Concept Topic Sheet for Final Exam in SYA 4300 Ethics Confidentiality and Anonymity telling a potential research participant about the nature of the Informed consent study any risks to participation and gaining permission to include them in the study informed consent form and removes any records that might indicate the subject s identity backgrounds that meets to review research plans involving human subjects to determine risk to subjects Insitutional Review Board committee made up of varying maintaining confidentiality is ensured in the Ethics committees Quantitative data analysis Univariate analysis describe the distribution of a SINGLE variable o 1 Frequency tables number of people or cases in each category often expressed as percentages of sample interval rational o 2 Diagrams Bar chart or pie chart nominal or ordinal most popular display distribution of cases across categories of a variable Histograms interval ratio o 3 Measures of central tendency the value around which cases tend to center which measure you should use depends on level of measurement shape or form of the distribution of data and research objective Mean sum all values in distribution then divide by total number of values any level of measurement nominal variables Median middle point within entire range of values and not distorted by outliers ordinal or interval Mode most frequently occurring value interval o 4 Measures of dispersion the amount of variation in a sample Range the difference between the minimum and maximum values in a sample most common Interquartile range Variance Standard deviation the average amount of variation around the mean reducing the impact of extreme values outliers The greater the variability around the mean the larger the Useful for comparing the variability in different standard deviation distributions Bivariate analysis describe the relationship between TWO variables Searches for co variance and correlations Cannot establish causality can sometimes infer the direction of a causal relationship if one variable is obviously independent from each other Cross tabulation contingency tables connects the frequencies of two variables and helps you identify any patterns of association can only establish causation if a correlation exists between two variables used with any level of measurement A cross tabulation table reveals four aspects of the association between two variables Note independent and dependent variables are INFERRED 1 Existence do the percentage distributions vary at all 2 Strength how much do the distributions vary 3 Direction Do values on the dependent variable tend to increase or decrease with an increase in value on the independent variable 4 Pattern Are changes in the percentage distribution of the dependent variable fairly regular simply increasing or decreasing or do they vary perhaps increasing then decreasing or perhaps gradually increasing then rapidly increasing o Correlation and causation relationships not causality o Spuriousness mediating moderating intervening variables o Chi square test establishes how confident we can bet that there is a relationship between the two variables in the population P value usually set at 05 Used with any level of measurement Multivariate analysis o When would we conduct multivariate analyses To identify intervening variables third variables moderating the relationship or to determine if the relationship between two variables is spurious Introduction to qualitative research What is it Prioritizes words over numbers an inductive view of the research process in which theory is generated through research o Interpretivist focus on understanding the social world through examining the interpretation of the world by its participants o Constructivist views social properties as outcomes of interactions between individuals Methods of qualitative research discourse analysis and triangulation Focus group ethnography Secondary dataset mixed methods Contrasts and comparisons quantitative vs qualitative ethnography interviewing focus groups o Differences Numbers vs words Point of view of researcher vs participant Social life as static vs a process Macro vs micro Behavior vs meanings o Similarities Relating data analysis to previous studies Answering research questions Explaining variation Main steps in qualitative research o 1 General research question o 2 Selection of sites and subjects o 3 Data collection o 4 Interpretation of data o 5 Conceptual and theoretical work 5a Revising specifying research question 5b Collecting more data o 6 Writing up findings and conclusions Reliability and validity in qualitative research reliability and validity are critical for quantitative research their relevance is not directly transferable to qualitative research Main preoccupations of qualitative researchers o 1 Seeing through the eyes of the people being studied o 2 Description and the emphasis on context o 3 Emphasis on process o 4 Flexibility and limited structure o 5 Concepts and theory ground in data Critiques of qualitative research o 1 Too subjective o 2 Difficult to replicate o 3 Problems of generalizability representative of population o 4 Lack of transparency process of qualitative data analysis is often unclear Triangulation approach to mixed methods involves cross checking the results of one method against the results of another Grounded theory Well not a theory an approach to research that generates theory from data similar to inductive research o Qualitative research as an iterative process Interviewing in qualitative research Structured interview vs semi structured interview Preparing for a semi structured interview o Unstructured single question and free response similar to a conversation o Semi structured list of questions or topics to cover interview guide if an interview guide is employed it should not be too structured in its application and should allow some flexibility in the asking of questions it should be recorded and then transcribed Finding interview subjects o Purposive sampling methods Techniques to ask questions in a semi structured interview Ethnographic research and participant observation Ethnography refers to both a method and the written product of research based on that method an ethnographer is typically a participant who also uses non observational methods and sources such as interviewing and documents Gaining access entry in ethnography o The method of access to a social setting will depend in part on whether it is a