Fox 1 Lecture 5 SOCIOL 2D06 Wednesday, October 16, 2013 ...
Fox 1 Lecture 5 SOCIOL 2D06 Wednesday, October 16, 2013 Methodological Approaches in Sociological Social Psychology: Part II Experimental VS Non-Experimental Sociological social psychology employs both experimental and non-experimental forms of research Experimental - control and test group; scientific - ex. drug experiments Experimental Research - involves the use of control and test groups - people are subjects rather than participants - involves pre-tests and post-tests - pivotal part of experimental research - non-experimental research can involve this - pilot testing the research before going through with it to give you comparative time intervals (T1, T2 => comparison of data results) - random assignment into control and test groups - to maintain the integrity of the study Experimental Research: A Case Study in Sociological Social Psychology - O’Brien and Hummbert’s 2006 study of “A Senior Moment” or a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?” (Casey, 2006) - do seniors justify their actions by this quote or is it something that they’re fulfilling in themselves? - control group and test group: - conducted memory test (word recall) on older individuals - presented with a list of words and then it was taken away; they were then told to recall or write down the words that they had recently seen - when competing against older individuals (those over 70), participants could only recall 12 words - internalization of values of competing against the same age group, so they may not remember a large amount of words either - when competing against younger individuals, participants could only recall 14 words - when they were in a group with younger people, it was almost motivation to recall more words - colloquial phrase of joking about ‘senior moments’ might be a self-fulfilling prophecy! Non-Experimental Methods - quantitative methods - most commonly in the form of survey research
Fox 2 Lecture 5 - test attitudes, values, beliefs, personality traits, etc to assess interactions and
relationships with people and whether they are influenced by others and social structure in society - qualitative methods - interviewing (variety of different types), focus groups, observation, narrative analysis - archival/secondary research (sometimes grouped with qualitative research) - content analysis, etc., to analyze themes, etc - mixed methods - combination of qualitative and quantitative Quantitative Methods: Advantages of surveys: - sample large number of individuals - takes longer to gather data in quantitative vs qualitative data - less time-consuming process - have to take this with a grain of salt - some surveys are expanded over a large period of time => longitudinal studies; but most people use it as a quicker method to get their results and analyze data - data analysis is “easier” than analyzing/transcribing interview data - it’s easier to load information into statistical software and get a nice print out of charts, graphs, models, etc., at the same time, you need people with expertise to deal with these softwares - can be checked for validity and reliability through software programs like SPSS - ....of your research questions to validate data - more difficult for quantitative data because it is hard to develop meaning to variables - easier to pilot test - giving it to a small group of people to get feedback; they may tell you problems with survey - ex. too long, etc., to help you come up with a better, refined survey - tries to eliminate issues before they happen Disadvantages of surveys: - confusion - questions people may not understand and may not be interested in - double-darrelled questions - a question that has two questions in one and you don’t know which question to answer - generalizability/validity - if you’re not doing a large survey, you cannot generalize it to the population, making it less valid - ex. creating a survey for 20 people and trying to relate data to whole population of Canada - you cannot do this because your sample is too small
Fox 3 Lecture 5 - social/cultural barriers - by giving an english based survey, you bias the survey in that everyone speaks
english, but in a multicultural country, that is not the case - the survey has to be applicable to all possible people who are participating - response rates - sometimes people don’t want to answer surveys because they’re too timeconsuming - half way through, some people may trail off and not answer the rest of the questions in the survey - some people will have a “brain drain”.... which is caused by the survey being uninteresting and boring - this effects the response rates and accuracy of the survey Case Study in Quantitative Methods: - “Childlessness in Australia: Dr. Bronwyn Harman” - ...ECU’s school of psychology and social sciences - available at edith cowen university - why are people childless? - anonymous online survey of (in)voluntary childlessness - snowballing and social media (twitter) to gather participants - involuntary - 50% were infertile; 22% left it too late to have a child - voluntary - 30% said they might have a child later - they could potentially become a part of the 22% above because they may wait too long; 