SOCI 3240: Final Exam

Describe two situations in which you would not like to use action research.

1. 2.

According to the text, what are the three major strengths case studies have in the development of grounded theory?

1. 2. 3.

List and define 4 of the 5 researcher skills that Yin associates with conducting good case studies.

1. 2. 3. 4.

List 7 of the 10 descriptors Johnson uses to help individuals better bring action research into methodological focus.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

List and define 5 of the 8 basic ingredients in focus groups.

1. A clearly defined objective and/or research problem 2. The nature of the group- What are the group's characteristics? Is the group largely homogeneous or is it heterogeneous? Is it an appropriate group for the research question(s)? 3. Atmosphere/environment and rapport- Make sure all group members feel comfortable and understand that you as a researcher will respect confidentiality 4.An aware listening facilitator: Facilitators, as with any interviewer, must listen to what the subjects are saying. It is important to have a schedule or agenda during the focus group; however, it should never be so inflexible that interesting topics that spontaneously arise during the group discussion are shortchanged or unnecessarily truncated. 5. A well-organized and prepared facilitator: Whether the facilitator intends to work with several specific questions or with several general topical areas, the facilitator should have a clear idea about how things will proceed.

Discuss at least 2 dangers of invisibility as stated in the text.

1. Certificates of Confidentiality- Protects interviewer from being compelled to bear witness against a subject who may have revealed plans for a crime to researcher as part of latter's work. 2. Accidental Misidentification- guilt by associationF

List and define the three types of memoing discussed in class.

1. Code memos- These are memos that attempt to clarify what sort of codes a researcher will eventually use in the coding phase of the research. 2. Theoretical memos- These are memos that a researcher uses to connect his/her theoretical ideas to the observations in the field. 3. Operational/Procedural memos

List three advantages in using the Internet for market research with online focus groups.

1. Cut costs 2. Have potential to reach a broad geographic scope 3. Provide for a convenient and a comfortable way of participating

The instructor listed 10 principles of sound interviewing. List 7 of them.

1. Dress the part 2. Be on time 3. Test equipment 4. Minimize your own opinions 5. Do not accept what is said at face value 6. Ask for examples 7. Be as neutral as possible 8. Avoid interruptions 9. Avoid reinforcing respondents statements 10. Abide by cultural norms

List and define the three major components of ethnography.

1. Field work- going into the social domain of the group one wants to study and observing them. 2. Case studies- use a diversity of methodology to understand a particular social situation. 3. Participant Observation- the researcher actually participates in the activities of the group

Participatory Action Research

1. Identifying the Research Question(s) 2. Gathering the Information to Answer the Question(s) 3. Analyzing and Interpreting the Information 4.Sharing the Results with the Participants

List and define the three different types of case studies as outlined by Stake.

1. Intrinsic-undertaken when a researcher wants to better understand a particular case. 2. Instrumental- provide insights into an issue or refine a theoretical explanation, making it more generalizable 3. Collective- involve extensive study of several instrumental cases, intended to allow better understanding, insight, or perhaps improved ability to theorize about a broader context.

List and define 3 of the 5 elements the text states should be included in the moderator's guide.

1. Introduction and introductory activities 2. Statement of the basic rules or guidelines for the interview 3. Short question-and-answer discussions 4. Special activities or exercises 5. Guidance for dealing with sensitive issues

List and define 4 of the 6 possible variations on the theme of invisible status that Stoddart identified. How does the problem of "getting in" a field setting pertain to our relative inability to do ethnographies of elites?

1. Invisible Researcher 2. 3. 4. The elites were very nature difficult to penetrate

What are the two major concerns in developing descriptive accounts and creating reports of these accounts?

1. It is critical that accounts reflect the perceptions of all stakeholders in the study population. 2. Except in situations in which the stakeholders amount to only a very few people, all of them usually cannot be included in all the steps of the process all of the time.

The book provides 10 commandments of interviewing. List and define 6 of them.

1. Never begin an interview cold. 2. Remember your purpose-keep subject on track 3. Present a natural front 4. Demonstrate aware hearing 5. Be respectful

According to the instructor what are three sources one can get visual data?

1. Oneself 2. Media or other public places 3. Respondents we are researching

List and define 4 of the 6 mixed methods approaches discussed in class.

