SRM
Induction
emperical -> theoretical. verification logic.
Deduction
theoretical -> emperical. falsification logic.
Culture of Poverty (Oscar Lewis, 1969)
People born into poverty become adapted to poor mindsets.
Measurement validity
Are you measuring, what you want to measure?
Internal validity
How unambigious is A the cause of B?
External validity
Can the results be generalised to a larger population?
Ecological validity
Are findings meaningful to everyday life?
Replicability
Is the procedure explained clearly? Can it be repeated?
Reliability
Are measurements consistent?
Experimental design
Manipulating for results
Cross-sectional design
Surveys, taking a cross-section of the population.
Case study design
Depth-interviews. Vey detailed.
Conditions for causality
- Cause occurs before effect
- "Proximity" in time and space
- Correlation between variables
- The correlation can not be spurious
Empirist
Oberving everything
Conceptualizing
Making vague concepts or ideas more concrete and precise by clearly delineating them and discussing them in terms of content
Nominal measurement
Unordered
Ordinal measurement
Ordered
Interval measurement
Odered and equal distances between values
Ratio measurement
Scale with zero point
Dichotomous categories
Two levels of measurement (yes/no)
Snowball sampling
Finding respontents through other respondents/other people. Invalid as convenience sample, but useful for "hard-to-reach groups".
Census
Selection of everyone, no generalisation.
5 sampling methods
- Random
- Systematic
- Convenience
- Cluster
- Stratified
Errors in survey
External:
- Sampling error
- Sample related error
- Data collection error
Measurement/reliability
- Data processing errors
Objectivist ontology/naïve realism
Social reality exists outside of social actors
Pragmatism/critical realism
Social reality is true and partly constructed by social actors
Constuctivist ontology
Social reality is constructed by social actors
Positivist epistemology
Very objective, factual research, without biases. Natural science methods.
Interpretivist epistemology
People are not molecules, or atoms. Social reality has a specific meaning an relevance structure.
Quantitative research
- Objectivism
- Positivism
- Deduction
Qualitative research
- Constructivist
- Interpretivist
- Induction
Classical hermaneutics
Understand the thinking of the author, what do they mean? Achieved by rereading.
Current hermaneutics
Study social world as text. Reflaction/double examination of the researcher.
Phenomenology
Describes the essential features of social life
Serendipity
Accidental findings, unanticipated, anomalous and strategic.
Triangulation
Gathering data through several sampling strategies
Mode
Most common value
Median
Middle value (*****)
Mean
Average value
Proportion
Mean, for dichotomous variables
Frequencies
How often do we see the answer?
Range
What's the minimum and maximum value?
Standard deviation
Summary measure of the average distance to the mean
Z-score
How many deviations are you above or beneath the mean?
Preoccupations
- Seeing through the eyes of people studied
- Emphasis on social process
- Description and emphasis on context
- Relation theory and data
- Flexibility and limited structure
Abduction
Acknowledges that the conclusions arising from an observation are plausible, but not completely certain.
Inferiority complex (mixed methods)
- Generalisability
- Subjectivity in it's methods
- Not replicable
- Lack of transparancy
Incompatibility (mixed methods)
Embedded methods, doesn't go together.
Mixing is useful (mixing methods)
Strengths and weaknesses in both methods
Distinction is false (mixed methods)
Differences are too simple and methods should have never separated in the first place
Facilitation
Using one method to prepare for the other.
Complementarity
Using methods that provide information about different aspects.
Universalism (ethics)
An absolute moral applied to all
Situation ethics
a. The end justifies the means
b. No choice
Ethical transgression is widespread
All research involves elements that are in some way ethically questionable.
Anything goes ethics
Deceiving people in order to gain their trust and ecourage them to reveal themselves.