7% disliked children; some just didn’t want one - we fall into a sense of security that people can be created at any time due to IVF - this is not good - women are judged by how they mother - so it is difficult to judge women without children - * she used both qualitative and quantitative data - involuntary and voluntary - you tend to be more negatively viewed when you’re involuntary because that is seen as a defect (something is wrong with you) - used methods to figure out how people feel and what they’re opinions are on voluntary and involuntary childlessness - values, beliefs, and understandings were found through one on one qualitative interviews - personal stories developed, follow-up questions allowed researcher to get more information - * know that how her research is a quantitative research example Qualitative Methods: Advantages: - opportunity to discuss issues personally with individuals
Fox 4 Lecture 5 - getting at information that a survey or quantitative forms of inquiry cannot - more flexibility - still have to abide by protocols (not putting the subjects at risk) - participants have a voice - opportunity to work with communities - working in a small group is more widely accepted - employment of unique and tailored methodological tools and techniques - ex. peer researchers are people working in communities - they could be interested in poor people and they find poor people in the
community and allow them to become a part of the study and research process - a disadvantage could be that sometimes because it is a peer, it could be that they’re giving you an answer that you wish to hear Disadvantages: - present more ethical concerns - ex. the childlessness case study - because we are dealing with actual people and their lives, we have to make sure that we are best atune to how to treat ethical concerns in order to not affect the participants - time-consuming - dependent on your time and participants and how long each step will take - dependent on participant - some people may not show up to interview, get bored of interview, and do not wish to continue - potential for greater risk - ...because as you talk and explore more questions, it could bring in more emotions, making it risky for the participants involved - consent issues - making sure that you have people consenting to participate in your study - everyone needs informed consent and voluntary participation - confidentiality/anonymity issues - when dealing with smaller groups a people, there is a greater risk that this can be compromised - disclosure - how much do we tell participants about the study? - telling them too much may effect the results of your data - exclusion of particular groups given social, political, economic, environmental factors that make it difficult to include them - sometimes you’re unable to reach the group you’re trying to reach (could be too far?) - generalizability - they typically have smaller sample sizes
Fox 5 Lecture 5 - misinterpretation of data - in doing the research AND analyzing data - ex. if you don’t understand the subculture you’re studying, you may misinterpret things - you can misinterpret the way people have said something once analyzing data - validity/reliability - do not have software programs like quantitative research Recall: The 10 Lies of Enthnography (Fine, 1993) - the classic virtues of sympathy, honor, and virtue (pg 269) - not doing anything irresponsible - these traits are not always predictable in situations as some people do not take on these roles - technical skills of being precise, observant and passive (pg 270) -ethnographic self as the ways of presenting oneself and one’s work (pg 270) - being someone who is considered to have all above traits and you’re a deep involved researcher, exploring the situations and then trying to share them Case Studies: Unique Qualitative Methods : * great way to show what the community means and creating social change - theatre of the oppressed/ theatre for health - ohio state university centre for science and clinical translation science 2013 - innovative approaches to CBPR: theatre for health research - can theatre change the world? - family of theatrical methods used in society - audience becomes active; as spectators they explore, show, analyze, and transform the reality in which they’re living - engages community in identifying problems and solutions through plays (theatre for health); evolved from theatre of oppressed; this allows everyone to have a voice in local issues in the community - you’re tailoring your methods to what is of interest to them - what is the role of education and community involvement? - heavily rooted in community interests - soap-opera production techniques to allow the people to have a voice, leading to education and better hygiene and sanitation - how is this a unique perspective? - yes, because you’re developing these theatrical approaches and relating them to research methods - how was this technique tailored to the community? - rooted in interests of those particular individuals - allowing people to take on different roles, explore their opinions, and share their voice - moving away from traditional approaches, for sure
