Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons^™

The Phenomenon Of Collaboration: A Phenomenologic Study Of Collaboration Between Family Medicine And Obstetrics And Gynecology Departments At An Academic Medical Center, David Brown, Cheryl Brewster, Marina Karides, Lou Lukas

David C. Brown

Collaboration is essential to manage complex real world problems. We used phenomenologic methods to elaborate a description of collaboration between two departments at an academic medical center who considered their relationship to represent a model of effective collaboration. Key collaborative structures included a shared vision and commitment by leaders, rigorous quality improvement, clear delineation of roles with built-in flexibility, ongoing commitment to formal and informal communication channels and conflict resolution, relationship development grounded in respect and responsiveness, and shared training in a supportive learning environment with legitimate participation fostering skill development. This study reveals the complexity and resources required for …

Reducing Confusion About Grounded Theory And Qualitative Content Analysis: Similarities And Differences, Ji Cho, Eun-Hee Lee

Ji Young Cho

Although grounded theory and qualitative content analysis are similar in some respects, they differ as well; yet the differences between the two have rarely been made clear in the literature. The purpose of this article was to clarify ambiguities and reduce confusion about grounded theory and qualitative content analysis by identifying similarities and differences in the two based on a literature review and critical reflection on the authors’ own research. Six areas of difference emerged: (a) background and philosophical base, (b) unique characteristics of each method, (c) goals and rationale of each method, (d) data analysis process, (e) outcomes of …

Avoiding Traps In Member Checking, Julie Carlson

Julie Carlson Ed.D. .

Due to the variations of design and protocol in qualitative inquiry, researchers may inadvertently create problems for themselves in terms of the trustworthiness of their research. Miscommunication between participants and researchers can especially arise from the unique and unpredictable nature of human dynamics. In this paper I contend that such problems, or traps, can easily and at times unknowingly be set during the qualitative process known as member checking, threatening the researcher/participant relationship and possibly the stability of the study. In this paper, I examine member checking through five vignettes personally experienced. These vignettes are preceded by a presentation of …

Exploring The Dimensions Of Nomophobia: Developing And Validating A Questionnaire Using Mixed Methods Research, Caglar Yildirim

Caglar Yildirim

Nomophobia is defined as the fear of being out of mobile phone contact and is considered a modern age phobia introduced to our lives as a byproduct of the interaction between people and mobile information and communication technologies, especially smartphones. This research study sought to contribute to the nomophobia research literature by identifying and describing the dimensions of nomophobia and developing a questionnaire to measure nomophobia. Consequently, this study adopted a two-phase, exploratory sequential mixed methods design. The first phase was a qualitative exploration of nomophobia through semi-structured interviews conducted with nine undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university in …

Alcohol Abuse As A Rite Of Passage: The Effect Of Beliefs About Alcohol And The College Experience On Undergraduates’ Drinking Behaviors, Lizabeth Crawford, Katherine Novak

Katherine B. Novak

Qualitative studies of alcohol’s ritual influences indicate that college undergraduates who drink heavily tend to view alcohol use as integral to the student role and feel entitled to drink irresponsibly. Our analyses, based on a standardized measure of these beliefs administered to approximately 300 students, confirmed these findings. Among our sample, beliefs about alcohol and the college experience had an effect on levels of alcohol consumption similar in magnitude to that of other variables commonly associated with a risk for heavy drinking. Moreover, the alcohol beliefs index moderated the effects of three risk factors—gender, high school drinking, and friends’ use …

Using Nvivo 10 For Windows For Sociological Qualitative Data Analysis, Amanda Swygart-Hobaugh

Amanda "Mandy" J. Swygart-Hobaugh

Underclaiming And Overclaiming, Sachin Pandya, Peter Siegelman

Peter Siegelman

Arguments that we have too much litigation (overclaiming) or too little (underclaiming) cannot be valid without estimating how many of the undecided claims that are brought (actual claims) or not brought (potential claims) have or lack legal merit. We identify the basic conceptual structure of such underclaiming and overclaiming arguments, which entails inferences about the distribution of actual or potential claims by their probability of success on the merits within a claims-processing institution. We then survey the available methods for estimating claim merit.

