Qualitative and quantitative methods

Grand Tour

A BLANK BLANK descriptive interview question is designed to elicit broad and detailed information about a place or event, such as "Describe the nature of the relationships in your family."

Mini Tour

A BLANK BLANK descriptive interview question is designed to elicit narrower and less detailed descriptions of events or places, such as "Briefly describe your bedtime routines."

Placebo control

A BLANK BLANK group will think that they are the treatment group, but they are actually being deceived in order to see if their expectations will affect them.

Imposed etic

A BLANK BLANK research approach forces the values or expectations of one culture onto others, often leading to problems with both data and interpretation.

Structured

A BLANK interview involves predetermined questions or prompts in a particular order. It is designed to be more systematic and is more likely to yield specific data that can be analyzed more objectively, but it lacks flexibility.

Narrative

A BLANK interview, which is relatively new in psychology, allows the subject to expound upon topics without much guidance or direction from the interviewer. This technique can be hard to analyze because of its lack of structure, but it has the advantage of avoiding the interviewer's biases.

Semi-structured

A BLANK-BLANK interview is potentially the best of both worlds in that there is a basic sequencing of questions, still giving the interviewer the ability to guide the discourse; however, room is made for some less coordinated questions and responses, giving these types of interviews some stability and some flexibility.

Unstructured

An BLANK interview is intentionally conversational, with little if any predetermined sequencing of questions or prompts. It is a relaxed way of getting the subject to open up about himself, and it is flexible in that it allows the interview to be fluid.

Thematic content; inductive content

BLANK BLANK analysis, also known as BLANK BLANK analysis, involves organizing "raw themes" from the interview data, coding them for similarity, organizing them into subordinate and superordinate themes, followed at last by more inclusive dimensions between subjects.

Experimenter bias

BLANK BLANK occurs when something the researcher does ends up confounding the experiment, like inadvertently giving away the goals of the study to subjects.

Internal validity

BLANK BLANK refers specifically to the quality of the study, whether the methodology was sound, extraneous variables were for, and steps were carefully followed.

Researcher triangulation

BLANK BLANK refers to the comparison of results from different scientists, thus giving findings more validity or credibility.

Data triangulation

BLANK BLANK refers to the use of different pieces of information (numbers, interview results, survey results, medical information, etc.) in order to add to the credibility of a qualitative study.

Kuhn and Popper

BLANK and BLANK disagreed on the role of the scientist, the former assuming that researchers should seek to support existing theories and the latter assuming they should seek to prove them wrong.

Quasi

BLANK experiments do not involve intentionally changing independent variables, instead relying on naturally occurring variables, like gender or handedness.

Field; controlled environment

BLANK experiments try to increase external and ecological validity by moving them out of the BLANK BLANK of the laboratory.

History

BLANK is a term that refers to the possible confounding variables that arise because each participant has had different experiences and influences prior to the study.

Empiricism

BLANK is the term used to describe the collection of individuals examples in order to form and test hypotheses about that data, and it is the bedrock of the scientific method.

Covert

BLANK observations decrease the chances of demand characteristics, but they raise issues related to privacy and informed consent.

Overt

BLANK observations increase the chances of demand characteristics, but control for issues related to privacy and informed consent.

Credibility; triangulation

BLANK refers to the likelihood that qualitative research is coming up with meaningful and applicable data, and it is usually accomplished, not by one result, but because of BLANK.

Mortality

BLANK refers to the loss of subjects from one trial to the next, which is particularly important during longitudinal research.

Validity

BLANK refers to the ways that particular research is either well-planned and effective during the initial study or whether it is applicable to real world settings.

Correlational

BLANK studies attempt to show that two variables compare well positively or negatively to one another, although it is often emphasized that causation may be unclear.

Experiments

BLANKs involve the manipulation of independent variables in order to measure the impact on dependent variables.

Case study; triangulation

Henry Molaison became the subject of a very famous BLANK BLANK that, over many years, involved the BLANK of various types of information in order to get a complete picture of what happens to someone who, after years of generating memories, loses his hippocampi.

Representative sample

Ideally, when doing quantitative research that you hope to apply to a much larger population, you need to have a BLANK BLANK that accurately reflects the entire community.

Snowball sampling

If a scientist were doing qualitative research on drug addicts, he might locate a few addicts and then have them invite other addicts into the study, which is called BLANK BLANK, mostly because a few subjects end up becoming a larger sample.

Natural experiment

In 1979, Tannis MacBeth Williams took advantage of an upcoming change in that a Canadian city, which she dubbed Notel, was about to get television service for the first time, a perfect setup for a BLANK BLANK using Notel and two other cities.

Derived etic

In Law (141), it is suggested that the BLANK BLANK approach is best for looking at depression, because, though many aspects of this disease are quite similar across cultures worldwide, there are significant differences in how these symptoms manifest themselves.

treatment group; control group

In Loftus' research on memory, the subjects who saw the "bloody" knife were the BLANK BLANK, and they were compared to the group who saw no weapon, the BLANK BLANK.

Reflexivity

In all research, but particularly in qualitative research, it is necessary for scientists to take a critical look at their methods, findings and explanations - which is called BLANK - in order to ensure that they were true to the process.

Debriefing

In order to ensure the ethical use of interview data, the interview should be followed by a BLANK during which the subject is informed about how the information will be used, who will have access to it, the fact that he can still withdraw his data from the study, etc.

Target population

In quantitative and some qualitative research, the goal is to acquire a sample that is representative of some particular BLANK BLANK.