Fox 6 Lecture 5 Unique Qualitiative Methods : * in order to understand children, you cannot look to adults for answers, you have to study children - children as photographers and creator of their pseudonyms (clancy, 2011) - used child-friendly techniques - told children to come up with a fake name for the study; reaction gotten to choose names was pure joy - wanted the kids to feel comfortable to participate and feel like their contributions were important because they were - used a digital camera - brought in two magazines and children were able to cut out things they thought were interesting and liked, etc - the new sociology of childhood - study of children by speaking to children themselves (albanese, christensen and james, christensen and prout) - others such as boden et al. (2004) have mentioned looking through catalogues with their participants - took on the ‘least adult role’ (Mendell, 1988:433) and gave children a voice - when you’re researching with children, you don’t want to go in with a very authoritarian attitude - one advantage was that she looked young; she knew a lot about tv shows and researched a lot to try to learn about the things they like prior; tried not to wear visibly branded clothing because it could’ve led to different results that could lead to suggestible answer they thought the researcher wanted - kids cut out pictures of zac efron, taylor swift, and miranda cosgrove - pictures they thought were appropriate and that their parents would be okay with - kids cut out pictures of a girl with a shirt showing off her stomach, and a girl who looked too old for her age (girl in picture wearing something she thought would be for someone older or from the 1800’s) - pictures they thought were inappropriate Archival/Secondary Research - this is often used to compliment qualitative and quantitative research techniques - ex. content analysis, documentary analysis, etc., - helpful to grasp an understanding of how issues were/are understood - you’re trying to understand how something existed in a specific time to give you a broad understanding of how particular meanings were perceived and derived in that group setting Case Study - content analysis of images of childhood in Tiger Beat and Today’s Parent magazines over a 12-
month period (Clancy, 2011)
Fox 6 Lecture 5 - protection of youth in the past to hyersexualized males and females today - important to understand how parents conceptualized about parents, comparing them
to kids - used frame analysis - role of selection and salience of images - selection - why were particular images selected in both magazines? - something becomes more salient to us the more we see it - ex. if we see more traditionally-based non-sexualized role models in the parent magazine, the idea of this child will be more salient within us Today’s Parent - the use of fashion images to project the innocence of children and to reinforce traditional gender roles - the asexual, non-erotic depicting of anonymous - this is non-celebrity - children in the images (every day looking individuals; no celebrity identification) selected for inclusion in this magazine Tiger Beat - magazine uses of recognizable tween popular culture icons to promote certain styles of dress - tweens exposed to increasingly sexualized fashion - gendered marketing of adult fashions to boys as gentleman and girls as sexual through celebrity role models Multi-method Approach - often the best way to reach the widest group of participants is through multi-methods - can involve a survey with in-depth interviews or focus groups, etc., - this allows for greater reliability and validity because the multi-method technique balances out of the disadvantages of each technique - also provides a greater range of depth of data from which to draw results
Fox 2 Lecture 5 - test attitudes, values, beliefs, personality traits, etc to assess interactions and
relationships with people and whether they are influenced by others and social structure in society - qualitative methods - interviewing (variety of different types), focus groups, observation, narrative analysis - archival/secondary research (sometimes grouped with qualitative research) - content analysis, etc., to analyze themes, etc - mixed methods - combination of qualitative and quantitative Quantitative Methods: Advantages of surveys: - sample large number of individuals - takes longer to gather data in quantitative vs qualitative data - less time-consuming process - have to take this with a grain of salt - some surveys are expanded over a large period of time => longitudinal studies; but most people use it as a quicker method to get their results and analyze data - data analysis is “easier” than analyzing/transcribing interview data - it’s easier to load information into statistical software and get a nice print out of charts, graphs, models, etc., at the same time, you need people with expertise to deal with these softwares - can be checked for validity and reliability through software programs like SPSS - ....of your research questions to validate data - more difficult for quantitative data because it is hard to develop meaning to variables - easier to pilot test - giving it to a small group of people to get feedback; they may tell you problems with survey - ex. too long, etc., to help you come up with a better, refined survey - tries to eliminate issues before they happen Disadvantages of surveys: - confusion - questions people may not understand and may not be interested in - double-darrelled questions - a question that has two questions in one and you don’t know which question to answer - generalizability/validity - if you’re not doing a large survey, you cannot generalize it to the population, making it less valid - ex. creating a survey for 20 people and trying to relate data to whole population of Canada - you cannot do this because your sample is too small