Sound And The City: Noise In Restaurant Critics’ Reviews, John Lang

John T. Lang

Are expert aesthetic judgments of restaurants shaped by sound and music? Although sound is an important design element of a built space devoted to consumerism like a restaurant, it is a typically overlooked aesthetic structure. This project analyzes how widely read and influential food writing help the general public define the acceptable repertoire of music and sound in restaurants. I draw on a sample of major restaurant reviews that appear in the LexisNexis archives of the San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times from January 1, 1998, until December 31, 2010. Specifically, I examine 1208 reviews written by thirteen …

Drawn To The Land: Women’S Life Course Consequences Of Frontier Settlement Over Two North Dakotan Land Booms, 1878–1910, Cheryl Elman, Kathryn Feltey, Barbara Wittman, Daniela Jauk

Cheryl Elman

We introduce a life course, multimethod approach to examine the living arrangements of middle-aged and older American Indian and European women living on the rugged North Dakotan settlement frontier around 1910. Our model suggests that women’s later life circumstances reflect the long arm of institutional forces and their ethnicity/nativity, which anchors resource advantages and disadvantages (access to land, rail, and markets) and confers gender socialization (norms and practices) that reproduce gendered social roles. Drawing from primary and secondary sources, we find that European and American Indian women were selectively drawn to or (re)located on frontier spaces unevenly by ethnicity/nativity via …

The Politics Of Rights-Based Approaches In Conservation, Prakash Kashwan

Prakash Kashwan

Scholars and advocates increasingly favor rights-based approaches over traditional exclusionary policies in conservation. Yet, national and international conservation policies and programs have often led to the exclusion of forest-dependent peoples. This article proposes and tests the hypothesis that the failures of rights-based approaches in conservation can be attributed in significant measure to the political economic interest of the state in the tropics. To this end, the article presents findings from the empirical analysis of the Forest Rights Act of 2006 in India. Two key recommendations emerge from this analysis. One, the proposals for operationalizing rights-based approaches will likely be far …

Less Is More? 20 Years Of Changing Minimum Income Protection For Old Europe’S Elderly, Tim Goedemé

Tim Goedemé

Over the past two decades, pension reforms have been at the top of the agenda of social policy makers in Europe. In many countries, these reforms have resulted in less generous public pensions. At the same time, minimum income protection for the elderly has received attention from policy makers, but much less so from social policy researchers. Therefore, in this paper, I explore how benefit levels of non-contributory minimum income schemes for the elderly have evolved between 1990 and 2009 in 13 ‘old’ EU member states. Building on two new cross-national and cross-temporary comparable datasets on minimum income protection in …

Racial Differences In Multigenerational Living Arrangements In 1910, Cheryl Elman, Andrew London

Cheryl Elman

We explore racial differences in multigenerational living arrangements in 1910, focusing on trigenerational kin structures. Coresidence across generations represents a public function of the family, and we observe this across different ages or life-course stages through which adults came to be at risk for providing simultaneous household support for multiple generations of kin dependents. Using data from the 1.4 percent 1910 Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, our comparisons adjust for marital turnover, including widow(er)hood/divorce and remarriage, as rates are known to be historically higher among African Americans in this period. Across subgroups defined by age and sex, we find that …

Consulting Ethics, William Feighery

William Feighery

An important, if much neglected, arena within the field of tourism studies is the role of tourism scholars as consultants in the development process. For individuals within this field of ‘expert knowledge’ participation in consultancy projects often places them at the heart of complex and competing interests at local, national and international level. Such complexity necessitates ethically informed decisions. In this paper I first explore the evolution of tourism related research and consultancy, before considering the rise of ethics in arenas of professional practice. Further, I consider the Foucauldian construct of ‘technologies of the self’ as potentially offering an ethical …

Developing A Community Of Practice For Trainers: Towards A Culture Of Conscience In Clinical Research, Marie Mckenzie Mills

Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci

This developmental research study concerned how trainers, drawn mainly from the commercial (pharmaceutical) sector of the field of clinical research, shared understandings of practice in a professionally localised community, as part of their continuing professional development. Trainers in this community had a heterogeneous range of identities including full-time and part-time trainers: clinical research trainers, training managers; clinical research managers, clinical research associates, compliance managers, auditors and others. The main aim was to explain conditions shaping this community and its concept of practice. The study involved observing practice from an interlocutory position, using Cultural- Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), to reveal the …

Culture And Technological Innovation: Impact Of Institutional Trust And Appreciation Of Nature On Attitudes Towards Food Biotechnology In The U.S. And Germany, Hans Peters, John Lang, Magdalena Sawicka, William Hallman

John T. Lang

Using ‘general trust in institutions’ and ‘concepts of nature’ as examples, the article analyzes the influence of cultural factors on sense-making of food biotechnology and the resulting public attitudes in the USA and Germany. According to the hypotheses investigated, different levels of trust and appreciation of nature explain part of the well-known differences in attitudes between both countries. The analysis of a cross-cultural survey of the general population shows that appreciation of nature is a predictor of attitudes in both countries. The higher appreciation of nature in Germany partly explains why attitudes towards food biotechnology are more negative in Germany …

Understanding Receptivity To Genetically Modified Foods, John Lang, Susanna Priest

