lecture 29 (reasoning)

Question 1

epistomology?

Answer 1

philosophical attempts at pinpointing how we can know knowledge and what knowledge we can know

Question 2

qualitative research?

Answer 2

• collecting non-numerical data, mostly rich descriptions, for understanding how people experience the world
• Interest in people’s experiences, which cannot be seen in isolation from a particular context
• Conversation topics derived from the literature, less tightly defined plan
• No statistics: coding and interpreting statements
• leads you to a general description of the data

Question 3

hypothetico-deductive approach?

Answer 3

attempts to find hypotheses that can be rejected with which theories can be rejected so that more information on the truth in the world can be obtained

Question 4

big q vs small q qualitative research?

Answer 4

• Small q qualitative research: uses qualitative tools and techniques but within a hypothetico-deductive framework
• Big Q qualitative research: used in a qualitative paradigm which rejects objective realities and truths

Question 5

qualitative vs quantitative?

Answer 5

• Research based on words instead of numbers
• Individual experience vs. differences between groups
• Rich description of some cases vs superficial
  description of large groups of people
• Unstructured and flexible
• answer driven vs method driven: The value of the answer is more important than the steps followed to
  produce the answer

Question 6

qualitative and quantitative: same concepts different meaning?

Answer 6

• Data: Textual or visual information
• Sample: Targeted selection of participants (‘purposive’ or ‘theoretical’ sampling)
• Theory: General description of what the participants experience is in this situation

Question 7

why choose qualitative research?

Answer 7

• research into special persons or situations
• research into situations in which little research has
  been carried out
• if you want to immediately change things in the context of the research
• research into situations in which ethical and
  practical considerations play a major role

Question 8

tools?

Answer 8

• semi structured interviews: broad guideline, no fixed questions and order
• focus group: group interview, with a focus on interaction between the group members
• perform a (qualitative) content analysis: making the content of communication transparent

Question 9

approaches?

Answer 9

• they are not mutually exclusive, but provide
  answers to different types of questions

1. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis
   (how does a person experience this in this context?)
2. Grounded theory
   (how do (social) processes impact participants?)
3. Discursive analysis
   (how are experiences constructed?)

Question 10

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA)?

Answer 10

• the goal is to get a detailed picture of how an
  individual gives meaning to events
• researcher has a crucial role: how does the
  researcher make sense of the participant making sense of the world

Question 11

steps for IPA?

Answer 11

1. targeted collection of a homogeneous and small sample (small due to practical constrains)
2. interview based on global guideline
3. transcription, annotation & clustering of themes
4. reporting on overarching themes -> superordinate themes (looking for commonalities between themes so you can put them together)

Question 12

reflexivity?

Answer 12

• researcher acknowledging the part they play when creating the analytic account
• researcher must show reflexivity in qualitative research in order to increase the transparency of the research process

Question 13

grounded theory?

Answer 13

• back-and-forth between data collection, coding, testing categories, developing theory
• used when little is known about the field
• bottom-up AND top-down since it switches between steps and repeats them
• saturation: current categories cover everything there is to cover concerning the subject

Question 14

grounded theory steps?

Answer 14

1. collecting & transcribing data: semi-structured interviews, focus groups, existing visual material
2. coding & categories: identify and label meaningful units of text until saturation occurs
3. testing categories, further development
   & interrelations
4. developing theory (and overarching categories): testing it against the data

Question 15

bottom up vs top down?

Answer 15

can we do top down research or should we strive for bottom up research/ exploratory research

Question 16

discourse analysis?

Answer 16

• social reality is constructed by the way we
  communicate
• research into how people talk about their thoughts,
  feelings and experiences (regardless of whether this is how they ‘really‘ feel)

Question 17

realism vs relativism?

Answer 17

are psychologists able to filter out a single psychological reality that exists for all people at all times or are we just constructing narratives

Question 18

Yardley’s criteria for qualitative research?

Answer 18

1. sensitivity to context (previous research and theory should be clear)
2. commitment and rigour (long period of complete data collection)
3. transparency and coherence (detailing processes of collection and analysis and a well-fitting design for the research question)
4. impact and importance

Question 19

criticisms of qualitative research?

Answer 19

• it does not teach us how people experience something, but only what they say about it -> What some people say about what they think they think (god helmet example)
• lack of generalizability
• subjectivity: the central role of subjectivity implies that the influence of the researcher’s bias is even greater
• relativism: does a relativistic point of view imply that it’s impossible to be wrong?

Question 20

problems in quantative research?

Answer 20

• interpretations of given measurements as reflecting constructs is ambiguous (no direct way to get to the actual experience of person measured)
• generalizability and context also a problem in quantitative studies
• researchers can never be truly objective even if quantitative studies attempt to approximate this
• theories are weak and based on quantitative methods, we should be critical about their evaluation

Question 21

against methodolatry?

Answer 21

• Methodolatry: focusing on using the purest form of our favored method instead of attempting to answer the research question
• There is no universal method of scientific inference but, rather, a toolbox of useful methods
• the tools should be considered on a case-by-case basis, not chosen dumbly (different tools give different answers)