Find a peer-reviewed journal article that uses qualitative methods, Discussion Question, sociology homework help

Forum Question: (Always read the chapter listed in the Syllabus for this week, before responding so that you know what you are supposed to write about!)

• Find a peer-reviewed journal article that uses qualitative methods. Not articles from any newspapers (no CNN, Washington Post, etc.), not someone’s blog or website, not wikipedia.com or answers.com. Must be a research article published in a scholarly journal.
• Read the article and write a brief summary of the article. Please paraphrase and not simply provide the Abstract from the article.
• Write a critical review of their qualitative analysis using prompts from our first Assignment (See Assignment in Week 3, Section 10, questions 75-80 listed under “Qualitative Analysis – questions attached below as well) (These questions are listed below along with the other questions)
• This cannot be the same article you have reviewed/completed in Week 3 Assignment 1, or any articles you have reviewed and submitted for a grade (no double dipping!).

Qualitative Analysis (Make sure your article uses qualitative method in their analysis. Common for observation, field research, interviews, focus groups – see more about this in Babbie, 2011, pp. 24-25)

Quantitative and Qualitative Data (Babbie, 2011, pp. 24-25)

The distinction between quantitative and qualitative data in social research is essentially the distinction between numerical and nonnumerical data. When we say someone is intelligent, we’ve made a qualitative assertion. When psychologists and others measure intelligence by IQ scores, they are attempting to quantify such a qualitative assessment. For example, the psychologist might say that a person has an IQ of 120.

Every observation is qualitative at the outset, whether it be your experience of someone’s intelligence, the location of a pointer on a measuring scale, or a check mark entered in a questionnaire. None of these things is inherently numerical or quantitative, but converting them to a numerical form is useful at times. (Chapter 14 deals specifically with the quantification of data.) Quantification often makes our observations more explicit. It can also make aggregating and summarizing data easier. Further, it opens up the possibility of statistical analyses, ranging from simple averages to complex formulas and mathematical models. Thus, a social researcher might ask whether you tend to date people older or younger than yourself. A quantitative answer to this seems easily attained. The researcher asks how old each of your dates has been and calculates an average. Case closed.

Or is it? Although “age” here represents the number of years people have been alive, sometimes people use the term differently; perhaps for some people “age” really means “maturity.” Though your dates may tend to be a little older than you, they may act more immaturely and thus represent the same “age.” Or someone might see “age” as how young or old your dates look or maybe the degree of variation in their life experiences, their worldliness. These latter meanings would be lost in the quantitative calculation of average age. Qualitative data are richer in meaning and detail than are quantified data. This is implicit in the cliché, “He is older than his years.” The poetic meaning of this expression would be lost in attempts to specify how much older.

This richness of meaning stems in part from ambiguity. If the expression means something to you when you read it, that particular meaning arises from your own experiences, from people you’ve known who might fit the description of being “older than their years” or perhaps the times you’ve heard others use that expression. Two things are certain: (1) You and I probably don’t mean exactly the same thing, and (2) you don’t know exactly what I mean, and vice versa.

It might be possible to quantify this concept, however. For example, we might establish a list of life experiences that would contribute to what we mean by worldliness:

Getting married

Getting divorced

Having a parent die

Seeing a murder committed

Being arrested

Being exiled

Being fired from a job

Running away with the circus

We might quantify people’s worldliness as the number of such experiences they’ve had: the more such experiences, the more worldly we’d say they were. If we thought of some experiences as more powerful than others, we could give those experiences more points. Once we had made our list and point system, scoring people and comparing their worldliness would be pretty straightforward. We would have no difficulty agreeing on who had more points than whom.

To quantify a concept like worldliness, we need to be explicit about what we mean. By focusing specifically on what we’ll include in our measurement of the concept, however, we also exclude any other meanings. Inevitably, then, we face a trade-off: Any explicated, quantitative measure will be more superficial than the corresponding qualitative description.