1. Sequential Explanatory- Basically, the researcher conducts a quantitative method. Then he/she uses a qualitative method to better interpret his/her findings. 2. Sequential Exploratory- In this design, the researcher starts out with a qualitative method and then follows up with quantitative work. 3. Sequential Transformative design- This method is not as tied to a certain order of using methods as the first two designs. Thus, a researcher is able to start with a quantitative or qualitative method approach. The key is that the researcher is driven by a certain theoretical perspective (i.e. feminist, Marxist) that guides how the researcher interprets the results. 4. Concurrent Triangulation design- In this design a researcher collects quantitative and qualitative data at the same time.

List and define 4 of the 5 types of case studies discussed in class.

1. Snapshot - Intense study of one case at one point in time. 2. Longitudinal - Using both quantitative and qualitative techniques to understand a particular case over a period of time. 3. Pre-Post - Looking at a certain case in two periods of time. 4. Patchwork - Looking at multiple case studies of the same research entity

List and define 3 of the 4 general aspects the text discusses about ethnographers getting acclimated to the setting.

1. Taking in the physical setting 2. Developing relationships with inhabitants 3. Locating subgroups and stars

List and define three types of action research.

1. Technical/scientific/collaborative 2. Practical/mutual collaborative/deliberate mode 3. Emancipating/enhancing/critical mode

List and define 2 of the 3 problems the book outlines as it concerns question formulation

1. The Double-Barreled Question- Questions accidentally ask for two different pieces of information. 2. Complex questions- When questions are too long

Name at least 2 assumptions that are behind the use of standardized interviews.

1. The meaning of each question is identical for every subject. 2. The questions scheduled in their interview instrument are sufficiently comprehensive, and sufficiently simple, to elicit from subjects all (or nearly all) information relevant to the study's topic(s).

Name at least 2 assumptions that are behind the use of unstandardized interviews.

1. They do not know in advance what all the necessary questions are. 2. Not all subjects will necessarily find equal meaning in like-worded questions—in short, that subjects may possess different vocabularies or different symbolic associations.

What are the three goals when using photovoice as an action research strategy

1. To empower and enable people to reflect their personal and community concerns 2. To encourage a dialogue and to transfer knowledge and information about personal and community issues through discussions about photographs among participants 3. To access the perception of those not in control of various issues and to share this information with those who are in control (policymakers, politicians, healthcare professionals, educators, etc.)

What is a pre-test and why is it important when creating an interview schedule?

A pre-test is when a newly planned interview schedule is examined by experts and researchers that are familiar with the study's subject and then used in practice interviews.

According to the instructor, why is it important to transcribe interview data?

A transcription is also important because it allows the researcher to more easily look for patterns in the data.

Reflectivity

Access and ethical concerns underscore that ethnography requires a reflective concern on the part of the researcher,

What is meant by "action research"? What are the primary tasks that are targeted by action research? Discuss the three basic phases of action research as well as the action research spiral process.

Action research is a collaborative approach to research that provides people with the means to take systematic actions in a n effort to resolve specific problems. Looking- assess the situation and create a picture about what is going on Thinking- Thinking involves making interpretations and offering some explanation about the case at hand. Action- The central purpose of action research is to resolve some matter and take action toward improving the lives of the participants. Research Spiral process: identifying the research questions, gathering the information to answer the questions, sharing the results with the participants.

Outline

All the broad categories you feel may be relevant to your study.

Emic View

Along similar lines, some researchers seek to understand the worldviews of native inhabitants of social environments or what may be

Ambient Risks

Ambient dangers arise when a researcher exposes himself or herself to otherwise avoidable dangers, simply by having to be in a dangerous setting or circumstance to carry out the research.

List and define an advantage and a disadvantage of using the telephone interview.

An advantage: You can interview someone that is geographically far from you. A disadvantage: Current phone etiquette

According to the dissertation chair of the instructor, who is likely to be uncomfortable with the social sciences?

Are not for those who have to be about to answer questions with complete certainty.

Group Data

Collective notions shared and negotiated by the group

According to the text, how can focus group interviewing be combined with unobtrusive measures?

Commonly uses qualitative behavior.

CAPI

Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing

CATI

Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing

Embedded Case Study

Embedded case studies involve looking at one case study but including several levels or units of analysis. In other words, this case study approach includes examination of a subunit, or several subunits, of the overall focus of the research.

List and define the three different designs of case studies as discussed by Yin.

