Social Research Methods

    Research designs
    Naturalism has been defined as:
    Key concept 3.4 explains that “naturalism” is an unusual expression which has many meanings, some contradictory! All of the definitions shown in this question are correct, although “a” is positivist as opposed to the interpretivism suggested by “b” and “c”. However, research methodologies like ethnography, or observation, or unstructured qualitative interviews try to come close to the natural context of the data, while being relatively non-intrusive.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 43
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide
    Why might we say that quantitative researchers also try to study social meanings?
    A lot of the difficulties between quantitative and qualitative researchers stem from the consideration of meaning. It is argued that quantitative studies can reveal statistics but not those factors which produced the statistics. Furthermore, although what things are and what they mean are fundamentally different, it is the meaning of things that shape people’s relationships with the world around them. On the other hand, there can be little doubt that quantitative social researchers really are driven by the need to understand meaning, so the argument is really between the efficiency of methods they each use to uncover it. Questionnaires really do try to find out people’s attitudes and opinions, even if the results are shown as the numbers of people with a particular attitude, rather than their reasons for holding the attitude.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 624
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Sampling in quantitative research
    The term ‘data processing error’ refers to:
    Figure 8.9 displays the “four sources of error in social survey research” (p194), including ‘data-processing’ error. As the term implies, this is an error which occurs at the time of processing the data rather than at the time of preparing for it or even gathering it. The typical processing error crops up in coding answers given in questionnaires. It is true that faulty questionnaire construction may ‘breed’ errors at the processing stage, so that great care must be taken at the implementation phase and while there is, indeed, a standard ‘error’ between the averages of samples and populations, this is a statistical expression rather than a human mistake.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 194
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Documents as sources of data
    What are Scott’s four criteria for assessing the quality of documents?
    Scott (1990, cited on page 546) distinguishes between personal and official (private or state owned) documents, but argues that they can all be evaluated using the four criteria of ‘authenticity’: “is the evidence genuine?”; ‘credibility’: “is the evidence free from error?”; ‘representativeness’: “is the evidence typical?” and ‘meaning'” is the evidence clear and comprehensible?”
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 546
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature and process of social research
    Why is data analysis concerned with data reduction?
    When we look at all the data gathered, we then need to group similar bits of qualitative data into categories and themes, and quantitative data into tables and averages, so that we can see it more clearly. Literally, we make sense of the data in a process called ‘data reduction’. Answer (c) is incorrect, because the repetition of responses across the sample might prove to be, itself, very interesting. Most research suffers from having too little data, rather than too much, at least of the desired kind. Finally, exceeding the sample size can never be bad if the additional cases satisfy the selection criteria (see chapter 8).
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 11
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Mixed methods research: combining quantitative and qualitative research
    How can multi-strategy research help us to study different aspects of a phenomenon?
    It has been argued that quantitative research tends to reveal the larger scale, “macro” aspects of a phenomenon (such as patterns of crime or levels of educational attainment in different social groups), whereas qualitative research reveals the “micro” level processes of interaction that go on in everyday life. It is therefore extremely useful to combine these two levels of analysis and look at both aspects of a phenomenon, often through a two-stage research project.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 644,645
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Structured interviewing
    Which of the following is not advised when planning the question order of a structured interview?
    It is important to stick to the order of the questions as determined in the interview schedule, for a number of reasons. One fairly obvious reason is that if we skip a question, for whatever reason, we may forget to come back to it. Another concerns the logical progression of the question order, whereby a later question may predispose a respondent to answering an earlier question somewhat differently than might have been the case spontaneously. This particularly applies to questions of a more sensitive nature, which should be left till later in the interview, or those that strike the respondent as being more meaningful to them, more salient, which really should come early in the interview. From both the respondent’s point of view and your own, it is more appropriate to group questions into categories than to leave them “scattered all over the place”. The respondent will get a sense of order and intelligence and you are more likely to be able to understand the face validity of your own questions, apart from making coding and data processing more straightforward. Far from expecting variation in the question order, you are sternly cautioned against it.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 208-210
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Structured observation
    One of the criticisms often levelled at structured observation is that:
    Structured observation does impose a framework onto the social setting being observed. The problem is that the framework may be inappropriate or even irrelevant. Because of its focus on behaviour, it cannot easily study intentions of human actions, in other words, the meanings behind behaviour. Another problem is that lots of fragmentary data is gathered, which can be hard to integrate into a coherent whole. Interpretivist sociologists are often reluctant to use this method because the focus on observable behaviour often means neglecting to consider the subjective meanings that people give to their actions. This may suggest that observation should usually be accompanied with another data-gathering method, whether the research strategy is quantitative or qualitative.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 279
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis: using NVivo
    What does the acronym “CAQDAS” stand for?
    CAQDAS is one of the most significant developments in qualitative research over the last twenty years. The label refers to a group of software packages such as NVivo and ATLAS/ti, which are used for qualitative data analysis. These computer programmes were developed for individual use on a PC or laptop computer and were originally not much more than sophisticated word-processors but have developed into advanced data-base programmes.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 602
    Author: rikazzz Comment
    The nature of quantitative research
    An operational definition is:
    Devising measures of concepts is shown as step 4 in the process of quantitative research (fig. 7.1, p150). Bryman points out that this step is often referred to as operationalization, in other words, the series of separate steps we will take to make our research work for us. This is very important when we think about tests of validity of the research. The operational definition is therefore, the very opposite of abstract; attempting to phrase the concept so precisely as to make it capable of being tested in the research context.
    Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 150
    Author: rikazzz Comment