These are all expensive and highly artificial. Unlike experimental research, ethnographic and content analysis value naturalism over control. These research strategies observe participants and actually ask them questions. However, it is difficult to avoid social desirability response bias. Participants would be aware of bias and how it makes them look and respond accordingly to the socially “preferable” answer.
While the question may be asked as to whether a mixed methods research is possible in light of the two different paradigms, a researcher could resolve the issue through praxis, which Cameron sees as an important part of the mixed methods research. This debate over the ability to carry out such research process can be resolved by praxis, which Cameron describes as the mixed methods researcher becoming “knowledgeable, informed and familiar with the growing body of literature that forms mixed methods as a third methodological movement” (p. 102). Besides, not only must the researcher understand the discipline, but must also be familiar with the methodological and data integration in mixed methods research (Cameron, 2011, p. 102). In other words, debate over the practicality of mixed methods research can be addressed with the researcher recognizing the choices that are available to using mixed methods, and this is possible when mixed methods researchers become knowledgeable in both qualitative and quantitative research methods (Cameron, 2011, p. 104). The pragmatist approach in the research design and implementation phases allows for asking which techniques and procedures are best for the research problem.
Qualitative Research Method is mainly exploratory research, used to gain an understanding of reasons, motivations, and opinions. This research looks at non-numerical data and can show problems and develop ideas for potential qualitative research. The researcher can collect qualitative data from artifacts, archival records and focus groups using unstructured or semi-structured techniques, interviews, and observation. The information collected is later analyzed to look for common themes. It's not exact, in that, it does not give an exact answer, instead, it can be relative because the answer can vary from person to person depending on their perspectives, hence the information can be grouped in categories instead of numbers.
These concepts will be reviewed individually to be able to understand how to apply them when writing a research paper. It is significant to have validity in research. Validity is the best approximation of the truth of a given proposition, inference, or conclusion. It refers to the many conclusions reached about the quality of the different parts of the research methodology. It provides concrete data about the cause and effect construct.
„Evidence” is in the axis of the regulation planning rhetoric which has a clear significance for the scientists. This message not only suggests that policy makers widely accept the paradigm shift from (less adaptive and responsible) „traditional” to science-based policy making, but also creates new challenges for the scientists. The co-operation of policy and science is vital in making policy-data available, in performing analyses, in evolving new theories, and in developing assessments, since the outcomes of these processes can be deemed as policy-supporting evidence. Additional important sources of evidence are the so called “best practices” (best ways of working, used by others, to achieve the policy objectives), and the other lessons learned. However, it is important to note that the simple copy of a “best practice” does not always guarantee the success in a new policy domain.
Laboratories are environments that the scientist can control and indeed manipulate the various independent variables however they wish. They can calculate the effects of a single independent variable while removing the possibility that any other factors are affecting the dependent variable they are studying. b) Assess the reason why experiments are rarely used in sociology. (12 marks) Even though experiments appear to be extremely useful in proving something to be true, or to simply find a lot more about a certain subject, in sociology they are not as useful and reliable. They frequently incur many ethical or practical problems and are therefore not used as often as the results they show are very questionable.
If needed, it is fairly easy to replicate an experiment and is less time consuming than other research methods. However there are many downfalls as well. When conducting an experiment the setting of where the experiment is taking place is more artificial which may cause certain behaviors that wouldn’t occur in real life. This is known as external validity, which is the measure of how much the results of a study can be generalized and used in different situations, and people. To improve external validity cover stories are created when conducting experiments so the participants are not aware of what is really going on, or experiments are done in a natural setting as opposed to in a laboratory.
Generalizability: Due to the nature of methods like in-depth studies, analysis on the relatively small sample size makes it sometimes difficult to generalise the finding and apply it to other people even in the same population (Bryman 1988), making qualitative research strength in population validity low. However, the strength is when it has a well-defined population like that of ethnographic studies, in this case, generalisation is more effective. Researcher-subject relationship: In qualitative research methodologies, the research is required to interact with participants this has it is strengths and weaknesses. A strength of such is the interactive relationship that the researcher uses and its ability to open up participants to give first-hand experience information to the researcher with depth in meaning (Duffy, 1987). As a researcher spends more time with participants, the data are more likely to be honest and valid (Bryman, 1988).
The discussion made by those people who are willing to reveal the “reality” is made with a purpose. They are taking advantage of this powerful medium to reveal the potential problems and concerns of the society, and express their own perspectives and understandings of their own culture and life. Therefore, there may be biased or radical comments which influence the validity of the research. The point is that researchers themselves fully understand the purpose of their study. However, some participants such as those people who were randomly interviewed on the street didn’t quite understand the aim of their study.
Such a design of experiments means extraneous variables are kept to a minimum and thus prevents those becoming confounding variables. As the standard procedure is easily repeated it enabled this experiment to be more reliable. Although problems with carrying out this laboratory experiment are that such a design suffers from low ecological validity as participants are removed from their natural surroundings and thus may act differently. As well as this there may have been problems with demand characteristics as participant may have believed they had to get a really high or really low score on the number of words remembered. The population I chose to carry out my 'Man Whitney U test' on was within my local sixth form centre St. Angela's and St. Bonaventure's.