Concept Topic Sheet for Final Exam in SYA 4300 Justine Gunderson Fall 2015 MAIN TOPICS LISTS YOU SHOULD PROBABLY TO MEMORIZE Ethics Informed consent o Prospective research participants should be given as much information as might be needed to make an informed decision about whether or not they wish to participate o Participants should be aware of their entitlement to withdraw from the study whenever and withdraw the data supplied Confidentiality and Anonymity o Confidentiality an active attempt to remove from the research records any elements that might indicate the subjects identities It is KEY Ensured in the consent form o To ensure confidentiality Use codes for personal identifiers Keep data in a locked file where access is controlled Pseudo names Change identifying information Ethics committees IRB o A committee of specific composition 5 members with varying backgrounds and at least one member not in the sciences that review research plans involving HUMAN subjects to determine potential physical and or psychological risk Quantitative Data Analysis NUMBERS Step One Cleaning Organizing data Making sure your codes are accurate Step Two Examine the distribution of data 1 Univariate analysis o Frequency tables of people or cases in each category Often expressed as s of sample Interval ratio variables must be grouped o Measures of central tendency MODE Sum all values in distribution then divide by total number of MEDIAN Middle point within entire range of values Not distorted by values outliers MEAN Most frequently occurring value o Measures of dispersion the amount of variation in a sample RANGE the difference between the min and max values in a sample VARIANCE INTERQUARTILE RANGE 1 STANDARD DEVIATION o Graphs Bar or Pie chart nominal and ordinal variables Histogram Interval ration variables 2 Bivariate analysis correlations o Explores relationship between two variables and searches for co variance and o Cross tabulation contingency tables Connects the frequencies of two variables Help you identify any patterns of association o Correlation and Causation Correlation shows significant relationship between two variables Causation o Chi square test Test of statistical significance Establishes how confident we can be that there is a relationship between two variables in a population p 05 3 Multivariate Analysis etc o Controlling for a Third Variable o Controls typically include basic demographic factors like age race gender SES Spuriousness Intervening 3rd variable casually follows X IV and precedes Y DV 3rd variable precedes both the IV and DV When a variable was not effected by either the independent variable IV or the dependent variable DV If X causes the 3rd variable and the 3rd variable causes Y If the relation between X and Y is different at different values Mediating Moderating of the 3rd variable o Why would we conduct multivariate analyses To look for a possible spurious relationship between two variables To look for intervening variables third variables moderating relationship Introduction to Qualitative Research WORDS Uses uses more words than numbers interviews o Views social life as a PROCESS interactions create meanings o MICRO LEVEL concerned with individuals experiences and interactions not o EXPERIENCES and MEANINGS that participants attach to a certain large scale experience event Methods of qualitative research o Interviews focus groups discussion groups ethnography research that uses participants perceptions and meanings Contrasts and comparisons with quantitative research o QUALitative inductive research theory research Uses the interpretations of participants from interviews 2 Social life process Micro level o QUANTitative deductive research research theory Uses numerical data from surveys Social life static Macro level o Numbers vs Words o Point of View of Researcher vs Participant o Social Life as static vs a process o Macro vs Micro o Behavior vs Meanings Steps of Qualitative Research o 1 Research Question o 2 Selection of Sites and Subjects o 3 Data Collection o 4 Interpretation of Data o 5 Conceptual and Theoretical Work Reliability and validity in qualitative research o Reliability Is the measure stable over time Consistent o Validity Does the indicator measure the concept Accurate Main preoccupations of qualitative researchers To generate participants to express EXPERIENCES and MEANINGS that participants attach to a certain experience event Critiques of qualitative research o Too subjective o Difficult to replicate o Problems of generalizability does not represent population o Lack of transparency qualitative data analysis is unclear Interviewing in Qualitative Research Structured interview interviewer will not deviate from the interview schedule or probe beyond the answers received so they are not flexible questions are asked in a set standardized order and the o Close ended questions o Generates more QUANTitative data results because of close ended questions Semi structured interview list of questions or topics to cover from interview guide o Interviewer is expected to use probes and other questions to get more details and experiences from the interviewees WHAT WE DID FOR OUR PROJECT o Preparing for a semi structured interview Create Interview Guide Free write all conceptual areas that may be relevant Develop questions based on conceptual areas Create sequence of questions easy important sensitive validating next area REPEAT 3 Use open ended questions have probing questions ask multiple types of questions Schedule Interview Tell potential participants about interview and study let them be in control of the time and place of the interview Informed Consent Orient Interviewees single question free response Unstructured interview Finding interview subjects o Snowball Sampling A small group of people is sampled initially and they connect the researcher to other potential participants o Purposive sampling methods Techniques to ask questions in a semi structured interview Ethnographic Research and Participant Observation Ethnography culture norms and values of the group researcher immersed in social setting for an extended period to understand o Mainly PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION but interviews and documentary methods used too Gaining ACCESS entry in ethnography o Overt vs Covert ethnography OVERT group knows you are a researcher COVERT group is unaware of the research Advantages don t need to negotiate access reactivity is not a problem because the members do not