What a dilemma! Which approach should we choose? Which is more appropriate to social research?

The good news is that we don’t need to choose. In fact, we shouldn’t. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are useful and legitimate in social research. Some research situations and topics are amenable mostly to qualitative examination, others mostly to quantification. We need both.

However, because these two approaches call for different skills and procedures, you may feel more comfortable with and become more adept in one mode than the other. You’ll be a stronger researcher, however, to the extent that you can learn both approaches. At the very least, you should recognize the legitimacy of both.

Finally, you may have noticed that the qualitative approach seems more aligned with idiographic explanations, whereas nomothetic explanations are more easily achieved through quantification. Though this is true, these relationships are not absolute. Moreover, both approaches present considerable “gray area.” Recognizing the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research doesn’t mean that you must identify your research activities with one to the exclusion of the other. A complete understanding of a topic often requires both techniques.

The contributions of these two approaches are widely recognized today. For example, when Stuart Biddle and his colleagues (2001) at the University of Wales set out to review the status of research in the field of sport and exercise psychology, they were careful to examine the uses of both quantitative and qualitative techniques, drawing attention to those they felt were underused.

The apparent conflict between these two fundamental approaches has been neatly summarized by Paul Thompson (2004:238–39):

Only a few sociologists would openly deny the logic of combining the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative methods in social research …. In practice, however, despite such wider methodological aspirations in principle, social researchers have regrettably become increasingly divided into two camps, many of whose members know little of each other even if they are not explicitly hostile.

In reviewing the frequent disputes over the superiority of qualitative or quantitative methods, Anthony Onwuegbuzie and Nancy Leech (2005) suggest that the two approaches have more similarities than differences. They further argue that using both approaches strengthens social research. My intention in this book is to focus on the complementarity of these two approaches rather than any apparent competition between them.

 (Babbie 24-25)

Babbie, Earl R. The Basics of Social Research, 5e, 5th Edition. Cengage Learning, 01/2010. VitalBook file.

Quantitative Analysis (Questions)

81)  Is the results section a cohesive essay with the important findings highlighted?

82)  In the essay, does the researcher tie the results to the research hypotheses or goals stated in the introduction?

83)  If there are tables or graphs, are they clearly presented?

84)  Does the researcher present any descriptive statistics?

85)  Are the statistics appropriate for the level of measurement? (Hint: Explain why or why not?)

86)  Are the conclusions the researcher draws appropriate for the statistical information?

87)  In the discussion section, does the researcher briefly summarize the research purposes, methodologies, and key findings (in a non-statistical manner)?

88)  Does the researcher acknowledge any methodological or statistical weaknesses? (Hint: What are they?)

89)  Are the implications of the research or suggestions for future research discussed?

90)  Overall, is the results section adequate?

91)  Overall, is the discussion section adequate?

Additonal Questions:

a) Is the results section a cohesive essay? Why or why not?

b) Does the researcher connect the results to any general research questions or goals? Give 1 example.

c) Is the perspective of the results presentation appropriate? Does it match the research technique? (Hint: provide the justification)

d) Has the writer presented enough examples to support the conclusions?  Do the examples make the readers ‘believe’ the researcher’s points? (Hint: why or why not?)

e) Do you have reason to believe that the presence of the researcher influenced the actions or statements of other group members? Why or why not? If this is possible, has the researcher addressed it in the research?

f)  Especially in field research (although this may be an issue to a lesser degree in other forms of qualitative data gathering), does the researcher discuss how he or she interacted with subjects in the field, what problems arose, and how the researcher addressed them?

TIPS:

• You know the drill! The discussion should reflect your in-depth understanding of what you have found and read.
• Please do not use the same article you have already received credit for in your Assignment 1 (no double dipping!)
• Please do not use the ‘abstract’ as your summary – you should be able to explain what this paper is about based on the prompts from the first Assignment.
• Provide the in-text citations and references! We use the APA format in this class.

 

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