ADVANCED RESEARCH METHOD:

Qualitative and Quantitative Research

SOCI5013: Spring 2004

Qualitative versus Quantitative

• Qualitative: issues of richness, textual, inductive approach

• Quantitative: issues of design, measurement, and sampling, deductive approach

Triangulation

• Triangulation of measures

• Triangulations of observers

• Triangulations of theory

• Triangulations of method

Qualitative and Quantitative Orientations

• Soft data: impressions, words, sentences, photos, symbols, often with qualitative studies

• Hard data: numbers, often with quantitative studies

• Qualitative studies: interpretative, contexts• Quantitative studies: variables and hypotheses• More women in qualitative?• More men in quantitative?

Qualitative

• Transcendent approach: interpretive and critical• Logic in practice: few set rules, researchers rely

on informal wisdom when they get together over lunch or coffee

• Very few standardized procedures or terms• You learn by doing, through trail and error, by

working in an apprentice role with an experienced scholar.

• Thus it is quite difficult for new comers to learn how to do qualitative studies

Linear

• Linear: most quantitative scholars use linear approach

• It follows a fixed sequence of steps and goes along direct, narrow and straight path.

• It fits western European and North American culture? (a very daring statement)

Nonlinear

• Less direct cyclical path

• On the surface, it is disorganized, undefined chaos, and poor-quality research

• In the core, it has its own discipline and rigor, trying to pull together divergent information and perspectives.

Objectivity and Integrity

• Qualitative scholars stay close to their research subjects

• Interjecting personal opinions?• Sloppy data collections?• Selective evidences to support biased personal

opinion?• To ensure integrity• Qualitative researchers wrote large volume of

detailed notes• And/or invite other researchers to verify the

authenticity of the data sources

Quantitative Research Procedure

• Begins with hypothesis testing

• Concepts emerged in variable measurement

• Measures created, data collected and standardized

• Data are numbers

• Theories are deductive

• Stat and replicable

Qualitative Research Procedure

• Discover meaning after research analyzed data• Concepts are in themes, generalizations• Measures are in an ad hoc and specific to the

setting• Data are in pictures, words, but usually not in

numbers• Inductive theory• Research procedure particular and nonreplicable• Results are generalization from evidences to

present coherent pictures

Evidences in qualitative studies

• Photos, videos, words, gestures, tones• Grounded theory• Theory built from the data or grounded in

data• Conceptualization and operationalization

occur simultaneously with data collection and analyses

• Open to, or to a certain degree expecting, unexpected findings

Contexts

• Qualitative researchers look at contexts• Everything happens in contexts: events,

actions, conversations, accidents• Removing social contexts significantly

distorts the social meanings of those happenings

• Instead of counting the votes, researchers may ask what does voting mean in this context.

Cases and Process

• Rich contextual details and astute insights replace the sophisticated stat method and precise measures

• Observe cases over time, examine changes over time

• Timing is very important to qualitative researchers

Interpretation

• Qualitative research entails three-level interpretations

• First-level: the meanings of the materials

• Second-level: underlying coherence or sense of meaning in the data

• Third-level: generalize the meaning to larger population, connect the discovery to the theories that drive the research

Quantitative Research

• Variation and variables• Independent and dependent variables• Hypothesis and causality• Testing and refining hypothesis• Logic of disconfirming null hypothesis• In favor of alternative hypothesis• Clarity about the units and levels of analysis• Clarity about time sequences• Clarity about causal sequence

Traps

• Tautology: Sally is conservative because she believes that should be less regulation

• Tautology is talking in circle: is a statement true by definition

• Teleology: some statements that are extremely vague that renders impossible of empirical test

• Because U.S. is destined to be the world major power, tens of thousands of people want to immigrate into U.S.

Traps

• Ecological fallacy: mismatch of units of analysis• It often happens when a research uses

aggregated data to infer disaggregated status• A researcher found city neighborhood with high

concentration of black residence have higher crime rate than neighborhoods with low concentration of black residence.

• He concluded that blacks are more likely to commit crimes than white

• What’s the problem with this reasoning?

Spurious

• Spurious is a seemingly significant relationship between two variables suddenly disappears when controlling for the third variable

Race Poverty

Education

Examples

• Quantitative: Page 165 see (Musick, Wilson, and Bynum 2000)

• Qualitative: Lu and Fine (1995) on page 166