Summary Literature Research design and methods including case study + ethnography
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Course
Research Design and Methods
Institution
Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR)
Here you will find all the required articles for the course Research Design and Methods/Research Methods and Design for master students in Sociology and Public Administration and related studies. Weeks 1 and 2 are mandatory about general world views and strategies, followed by 3 weeks on case studi...
4.3 Research Design and Methods (Onderzoeksontwerp en Methoden) | Master GVB 2022-2023
Literatuur
Research Design and Methods
Content
Week 1 – Worldviews, questions and strategies............................................................................... 2
Week 2 – Frameworks, validity/reliability & sampling ................................................................... 11
Week 3-5 – Case study design .......................................................................................................... 24
Week 6-8 – Ethnographic research .................................................................................................. 37
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,4.3 Research Design and Methods (Onderzoeksontwerp en Methoden) | Master GVB 2022-2023
Week 1 – Worldviews, questions and strategies
Chapter 1 and chapter 2: Creswell, J.W., & Creswell, J.D. (2022). Research design: Qualitative
quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (6th ed.). Sage.
Chapter 1 – The Selection of a Research Approach
Research approaches
▪ Are plans and the procedures for research that span the steps from broad assumptions to
detailed methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation.
▪ It exists of three parts:
1. Research design.
2. Research methods.
3. Research problem.
The Three Approaches to Research
▪ Qualitative research is an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals
or groups ascribe to a social or human problem.
- The process of research involves emerging questions and procedures, data typically
collected in the participant’s setting, data analysis inductively building from particulars to
general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data.
- The final written report has a flexible structure.
- Those who engage in this form of inquiry support a way of looking at research that
honors an inductive style, a focus on individual meaning, and the importance of reporting
the complexity of a situation.
▪ Quantitative research is an approach for testing objective theories by examining the
relationship among variables.
- These variables, in turn, can be measured, typically on instruments, so that numbered
data can be analyzed using statistical procedures.
- The final written report has a set structure consisting of introduction, literature and
theory, methods, results, and discussion.
- Like qualitative researchers, those who engage in this form of inquiry have assumptions
about testing theories deductively, building in protections against bias, controlling for
alternative or counterfactual explanations, and being able to generalize and replicate the
findings.
▪ Mixed methods research is an approach to inquiry involving collecting both quantitative and
qualitative data, integrating the two forms of data, and using distinct designs that may
involve philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks.
- The core assumption of this form of inquiry is that the integration of qualitative and
quantitative data yields additional insight beyond the information provided by either the
quantitative or qualitative data alone.
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,4.3 Research Design and Methods (Onderzoeksontwerp en Methoden) | Master GVB 2022-2023
Three Components Involved in an Approach
▪ Two important components in each definition are that the approach to research involves
philosophical assumptions as well as distinct methods or procedures.
Philosophical Worldviews
▪ In writing about worldviews, a proposal might include a section that addresses the following:
- The philosophical worldview proposed in the study.
- A definition of basic ideas of that worldview.
- How the worldview shaped their approach to research.
▪ We have chosen to use the term worldview as meaning “a basic set of beliefs that guide
action”.
- We see worldviews as a general philosophical orientation about the world and the nature
of research that a researcher brings to a study.
- We will highlight four that are widely discussed in the literature: post-positivism,
constructivism, transformative and pragmatism.
The Postpositivist Worldview
▪ Knowledge is conjectural (and antifoundational)—absolute truth can never be found.
- Thus, evidence established in research is always imperfect and fallible.
- It is for this reason that researchers state that they do not prove a hypothesis; instead,
they indicate a failure to reject the hypothesis.
▪ Research is the process of making claims and then refining or abandoning some of them for
other claims more strongly warranted.
- Most quantitative research, for example, starts with the test of a theory.
▪ Data, evidence, and rational considerations shape knowledge.
- In practice, the researcher collects information on instruments based on measures
completed by the participants or by observations recorded by the researcher.
▪ Research seeks to develop relevant, true statements, ones that can serve to explain the
situation of concern or that describe the causal relationships of interest.
- In quantitative studies, researchers advance the relationship among variables and pose
this in terms of questions or hypotheses.
▪ Being objective is an essential aspect of competent inquiry; researchers must examine
methods and conclusions for bias.
- For example, standard of validity and reliability are important in quantitative research.
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, 4.3 Research Design and Methods (Onderzoeksontwerp en Methoden) | Master GVB 2022-2023
The Constructivist Worldview
▪ Human beings construct meanings as they engage with the world they are interpreting.
- Qualitative researchers tend to use open-ended questions so that the participants can
share their views.
▪ Humans engage with their world and make sense of it based on their historical and social
perspectives— we are all born into a world of meaning bestowed upon us by our culture.
- Thus, qualitative researchers seek to understand the context or setting of the
participants through visiting this context and gathering information personally.
- They also interpret what they find, an interpretation shaped by the researcher’s own
experiences and background.
▪ The basic generation of meaning is always social, arising in and out of interaction with a
human community.
- The process of qualitative research is largely inductive; the inquirer generates meaning
from the data collected in the field.
The Transformative Worldview
▪ It places central importance on the study of lives and experiences of diverse groups that have
traditionally been marginalized.
- Of special interest for these diverse groups is how their lives have been constrained by
oppressors and the strategies that they use to resist, challenge, and subvert these
constraints.
▪ In studying these diverse groups, the research focuses on inequities based on gender, race,
ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic class that result in asymmetric
power relationships.
▪ The research in the transformative worldview links political and social action to these
inequities.
- Transformative research uses a program theory of beliefs about how a program works
and why the problems of oppression, domination, and power relationships exist.
The Pragmatic Worldview
▪ Pragmatism is not committed to any one system of philosophy and reality.
- This applies to mixed methods research in that inquirers draw liberally from both
quantitative and qualitative assumptions when they engage in their research.
▪ Individual researchers have a freedom of choice.
- In this way, researchers are free to choose the methods, techniques, and procedures of
research that best meet their needs and purposes.
▪ Pragmatists do not see the world as an absolute unity.
- In a similar way, mixed methods researchers look to many approaches for collecting and
analyzing data rather than subscribing to only one way (e.g., quantitative or qualitative).
▪ Truth is what works at the time. It is not based in a duality between reality independent of
the mind or within the mind.
- Thus, in mixed methods research, investigators use both quantitative and qualitative
data because they work to provide the best understanding of a research problem.
▪ The pragmatist researchers look to the what and how to research based on the intended
consequences— where they want to go with it.
- Mixed methods researchers need to establish a purpose for their mixing, a rationale for
the reasons why quantitative and qualitative data need to be mixed in the first place.
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