Control group

In scientific experiments, it is not enough to change an independent variable to measure a dependent variable. You must also have a comparative BLANK BLANK.

Introspection; subjective

In the era of behaviorism, Freudian psychology took a hit because it relied too much on interviews between therapist and patient, and this reliance on BLANK was considered to be too BLANK to be scientific.

Descriptive

Interviews often use BLANK questions in order to gain a large amount of information about an occurrence or a place, like a child's home. These questions are either Grand Tour or Mini-tour in nature, depending on the information needed by the interviewer.

Archival

Janis (1972) made use of BLANK data in order to look back at the decision-making processes of JFK and his administration prior the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Naturalistic observation

Maddi (1987) took advantage of an opportunity for a BLANK BLANK when Illinois Bell Telephone was going through significant downsizing in the early 1980s. It is not the kind of experiment one could ethically run.

Longitudinal

Mortality refers to the loss of subjects from one trial to the next, which is particularly important during BLANK research.

psychology students; convenience sampling

Much collegiate research has a built-in confounding variable in that subjects are BLANKs who might not represent the entire population, but they were chosen using BLANK BLANK.

Hawthorne Effect

Named for a famous study involving worker performance, the BLANK BLANK refers to when subjects exhibit demand characteristics just because they know they are being observed.

Demand

Named for a famous study involving worker performance, the Hawthorne Effect refers to when subjects exhibit BLANK characteristics just because they know they are being observed.

Being observed

Named for a famous study involving worker performance, the Hawthorne Effect refers to when subjects exhibit demand characteristics just because they know they are BLANKed.

Screw you

Occasionally, subjects will intentionally confound results of experiments by giving wrong answers or exhibiting demand characteristics, which is humorously called the BLANK BLANK Effect.

Purposive sampling

Often, researchers are very particular about choosing the subjects they are studying, such as alcoholics or the obese, so they have to engage in BLANK BLANK.

Subjective; credibility

Qualitative research, because of its very nature, is considered to be more BLANK, dependent upon interpretations by the researchers, but BLANK is still increased through triangulation and thorough write-ups.

Objective

Quantitative research attempts to be thoroughly BLANK, removing the biases, confounding variables and personal interpretations of qualitative research.

Population validity

Recently, researchers found that medications that worked on rodents to eliminate amyloid plaques in theire brains had virtually no impact on the same plaques in humans' brains, revealing a problem of BLANK BLANK.

Randomly; sample size

Regarding quantitative research, in order to create a truly representative sample, researchers seek ensure that subjects are chosen BLANK, and that they have an adequate BLANK BLANK.

Theoretical triangulation

Researchers or therapists who do not lock themselves into analyzing people, events or other variables in only one way, according to one model, are usually more willing do engage in BLANK BLANK in order to get a full picture of a situation.

Methodological triangulation

Scientists who are not sure whether to use interviews, experiments, surveys, archival data, or other types of research may want to engage in BLANK BLANK in order to get a qualitative overview of their subject.

Methodological

Since Henry Molaison was such an interesting case, researchers studied him in many ways, such as experiments, interviews, questionnaires, etc. which is called BLANK triangulation.

Reflexivity; credibility

Since interviews are potentially quite subjective, it is important for the interviewer to be critical about his methods and analysis - called BLANK - which allows him to increase the BLANK of his findings by including these criticisms.

Credibility

Since it is often more difficult to apply the findings of qualitative research to other subjects, populations situations, etc., we do not refer to the validity of the research, instead using the word BLANK.

Triangulate

Since qualitative research is, by its very nature, more uncertain, it is important to BLANK various data sources, methods, theories or researchers' results.

Order effects

Sometimes, there is a problem with data collection that results from the sequencing of events during a study, leading to a confounding situation known as BLANK BLANK, which can be controlled for by doing another trial with the opposite sequencing.

Null hypothesis

Thanks to Karl Popper, the focus of research has now moved away from proving ideas to instead trying to verify the BLANK BLANK.

Hawthorne

The BLANK Effect occurs when researchers unintentionally let on what it is they are studying, which confounds the experiment because subjects change their behavior.

Emic

The BLANK approach emphasizes that different cultures, their values and norms are likely to impact the results of research, so these variations should be respected and controlled for.

Etic

The BLANK approach focuses on how a particular theory applies equally no matter where research is conducted, even cross-culturally.

Member checking

To ensure that the interviewer's analyses have some credibility, it is important to share them with the subject so he can verify or deny them, which is called BLANK BLANK.

They are being recorded; technical difficulties

Two of the biggest problems associate with postmodern transcription of interviews is that (1) subjects may act differently if they know BLANK, and (2) BLANK may cost the interviewers important data.

Raw; subordinate; superordinate

When analyzing data from an interview using thematic content analysis, one must identify BLANK themes, organize them into specific but smaller groups of BLANK themes, and finally take some of these and organize them into larger groups, called BLANK themes.

Stratified sampling

When choosing a sample, researchers often want to have representatives of different sub-populations in it, so they use BLANK BLANK.

Structured; data

When conducting interviews with larger populations, it is efficient to used BLANK interviews, because this limits the amount of BLANK that researchers will need to review.

Maturation

When subjects learn or otherwise improve on a task form one trial to the next and the researchers do not take this into account, this is a problem called BLANK.

Postmodern transcription

With the advent and advance of technology, the BLANK BLANK interview technique is used more frequently, allowing researchers to listen to audio or watch video footage so they can notice facial expressions or body language that they might have missed during the live interview.