Social Research Methods

    Ethnography and participant observation
    Is it okay to break the law in order to maintain a “cover”?
    Various reports on ethnographic research on football hooliganism and shady business practices, for example, are discussed by Bryman (pages 438-440), which show the risk and performance of criminal activity in order to maintain a covert role as an active participant. This does not justify breaking the law! A fervent ethical stance must be assumed by social researchers at all times, sometimes leaving no option but to avoid certain types of research project, including those focussed on criminal activities. It is never acceptable, under any circumstances, to break the law.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 440
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Research designs
    Survey research is cross-sectional and therefore:
    A survey attempts to discover the range of responses to a set of variables. The researcher can give a lot of details concerning procedures for selecting respondents, handling of the research instrument (perhaps a questionnaire) and the analysis methodology. In this way, replicability can be almost guaranteed. However, since the analysis can only pinpoint degrees of co-relation between variables, causality remains in the realm of inference, meaning low (or no) internal validity. Remember that internal validity depends on causality and reliability on replicability.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 54
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Social research strategies: quantitative research and qualitative research
    What does an empiricist believe?
    How do we actually know the things we know? People told us some of them, we read about some of them and others we saw, or felt for ourselves. This is at the heart of empiricism – we acquire knowledge through our sensory perceptions. It follows that the empiricist approach to research is to gather information through observation of the ‘real’ world and let theory emerge as a kind of conclusion. We should not start out with a theory, an empiricist might say, and find facts which seem to suit. Now, although this discussion might seem a bit too philosophical for some and consequently, a bit esoteric, most social research depends on ’empirical’ data. What this means is that most research studies include quite a bit of primary data gathering, and are not just limited to musings about what others have said.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 20
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Writing up social research
    Which qualitative research method was used by Jones et al (2010)?
    Structured interviewing is a quantitative method, so is not applicable to a qualitative research strategy like that followed by Jones et al (2010). They don’t give a rationale for their choice of semi-structured interviewing but it is possible that they saw a benefit in extended one-to-one discussions over the somewhat free-for-all nature of a focus group. CAQDAS is computer software (like NVivo) used by Jones et al, among others, to help with the analysis of the voluminous interview data.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 672-674
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Asking questions
    The value of piloting a questionnaire is that it helps you to:
    You must not test out your questions on people who will be in the final sample because they will give biased answers later. Finding out what an expert in the field would think of your questions tends to help with face validity and is clearly a good idea, so if your research concerns air travel, perhaps answer (c) might indicate a useful course of action. A pilot study for a questionnaire, though, will help with bringing to light those questions that are defective for a variety of reasons and with their sequencing and even with the instructions to respondents and interviewers. Most experienced researchers believe it to be an essential step in the research process.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 260,261
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis: using NVivo
    Which of the following is a kind of search that can be carried out in NVivo?
    There are three main types of search that you can conduct in NVivo. If you want to see all data coded under a particular node (single node search), select the node in question at the “navigation” window. You can also search to find instances of text coded for two separate nodes, by using the “queries” button to open a “Coding Query” dialog box. Using the “Edit” button on the top tool bar, then “Find”, opens the “Find Content” dialog box (shown in Plate 25.11, p615), which helps you to search for all instances of a particular word or phrase. This type of “string” search may uncover “in vivo” codes (expressions used by research participants), which can then be created as nodes in their own right.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 611-615
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature and process of social research
    Which of the following is not a type of research question?
    Bryman (page 7) says that “a hypothesis is in a sense a form of research question” but which is not formulated as a question. In a way, it provides the basis for research questions, of which seven types are suggested in Key concept 1.1. These include Denscombe’s (2010) list, including answers (a), (b) and (c). The research question forces us to think about what we want to find out precisely, as well as attempting to prove or disprove the hypothesis. A hypothesis that something can be changed leads naturally to research questions like ‘how can it be changed’, ‘to what extent can it be changed’ and perhaps ‘under which circumstances might it be changed’.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 7, 8
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Using IBM SPSS statistics
    How would you print a bar chart that you have just produced in SPSS?
    This is a straightforward way of printing your bar chart as a piece of “output” from SPSS. If you do not specify which things you want to print from the output summary box on the left of the screen, SPSS will print all of the graphs and tables in the Output Viewer. You can also locate a printer ‘icon’ like you have seen in many other computer programmes, which will open a ‘Print dialog box’. SPSS will warn you that your output has not been saved if you try to close the Output Editor. If that should happen, save your output as a file (SPSS gives you many types to choose from) and decide later on which material you want to print (and even which programme to print from).
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 370
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature and process of social research
    Because of the number of things that can go wrong in research there is a need for:
    Answer (a) is the correct answer, according to Townsend and Burgess (2009b, cited on page 16) because of the unpredictability of the research process. Key interviewees become unavailable or play ‘hard-to-get’, response rates prove too low to be usable, a new publication reveals significant development in the research topic and so on. We hope supervisors will always be sympathetic to your problems but it is your research, your dissertation, not theirs and it is, therefore, your responsibility to discharge it properly. Extra cash can be a help, from time to time, but is unlikely to resolve the problems outlined. Knowing when and how to change course is important, as is knowing when not to quit!
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 14
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Documents as sources of data
    Why might a collection of personal letters from the nineteenth century be low in representativeness?
    The selective retention of letters, diaries and autobiographies from historical periods reflects the social conditions of the time. For example, the introduction of the penny post in the nineteenth century may have led to more letters being written, but this would have been counteracted by the limited availability of education and literacy skills. Consequently, the documents available from the period in question are not representative of the population as a whole, being written by a subset only. A further complication arises when we consider why certain letters have been kept while others, presumably, have been destroyed. A feminist perspective would notice the relatively low proportion of letters extant from that period written by women, since boys were more likely than girls to have received an education at that time.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 548
    Author: rikazzz Comment