Qualitative research Flashcards
(27 cards)
What type of research is interpretivism associated with?
Qualitative research.
What does interpretivist research focus on?
People’s experiences, meanings, and how they understand the social world.
What are the 3 main methods of qualitative research?
Interviews, focus groups, ethnography
What are qualitative interviews?
Semi-structured or unstructured interviews used to explore participant experiences in depth.
What are focus groups?
Group interviews used to understand group dynamics or shared views.
What is ethnography?
Long-term immersion in a group/environment to understand their lived experiences and practices.
What did Cavanagh et al. study and find?
Interviewed men who had been convicted of domestic violence and women who were victims of domestic violence
Discovered abusers used “remedial strategies” like minimising or apologising to justify and continue abuse.
What did Moeller & Sandberg study and find?
Interviewed imprisoned drug dealers to establish how pricing was set
Drug pricing was based on profit, trust, market, and relationships – info unavailable through surveys.
What did Goodman et al. (2011) use focus groups for?
To understand public perceptions of the 2011 UK riots.
What was the purpose of Hussain & Pilkington (2019)’s focus groups?
To explore and intervene in radical ideologies among extremist youth groups.
discovered participants were less wedded to their ideology when in contact with the ‘outgroup’
What did the ‘Street Corner Society’ study reveal?
Study of mafias in Boston
Mafia operations were based on reciprocal obligations and influenced political power.
What did Sánchez Jankowski (1991) discover about gangs?
Gangs often had reciprocal relationships with communities and internal organisation
What are risks of ethnography?
Physical danger, ethical challenges, covert research requirements.
What did Yvonne Jewkes find in prison ethnographies?
Showed how the media had been key to forming many of the prisoners’ understanding of what life in prison would be like, how they should act, what certain identities meant.
-e.g. the media had reinforced the necessity of aggressive ‘not taking any shit’ masculinity, which often caused problems early on during incarceration.
What is Jewkes’ contribution to research methods?
She combined ethnographic (e.g. interviews) and quantitative methods (e.g. recidivism studies, suicide rates) to study prison environments.
What is discourse analysis?
Studying language and meaning in texts, speech, images, or media.
What did Hall’s ‘Policing the Crisis’ show?
Media contributed to moral panics around crime (e.g. mugging).
What did Ryan et al. (2022) find?
Media representations shaped public perceptions of refugees as criminals.
What did Edwards-Heller (2024) study?
How social media discourse encouraged participation in the January 6th insurrection.
What are the three types of interviews?
Structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.
What is triangulation in research?
Using multiple methods or perspectives to study a phenomenon.
What does anthropological mean in relation to ethnography?
It involves studying humans within their cultural and social environments.
What is the distinction between Inductive and Deductive research?
Inductive- builds from nothing, usually associated with qualitative research
Deductive- start with a hypothesis and then gather evidence to accept or reject that hypothesis, usually associated with quantitative
What was the aim of Goffman’s research in Philadelphia?
To explore how the pervasive presence of the criminal justice system affects the daily lives of young Black men in a poor neighbourhood.
