Social Statistics Commons^™

Validating The Mexican American Intergenerational Caregiving Model, Socorro Escandón

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this study was to substantiate and further develop a previously formulated conceptual model of Role Acceptance in Mexican American family caregivers by exploring the theoretical strengths of the model. The sample consisted of women older than 21 years of age who self-identified as Hispanic, were related through consanguinal or acquired kinship ties to an elder, and had provided at least one intermittent service (without pay at least once a month). A comparative analysis method was used to test the existing theory, which consists of four phases: (a) Introduction/Early Caregiving Experiences, (b) Role Reconciliation, (c) Role Imprint, and …

Is A Picture Worth A Thousand Words? Using Mind Maps To Facilitate Participant Recall In Qualitative Research, Johannes Wheeldon

The Qualitative Report

Mind maps may provide a new means to gather unsolicited data through qualitative research designs. In this paper, I explore the utility of mind maps through a project designed to uncover the experiences of Latvians involved in a legal technical assistance project. Based on a sample of 19 respondents, the depth and detail of the responses between the groups were compared. Those who first completed mind maps identified a greater number of unique concepts and provided more in depth responses about their experience in later interviews. Participants suggested that by first completing a mind map, they were better able to …

How I Learned To Design And Conduct Semi-Structured Interviews: An Ongoing And Continuous Journey, Silvia E. Rabionet

The Qualitative Report

Qualitative interviewing is a flexible and powerful tool to capture the voices and the ways people make meaning of their experience Learning to conduct semi-structure interviews requires the following six stages: (a) selecting the type of interview; (b) establishing ethical guidelines, (c) crafting the interview protocol; (d) conducting and recording the interview; (e) crafting the interview protocol; and (f) reporting the findings. A researcher's personal journey in crafting an interview protocol to interview HIV researchers is summarized. She highlights that training and experience are crucial and identifies some readings that can help in the process.

Reflection On The Methodological Aspects Of A Critical Ethnographic Approach Used To Inform Change For Adolescents With Disabilities, Sonia Gulati, Margo Paterson, Jennifer Medves, Rebecca Luce-Kapler

The Qualitative Report

Debate remains about how to effectively obtain information from adolescents with disabilities in marginalized areas and how to apply this knowledge to shape rehabilitation activities. This study explored how to empower adolescents in the urban slums of North India to assume greater control over their rehabilitation within the context of a local community-based rehabilitation program. Participants included 21 adolescents with and 11 adolescents without disability (aged 12 to 18 years), and 10 community-based rehabilitation workers. A critical ethnographic approach was adopted. Fieldwork was conducted from January to May 2005 and October 2006 to March 2007. This paper focuses on the …

Denzin's The Qualitative Manifesto Book Summary And Critique, Lise M. Allen

The Qualitative Report

Ethnography, Corporate Ethnography, and Corporate Research

Mixed Methods Design: A Beginner's Guide, Karen M. Keptner

The Qualitative Report

Mixed Method Design: Principles and Procedures by Janice M. Morse and Linda Niehaus (2009) is a "how-to" book for conducting mixed method research. Morse and Niehaus go step-by-step through mixed method research and provide clear explanation for combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. They also provide examples of what is not mixed method design. The book is easy to read. It could be an invaluable reference for anyone who conducts research in health and social sciences, seasoned researchers and students alike.

The Experiment-Based Knew-It-All-Along Effect In The Qualitative Light Of Narrativity, Marek Palasinski

The Qualitative Report

In contrast to the extant quantitative studies on the hindsight effect, the present narrative analysis looks at it from a rare angle of talk-in-interaction. Fifty one-to-one interviews were done with five student groups, each of which was presented with a scenario ending with one factual outcome and three alternative outcomes that actually did not happen. Confirming the already proven role of the provided event outcome in overestimating the probability of its occurrence, this study expands the current understanding of the processes neglected by the research on the hindsight effect. It does so by highlighting the strategic use of vagueness, self-empowerment …

How People Think About A Tv Program: A Q-Methodology Approach, Alireza Khoshgooyanfard

The Qualitative Report

This paper identifies four viewpoints about a TV program by making use of Q-method. Based on a factor analysis, 35 participants of this study are classified into four groups that each one creates a viewpoint towards the TV program. Each viewpoint is interpreted carefully by using 48 statements representing possible opinions about the TV program. The paper emphasizes that usual research methods like surveys are not as effective as the Q-method for this purpose. This method can help researchers to understand those angles of people's opinions that remain hidden by using a questionnaire or scale.

"I Can See You": An Autoethnography Of My Teacher-Student Self, Erika França De Souza Vasconcelos

The Qualitative Report

This article is an autoethnographic investigation of my second-nature teacher-student self. What has made me into the teacher I am? What makes me the teacher I am? In order to address these questions, I draw upon my memories of my own teachers and students. As I portray my teaching-learning experiences as textual "snapshots," I find that my most cherished memories come from when my teachers acknowledged my presence and listened to me, and when I have been in dialogue with my own students. My autoethnographic journey ends up linking the personal to pedagogical theory centering attention to relationships between teachers …

The Conflicts Between Grounded Theory Requirements And Institutional Requirements For Scientific Research, Jason Luckerhoff, François Guillemette

The Qualitative Report

The authors examined the conflicts between grounded theory (GT) requirements and institutional requirements for scientific research such as they were experienced by researchers and students. The overview of how GT was originally conceived served as background to the analysis of the problems GT users often faced when they submitted research projects to academic or granting committees. Three especially contentious aspects that arose from the data were discussed: the circularity of the general research method, the suspension of references to theoretical frameworks, and theoretical sampling. Participants to this study have explored some possibilities to overcome those conflicts.

