Research Methodology

    Using IBM SPSS statistics
    How would you use the drop-down menus in SPSS to generate a frequency table?
    Following this set of steps will open the “Frequencies” dialog box, in which you can select the variables you want to analyse and then click “OK”. It is worthwhile experimenting with the various drop-down menus to discover what else SPSS can do for you. Probably the best course of action is to ‘play’ with the gym-set data until you feel you are comfortable with the programme, then input your own data.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 360
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Content analysis
    Why did Warde sample food magazines from four different months in the year?
    Remembering that this is a quantitative method, it can be interesting to see frequencies of utterances in texts in different time periods. When sampling dates for content analysis, it is advised to make your sample as representative as possible, so that you can generalise your findings to other similar texts. In this case, Warde (1997, cited on page 288-289) did not select a random, probability sample of dates in the year, but he did choose magazines from one month in each of the four seasons. This was to reduce any sample bias that might have resulted from the types of recipes included in the magazines at particular times in the year, such as Christmas.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 288, 289
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Mixed methods research: combining quantitative and qualitative research
    How might qualitative research facilitate quantitative research?
    Qualitative research is sometimes used as the first stage of a project, with quantitative techniques forming the second stage. This allows researchers to explore their topic in an open-ended way, identify the most salient issues and then design a more focused, specific research instrument to address these, such as a questionnaire or a structured interview.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 638,639
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Asking questions
    You should avoid using double-barrelled questions in a survey because:
    The problem here is that we may tend to see concepts as virtual synonyms of each other, like “pay” and “conditions of “work”. It is not so much that we might think they are the same but that they might lead together to “job satisfaction”, say. Consequently, we may pose a question like Bryman’s on page 253: “How satisfied are you with pay and conditions in your job?” The author points out that the respondent may well be satisfied with one but not the other and so is unsure of how to reply. Questions should not be overlong, it is true, nor should they be too abstract, but the problems with ‘double-barrelled’ questions are not these, but with the creation of ambiguity and uncertainty on the part of the respondent.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 253
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature of quantitative research
    The term ‘reverse operationism’ means that:
    Bryman defines ‘reverse operationism’ (cited as Bryman 1988a:28 on p167) as an eventuality in research whereby concepts are generated by measures, or indicators, rather than the other way around. We might think of this as ‘reverse operationalism’ to stay consistent with the terms used in this chapter. Obviously this is not an intended procedure but rather something which emerges from extensive analysis of indicators, typically through factor analysis. As with any other statistical analysis technique, this certainly has a place in quantitative social research. Factor analysis is a sort of ‘trial-and-error’ analysis, attempting to discover which indicators are more likely to belong to a particular group of indicators than another. It is a useful tool in re-thinking social segments, leading to the formulation of new concepts for testing.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 167
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Interviewing in qualitative research
    Which of the following is a disadvantage of qualitative interviewing relative to participant observation?
    In some cases, it may be preferable to use participant observation rather than qualitative interviewing. This is often because the researcher wants to find out about deviant or illegal activities that people might not wish to disclose in an interview; the latter tends to produce selective, partial and somewhat sanitized reconstructions of events. Sometimes it is not possible to use one method alone to research our chosen concepts.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 493
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature of qualitative research
    Why do qualitative researchers like to give detailed descriptions of social settings?
    One of the main “preoccupations” of qualitative researchers identified by Bryman (pages 394 and 395) is their emphasis on descriptions of social settings. This is important in that it allows us to understand the context in which events take place and the meanings that individuals give to their action. It is precisely because something in the scene gives meaning to the research participant that the researcher includes it in the overall description.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 394, 3955
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Qualitative data analysis
    In analytic induction, what happens if the researcher finds a deviant case?
    Analytic induction (see Key concept 24.1, p571) involves generating a hypothetical explanation of the research question and then testing this out on a range of data. If just one deviant case is found, the researcher must either redefine the hypothesis so as to exclude the deviant case, or reformulate the hypothesis and proceed with the data collection. It is, therefore, “an extremely rigorous method of analysis” (p572).
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 571-572
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Documents as sources of data
    Why is it necessary to consider the authenticity of personal documents? Select all that apply.
    According to Scott (1990) authenticity is concerned with the integrity of the origin of evidence. Whilst autobiographies purport to be written by an author about themselves, they cannot simply be taken at face-value as a ‘window to the soul’. In some cases, they may have been ghost-written; in others they might have been heavily edited. They also might have been written with a specific purpose or focus in mind. As such, the authenticity of the document needs to be considered in order to understand the context by which it was created.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 547
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature of qualitative research
    What is meant by the term “grounded theory”?
    Grounded theory was introduced by Glaser & Strauss (1967) as a strategy for generating theory from data. In other words, rather than imposing a rigid theoretical framework on the social world, qualitative researchers should gradually build their theories from the data. The ‘theory’ we end up with is ‘grounded’ in the data. (See chapter 24 for a full discussion). It follows that grounded theory uses an inductive approach, whereby concepts emerge from the data. They can then be redefined as hypotheses for further testing.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 381, Key concept 17.2
    Author: rikazzz Comment