Research Methodology

    Qualitative data analysis
    Why should you start coding your data as soon as possible?
    Coding as you go along, and starting at a relatively early stage, can be very helpful for those who want to build a grounded theory. This is because it forces you to interpret your data and focus your ideas from the start, which in turn helps you to choose an appropriate sample of participants for the next stage of data collection. Qualitative data is typically quite voluminous, so the researcher can easily feel overcome by its sheer size. Coding the data from the outset helps to give the researcher some feeling of being on top of things.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 581
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Ethics and politics in social research
    There is a tendency for debates about ethics in social research to focus on the most extreme cases of ethical transgression. Why might this create a misleading impression?
    Writing about ethics in social research has typically centred on some extreme, infamous cases of deception, invasions of privacy and so on. While these examples help to illustrate our points convincingly, they can be misleading in that ethical dilemmas affect all kinds of social research, down to the most mundane and straightforward research designs.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 121
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS)
    In SPSS online help is provides from the:
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS)
    The ________ command is frequently used to generate variables suit-able for statistical analyses:
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Using IBM SPSS statistics
    In SPSS, what is the “Data Viewer”?
    The Data Viewer is one of the two screens that comprise the Data Editor in SPSS, the other being the Variable Viewer. The Data Viewer is a spreadsheet grid into which you can enter your data for analysis. It is actually the first screen you will see when you start up the programme, and you can go to work straightaway by entering the data you have collected; questionnaire by questionnaire, interview by interview etc.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 355 (see plate 16.1)
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS)
    Which command is used for swapping:
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide
    The natural sciences have often been characterized as being positivist in epistemological orientation. Which of the following has been proposed as an alternative account?
    Quantitative methods have often been assumed to be linked to a positivistic model of the natural sciences, but realism is an alternative epistemology that has also informed much quantitative research. The central issue concerns the validity of studying the social world with the same methodologies that have been developed for study of the natural world. A point of view must be taken that there is a “real” social world external to us, which can, therefore, be studied objectively. The positivist epistemology restricts knowledge to that which is directly observable, whereas the realist accepts the existence of forces driving phenomena, even though those forces may not be capable of observation. We must conclude that there is no “hard and fast” philosophy for doing quantitative research in the social sciences.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 622
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Qualitative data analysis
    Why are Coffey & Atkinson critical of the way coding fragments qualitative data?
    One of the problems with coding, identified by Coffey & Atkinson (1996), is that it involves extracting segments of data from their original context (e.g. an interview transcript), and so the researcher becomes less sensitive to what the data mean in relation to the narrative as a whole. It’s as if the coding process, itself, destroys the narrative. Coding is not analysis; it is a tool of analysis. It therefore requires great sensitivity to the data as a whole (in the sense of an entire interview, for example), so that it will not degenerate into a way of separating data chunks for easier (but less authentic) mechanical processing.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 583
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature of quantitative research
    The split-half method is used as a test of:
    ‘Split-half’ in research means grouping indicators so that the degree of co-relation between the answers can be examined. Typically, ten indicators would be divided into two groups of five each. Now we can see if respondents who scored high on one group also scored high on the other. We have, literally, split the group of indicators in half. Why? To show that the indicators we have used, actually relate to the concept, and thereby guarantee internal reliability.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 157
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Mixed methods research: combining quantitative and qualitative research
    Whereas quantitative research tends to bring out a static picture of social life, qualitative research depicts it asÂ…
    Another of the approaches to multi-strategy research is to combine the static view of events provided by quantitative research with the more processual picture provided by qualitative research. That is, qualitative research tends to focus on the everyday social processes of interaction that occur at a micro-level, which “fills in the gaps” left by quantitative depictions of macro-level patterns of events.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 645
    Author: rikazzz Comment