also learn much from an awareness that people’s routines may be repeated without question, prompting the researcher to reflect on the purpose or futility of these action patterns.  Rituals  Everyday life is occasionally punctuated with the special, significant, or the sacred—that is, the ritual or patterned ceremonial event.  These events or symbolic moments hold personal or cultural importance as they mark or affirm a tradition, an occasion, an achievement, a transition, a remembrance, or fulfillment.  Rituals  A ritual transcends the routines of everyday matters because of the pattern’s significance it holds for the individual or group.  Rituals are status passages that demarcate transitions of some kind, usually through processes such as separation, reversal, cleansing, challenging, changing, or celebration.  Rules  Most routines and rituals may be influenced to some extent by the rules set in place.  When researchers look at life qualitatively, they examine how tacit frames of acceptable social conduct or formal rules and laws are followed—or breached. Each society creates expectations, codes, and regulations for daily conduct, a process called socialization.  Rules  Individuals also have their own rules for daily living, a personal code of ethics, or a moral compass for action, reaction, and interaction with others.  Those who do not conform to the socially established order of things may be perceived by the majority as deviant and stigmatized as outcasts.  But rules are culturally and socially specific, for what is unacceptable conduct in one setting or context may be completely appropriate in another setting or context.  Rules  Much of the academic literature refers to power as the grand construct that influences and affects social life. Rules, in their broadest sense, are just one facet of power, yet analyzing how they influence humans serves as a manageable way of understanding the complexity of power.  Roles  Roles are the assumed or attributed personas and characteristics of individuals.  At any given moment, each one of us plays one or more roles that possess various levels of status or position. Roles emerge from individuals’ personalities or identities. Roles are realized and enacted through particular routines, rituals, and rules of conduct.  Roles  Organizations and institutions also play roles in social life. Institutional roles can be multiple and conflicting, yet remember that their rules and relationships with society are established by people.  Relationships  When researchers look at life qualitatively, they examine how people act, react, and especially interact with each other in various social contexts.  The roles people assume, to a significant degree, influence and affect the types of relationships they have with others, who are also in their own roles with their own perceptions of relationship status.  How one person relates with others reveals much about his own role identity and values, attitudes, and beliefs.  Relationships  Interaction is how relationships get constructed.  They are collective chains of actions and reactions in which people in role exchange routines and rituals in accordance with rules for living.  Not every social interaction is equitable, however. People may hold different objectives for what they want and want others to do.  These complex interaction patterns are what qualitative researchers attempt to discover to answer why we do the things we do. Interrelationships in Social Life Saldaña & Omasta, 2018  HOW DO WE ANALYZE?  Although it is possible to make errors that deviate too far from accepted practices, there is no one “right” way to analyze qualitative data.  Analysis does not start after all the data have been collected.  Analysis is an ongoing process from beginning through end of an inquiry.  Think of analysis as a through-line—that is, a thematic thread that weaves throughout the research endeavor. Saldaña & Omasta, 2018 ‘  HOW DO WE ANALYZE? Key Components of Qualitative Research: Fieldwork and naturalistic engagement Descriptive and analytic Seeks complexity and contextualization Researcher as instrument Fidelity to participants Meaning and meaning-making Inductive The Role of the Researcher  Social Location/Identity  Researcher’s identity markers (e.g., gender, social class, race, sexual identity/orientation, culture, ethnicity, language communities, etc. and intersections of these  Positionality  Researcher’s relationship to the context and setting of the research CONSIDERATIONS IN Qualitative Research  Criticality  A critical methodological approach  Creates the conditions to see, engage, contextualize, and make meaning of the complexity of people’s lives and society  Serves as a counter-narrative to dominant and normative cultural knowledge  Reflexivity “the systematic assessment of your identity, positionality, and subjectivities” (Ravitich & Carl, 2016, p. 15)  Collaboration  Should occur throughout the research process, regardless of whether you are on a team or a lone researcher  Dialogic engagement: The collaborative, dialogue-based processes that qualitative researchers engage in throughout a research study that push you to think about various aspects of the research process (and products) in dialogue with others.  Rigor  Responsive research design  Fidelity to participants’ experiences  Seeks complexity and contextualization in design and representation  Transparency  Reflexive engagement Approaches to Qualitative Research  Action research  Case study  Ethnography/critical ethnography  Evaluation research  Grounded theory  Narrative research  Participatory action research  Phenomenology  Practitioner research  RESOURCES USED TO CREATE PRESENTATION  McCarthy, A. (2019). Flextext: Psychology. Don mills, on: Pearson Canada INC.  Ravitich, S. & Carl. N. (2016). Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological. Thousand Oaks, CA: sage publications inc.  Saldaña, J. (2011). Fundamentals of Qualitative Research (Understanding Qualitative Research). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications inc.  Saldaña, J. & Omasta, M. (2018). Qualitative Research: Analyzing Life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications inc.