Exploratory- When conducting exploratory case studies, fieldwork and data collection may be undertaken before defining a research question. Explanatory-The explanatory case study, then, attempts to discover and analyze the many factors and conditions that can help us to build a causal explanation for the case. Descriptive-With descriptive case explorations, the investigator presents a descriptive theory that establishes the overall framework for the investigator to follow throughout the study. Descriptive case studies differ from explanatory ones in that we would be focused on the uniqueness of the case and not try to develop an inferential model that would necessarily be applied to other cases.

Aware Listening

Facilitators, as with any interviewer, must listen to what the subjects are saying (see Chapter 4). It is important to have a schedule or agenda during the focus group; however, it should never be so inflexible that interesting topics that spontaneously arise during the group discussion are shortchanged or unnecessarily truncated.

Active Interviewing

From their perspective, the interview is not arbitrary or one-sided. Instead, the interview is viewed as a meaning-making occasion in which the actual circumstance of the meaning construction is important

Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers are people or groups who are in positions to grant or deny access to a research setting

Analytic Ethnography

I use the term "analytic ethnography" to refer to research processes and products in which, to a greater or lesser degree, an investigator (a) attempts to provide generic propositional answers to questions about social life and organization; (b) strives to pursue such an attempt in a spirit of unfettered or naturalistic inquiry; (c) utilizes data based on deep familiarity with a social setting or situation that is gained by personal participation or an approximation of it; (d) develops the generic propositional analysis over the course of doing research; (e) strives to present data and analyses that are true; (f) seeks to provide data and/or analyses that are new; and (g) presents an analysis that is developed in the senses of being conceptually elaborated, descriptively detailed, and concept-data interpenetrated.

According to the text, how does focus group interviewing differ from participant observation?

In a focus group, the interviewer acts does not engage in the same activities as the respondants.

Zero-Order Level of Communication

In such instances, the words and ideas conveyed by survey questions are simplified to the level of the least sophisticated of all potential respondents.

Contextualizing Stories

In this stage, the participants share stories about their photographs. In more traditional research terms, they offer accounts about the photographs, why they were taken, what the image means to the individual, and what they intended the photograph to depict.

How does the capacity of the interviewer as actor differ from the role of interviewer as director?

Interviewer as director: At the same time as you are performing as actor, you must also serve as director. In this capacity, you must be conscious of how you perform lines and move, as well as of the interviewee's performance. As an interviewer, you must reflect on each segment of the interview as if you were outside the performance as an observer. From this vantage point, you must assess the adequacy of your performance (e.g., whether you are responding correctly to line cues from the interviewee and whether you are handling avoidance messages appropriately). This may include demonstrating both verbally and visually that you are empathic to things the interviewee has said. An approving nod or a brief comment, such as "I see what you mean" or "I understand," may offer sufficient positive reinforcement. You can also, carefully, communicate that you consider some response to be unfinished, or insufficient, and that you are waiting for more elaboration. Sometimes the best way to do this is by doing nothing. Interviewer as Actor: As an actor, you must perform your lines, routines, and movements appropriately. This means that in addition to reciting scripted or unscripted lines (the interview guidelines), you must be aware of what the other actor (the interviewee) is doing throughout the interview. You must listen carefully to line cues in order to avoid stepping on the lines of the interviewee (interrupting before the subject has completely answered a question). In addition, as actor, you must remain nonjudgmental regardless of what the interviewee may say. If you want people to openly talk about their feelings and views, you must refrain from making any negative judgments—either verbally or through visual cues. The best way to accomplish this is to accept people for who and what they are; avoid making judgments of their actions, beliefs, or lifestyles, even in your mind. This might mean that there are certain people whom you should not interview because you, personally, cannot suspend your judgment of them.

Creative Interviewing

Involves using a set of techniques to move past the mere words and sentences exchanged during an interview

Contrast microethnography with macroethnography.

Macroethonography: Attempts to describe the entire way of life of a group Microethonography: Focuses on particular incisions at particular points in the larger setting.

Role-Taking

Many roles are available to an interviewer. Regardless of any preconceived notion and expectation about the interviewer's role as perceived by the interviewee, it is possible (within certain limits) for the interviewer to shape, alter, and even create desired role images.

Opaque Text

Other subjectivist and existential approaches have given rise to the notion of fieldwork as transition, in which cultural elements, including human ideas and perceptions,

Under what conditions would it be inadvisable to conduct a mixed methods approach?