John T. Lang

Consumers in the United States and Europe have not fully embraced genetically modified (gm) foods. In the United States, public opinion remains undecided, whereas in Europe, people tend to regard such foods in a negative light. While opposition to gm products may be more vigorous in Europe, consumer enthusiasm for these foods is actually quite limited on both sides of the Atlantic. Policy makers and industry executives have struggled to grasp why consumers have not greeted these foods more enthusiastically. Contrary to apparent industry opinion, economics at the consumer level is not the only factor to consider when trying to …

Who Does The Public Trust? The Case Of Genetically Modified Food In The United States, John Lang, William Hallman

John T. Lang

Trust is important for the perception of many types of risk, including those relating to genetically modified (GM) food. Who the public trusts in any given circumstance, however, is not well understood. In this study of public trust regarding GM food, an exploratory factor analysis with Promax rotation reveals public classification of three common institutional types—evaluators, watchdogs, and merchants. The structure of relationships among these stakeholders can act to enable or constrain public support for this new technology. Evaluators—scientists, universities, and medical professionals—are the most trusted. Watchdogs—consumer advocacy organizations, environmental organizations, and media sources—are moderately trusted. Merchants—grocers and grocery stores, …

I Will Not Eat It With A Fox; I Will Not Eat It In A Box: What Determines Acceptance Of Gm Food For American Consumers?, Venkata Puduri, Ramu Govindasamy, John Lang, Benjamin Onyango

John T. Lang

This article suggests differential acceptance and approval of genetic modification involving plant or animal genes. The results can contribute to our understanding of GM food acceptance and be used to derive marketing strategies and in policy formulation. Similar to previous studies, this article suggests that demographic, socio-economic, consumer value attributes, and trust in key stakeholders help drive acceptance of genetic modification. In general, the public is more approving of plant-based GM than animal-based GM. Furthermore, the results of this survey suggest that a better understanding of biotechnology, trust in the GM regulatory framework, and biotechnology corporations’ motives are critical for …

Americans And Genetically Modified Food: Knowledge, Opinion And Interest In 2004., William Hallman, W. Hebden, Cara Cuite, Helen Aquino, John Lang

John T. Lang

This report presents the results from the third in a series of studies examining public perception of genetically modified (GM) food in the United States. All three studies were based on survey results of separate, nationally representative samples of approximately 1,200 Americans taken in 2001, 2003, and 2004. While the survey instrument on which the current report is based maintained many of the same measures of awareness and attitude as its two predecessors, it also included several new queries that assess the ability of respondents to recall specific news stories related to GM food, their interest in the topic, and …

Expertise, Trust, And Communication About Food Biotechnology, John Lang, Karen O'Neill, William Hallman

John T. Lang

Experts typically presume to speak with authority about complex concerns, such as agricultural biotechnology. Research indi- cates, however, that the effectiveness of risk communication depends on perceptions about the trustworthiness of the institu- tions and experts providing information. This exploratory study investigates how experts from a range of food-associated pro- fessions and institutions perceive their own roles in communi- cating about biotechnology. Most of the respondents rated scientists and other experts as most likely to tell the truth about biotechnology, but many felt that members of the public were most influenced by the mass media and by critics of biotechnol- …

Public Perceptions Of Genetically Modified Foods: A National Study Of American Knowledge And Opinion., William Hallman, W. Hebden, Helen Aquino, Cara Cuite, John Lang

John T. Lang

The report begins with an investigation of Americans’ awareness of the presence of genetically modified (GM) ingredients in the foods they encounter everyday. Next, the report describes Americans’ actual and perceived knowledge of science, biotechnology and food production. It then examines American opinions about GM foods in general, along with their opinions on a variety of existing and potential GM food products with direct or indirect consumer benefits. The report discusses the relationship between opinions of GM food and a variety of factors, including demographics, knowledge of biotechnology, purchasing behaviors and styles of food selection. Finally, it describes Americans’ thoughts …

Public Perceptions Of Genetically Modified Foods: Americans Know Not What They Eat, William Hallman, Adesoji Adelaja, Brian Schilling, John Lang

John T. Lang

Biotechnology stands to be a defining technology in the future of food and agriculture. Proponents argue that science and industry are poised to bring consumers a wide variety of products that have potential for meeting basic food needs, as well as delivering a wide-range of health, environmental and economic benefits. Opponents counter that the potential exists for unintended consequences, ranging from ecological disruption to adverse human health implications, and that these risks are not fully understood. Fundamental questions exist, however, regarding the general public’s position on food products derived with the use of biotechnology.

Applied Communication Research, Katherine B. Novak, Judith M. Buddenbaum

Katherine B. Novak