Revitalization Of Indigenous Culture In Child Care Centre, Jana Kulhánková

The Qualitative Report

In this study, I address contemporary ways of looking after children and care giving roles women play in today's Aboriginal community in Brisbane, Australia. Data were collected through participant observation and interviews during field work in a family care centre managed by Indigenous women with the staff and their clients. My main contribution is in describing how various activities of the centre, such as parental programmes, women's gatherings, and rites of passage reflect the traditional models of child care and women's position in the family environment and how these models are perpetuated again in the modern urban environment. Furthermore, I …

Corporate Ethnographers: Master Puzzlers, What They Do, And Their Value To The Business Sector, Alice Obenchain-Leeson

The Qualitative Report

Melissa Cefkin's book Ethnography and the Corporate Encounter is the fifth volume in a six-volume series on studies in public and applied anthropology by Berghahn Publishing. Cefkin unearths the world of corporate ethnography by explaining how the field evolved from the larger field of anthropology. Through collecting a variety of corporate ethnography studies conducted at Intel, Microsoft, and others, Cefkin brings to life the work of corporate ethnographers as master puzzlers as she attempts to answer the questions: What are corporate ethnographers and under what conditions do they work? What value does ethnography bring to the understanding of complex business …

Reflexivity And The Sociology Of Science And Technology: The Invention Of "Eryc" The Antibiotic, Fran Collyer

The Qualitative Report

Until recently, the social-technical process of invention has fallen between sociological investigation of the genesis of a new idea (an ideational phenomenon) and the production of a new technology (a material phenomenon). The advent of post-modernism and post-structuralism offered new avenues for theorising invention, accounting for, on the one hand, its material nature, and, on the other, its ideational nature, through the notion of socio-technical ensembles: phenomena constructed through the co-producing, mutually constitutive action of actants (both human and otherwise). This paper argues that despite its potential, theorising within the sociology of science and technology is hampered by insufficient attention …

How To Conduct Ethnographic Research, Nisaratana Sangasubana

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of conducting ethnographic research. Methodology definition and key characteristics are given. The stages of the research process are described including preparation, data gathering and recording, and analysis. Important issues such as reliability and validity are also discussed.

A Reflexive Pragmatist Reading Of Alvesson's Interpreting Interviews, Brian T. Gearity

The Qualitative Report

Remember those interviews you collected for that qualitative research study? How did you address issues of interviewee power, impression management and rationality? Was it "trustworthy"? Really? In Interpreting Interviews, Mats Alvesson summarizes the current state of thought on interviews as a tool for qualitative data collection and challenges this framework as simplistic and failing to account for its complexities as a social act. Alvesson argues for a critical consciousness and pragmatic approach to interviews. This review blurs genres from autoethnography and more traditional approaches while taking Alvesson's approach, reflexive pragmatism, to its logical consequences. As a whole, Interpreting Interviews is …

Welcome (Back) To The Old World: A Review Of Peter Swanborn's Case Study Research: What, Why And How?, Maja Miskovic

The Qualitative Report

Case Study Research, a book by Peter Swanborn, a former chair of methodology at the Universities of Utrecht and Amsterdam, joins the collection of scholarly sources available to students, researchers and practitioners interested in doing case studies. The author situates the book within a general methodological framework, useful for graduate courses with a strong emphasis on quantitative research, mainly organizational science, information management, marketing, health sciences, and psychology. The book offers precise advice regarding the case study design, steps to be followed in conducting it, and a secure epistemological-methodological space in which appropriate strategies lead to solutions/answers.

Introduction To Gis Using Open Source Software, 1st Ed, Frank Donnelly

Open Educational Resources

This tutorial was created to accompany the GIS Practicum, a day-long workshop offered by the Newman Library at Baruch College CUNY that introduces participants to geographic information systems (GIS) using the open source software QGIS. The practicum introduces GIS as a concept for envisioning information and as a tool for conducting geographic analyses and creating maps. Participants learn how to navigate a GIS interface, how to prepare layers and conduct a basic geographic analysis, and how to create thematic maps. This tutorial was written using QGIS version 1.5 "Tethys", a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) desktop GIS software package.

2011 Life In Hampton Roads Survey, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

The Social Science Research Center (SSRC) at Old Dominion University recently completed data collection for the second annual Life in Hampton Roads telephone survey. The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into residents’ perceptions of the quality of life in Hampton Roads. The survey also attempted to determine the attitudes and perceptions of citizens regarding topics of local interest such as transportation and traffic, local and state government, crime, and other issues. Funding for the 2011 survey was provided by the ODU Office of Research and the Office of University Advancement. Questions were generated through email …

Pledge Your Body For Your Bread: Welfare, Drug Testing, And The Inferior Fourth Amendment, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposals to subject welfare recipients to periodic drug testing have emerged over the last three years as a significant legislative trend across the United States. Since 2007, over half of the states have considered bills requiring aid recipients to submit to invasive extraction procedures as an ongoing condition of public assistance. The vast majority of the legislation imposes testing without regard to suspected drug use, reflecting the implicit assumption that the poor are inherently predisposed to culpable conduct and thus may be subject to class-based intrusions that would be inarguably impermissible if inflicted on the less destitute. These proposals are …

Embracing The Visual: Using Timelines With In-Depth Interviews On Substance Use And Treatment, Lynda Berends

The Qualitative Report

People typically seek treatment for addiction only when faced with a major crisis. Understanding the trajectory of substance use and treatment seeking may assist in identifying points for intervention. In this study I explored the use of visual methods with in-depth interviews to represent people's substance use, critical events, and treatment pathways. Ethics approval was granted with the condition that only aggregate findings would be presented, although occasional quotes could be used for illustration. Typical timelines were developed, along with text vignettes describing hypothetical participants whose experience matched that shown in these timelines. Benefits of the timelines include the combination …