Part of this is that there are questions that a scholar only needs quantitative or qualitative research to address.

Self-Conscious Performer

Rehearsed Performance

According to the text, what is the first thing to do when developing an interview schedule?

Researchers must determine the nature of their investigation and the objectives of their research.

Index Sheets

Should contain some type of code identifying the transcript in which it has been located, the page number of the specific transcript, and a brief verbatim excerpt (no more than a sentence).

Situational Risks

Situational danger occurs when the researcher's presence or behaviors in the setting trigger conflict, violence, or hostility from others in the setting.

What are the advantage of structural interviews as opposed to unstructured interviews?

Structural interviews have a more established system of meaning.

Short Answer Sheets

Summarize issues and topics in transcript as well as background data on each respondent.

Dramaturgy

Symbolic interactionist paradigm—the stream of symbolic interaction

What is the difference between a synchronous and an asynchronous environment?

Synchronous environments contain real time threaded communications as if they were talking in person wheres asynchronous environments contain conversations with pauses and delayed responses.

Inter-Rater Reliability

The degree of agreement among the coders

Etic View

The etic dimension of the research, then, operates in the understandings and latent meanings uncovered by the research in the course of the study. But these meanings and understandings are outside of the insider's (emic) general perceptions. Instead, these etic understandings are the products of interpretations of meaning, theoretical and analytic explanations, and understandings of symbols as mediated through the researcher (an outsider).

Raw Data

The information collected during the course of a focus group, like that collected during the course of a face-to-face interview

According to the text, what is the largest difference between traditional and online ethnography?

The largest difference between traditional and online ethnography is that traditional ethnography is studied

Social Interpretations

The process of social interpretation, although not fully understood, is nonetheless evidenced by convincing empirical research/interviewer's intuition

Life History

The researcher is interested in the life events of those being interviewed

Social Performance

The symbolic action that passes between actor and audience

How would a researcher move from line to line coding to focus coding in fieldwork?

The way this works is that the researcher first goes through the notes and tries to place an observation beside each line. Then the researcher goes back and focuses on those codes rather than the notes to create a smaller focused code.

Full-Channel Communication

These nonverbal channels of communication, together with more obvious verbal channels, make up the conversational interaction situation

According to the professor, why do some researchers argue that quantitative research is not science?

They argue that large sample studies do not get at the reasons why social phenomenon happens but fools us by pointing out superficial relationships that might seem causal.

According to the instructor, how can a researcher make sure the interview data collected is an accurate representation of the respondents' comments?

This can be done by writing out the interpretations and having another researcher, who has read the interviews, read them

Extended Focus Group

This procedure includes a questionnaire administered to participants before the group session.

Time-Extended Focus Group

This style of focus group uses online communications technology, usually in a message board format, where questions can be posted and responded to either privately or for all to see; in a threaded message style, where questions can be asked and answered and all connected can view them; or even in a wiki community writing format, where focus group members can see questions and answers and can even simultaneously respond and post their impressions, answers, or other questions.

Why should you invite more individuals to a focus group than you actually need?

To have a chance to divide a large focus group in to two or more subgroups and creating multiple cases.

Define and contrast the use of typologies, sociograms and metaphors as ways to interpret ethnographic data.

Typology: A systematic method for classifying similar events, actions, objects, people, or places, into discrete groupings. Sociograms: Part of a larger group of techniques known as sociometry. These procedures allow the researcher to make assessments about the degree of affinity or disdain that members of a group have toward one another. Metaphors: Descriptions that reveal aspects of the subject through comparison with other subjects.

According to the instructor, what does it mean to "cherry pick" quotes from the respondents and why is this bad methodology?

Using certain parts of the transcript in order to make the respondent appear a certain way.

According to the instructor, regardless of the actual number of interviews you have done, how do you know that you have conducted enough interviews for a given project?

When a pattern or patterns have emerged from the interview responses.

Group Think

Which involves several members of the group jumping on board a particular idea or series of comments about a given idea, attitude, or belief as the result of subgroup pressure.

According to the instructor, how does analyzing focus group transcripts differ from analyzing one to one interview transcripts?

interactions between different respondents.

Semistandarized Interview

• More or less structured. • Questions may be reordered during the interview. • Wording of questions flexible. • Level of language may be adjusted. • Interviewer may answer questions and make clarifications. • Interviewer may add or delete probes to interview between subsequent subjects.