Fox 3 Lecture 5 - social/cultural barriers - by giving an english based survey, you bias the survey in that everyone speaks
english, but in a multicultural country, that is not the case - the survey has to be applicable to all possible people who are participating - response rates - sometimes people don’t want to answer surveys because they’re too timeconsuming - half way through, some people may trail off and not answer the rest of the questions in the survey - some people will have a “brain drain”.... which is caused by the survey being uninteresting and boring - this effects the response rates and accuracy of the survey Case Study in Quantitative Methods: - “Childlessness in Australia: Dr. Bronwyn Harman” - ...ECU’s school of psychology and social sciences - available at edith cowen university - why are people childless? - anonymous online survey of (in)voluntary childlessness - snowballing and social media (twitter) to gather participants - involuntary - 50% were infertile; 22% left it too late to have a child - voluntary - 30% said they might have a child later - they could potentially become a part of the 22% above because they may wait too long; 7% disliked children; some just didn’t want one - we fall into a sense of security that people can be created at any time due to IVF - this is not good - women are judged by how they mother - so it is difficult to judge women without children - * she used both qualitative and quantitative data - involuntary and voluntary - you tend to be more negatively viewed when you’re involuntary because that is seen as a defect (something is wrong with you) - used methods to figure out how people feel and what they’re opinions are on voluntary and involuntary childlessness - values, beliefs, and understandings were found through one on one qualitative interviews - personal stories developed, follow-up questions allowed researcher to get more information - * know that how her research is a quantitative research example Qualitative Methods: Advantages: - opportunity to discuss issues personally with individuals
Fox 4 Lecture 5 - getting at information that a survey or quantitative forms of inquiry cannot - more flexibility - still have to abide by protocols (not putting the subjects at risk) - participants have a voice - opportunity to work with communities - working in a small group is more widely accepted - employment of unique and tailored methodological tools and techniques - ex. peer researchers are people working in communities - they could be interested in poor people and they find poor people in the
community and allow them to become a part of the study and research process - a disadvantage could be that sometimes because it is a peer, it could be that they’re giving you an answer that you wish to hear Disadvantages: - present more ethical concerns - ex. the childlessness case study - because we are dealing with actual people and their lives, we have to make sure that we are best atune to how to treat ethical concerns in order to not affect the participants - time-consuming - dependent on your time and participants and how long each step will take - dependent on participant - some people may not show up to interview, get bored of interview, and do not wish to continue - potential for greater risk - ...because as you talk and explore more questions, it could bring in more emotions, making it risky for the participants involved - consent issues - making sure that you have people consenting to participate in your study - everyone needs informed consent and voluntary participation - confidentiality/anonymity issues - when dealing with smaller groups a people, there is a greater risk that this can be compromised - disclosure - how much do we tell participants about the study? - telling them too much may effect the results of your data - exclusion of particular groups given social, political, economic, environmental factors that make it difficult to include them - sometimes you’re unable to reach the group you’re trying to reach (could be too far?) - generalizability - they typically have smaller sample sizes
Fox 5 Lecture 5 - misinterpretation of data - in doing the research AND analyzing data - ex. if you don’t understand the subculture you’re studying, you may misinterpret things - you can misinterpret the way people have said something once analyzing data - validity/reliability - do not have software programs like quantitative research Recall: The 10 Lies of Enthnography (Fine, 1993) - the classic virtues of sympathy, honor, and virtue (pg 269) - not doing anything irresponsible - these traits are not always predictable in situations as some people do not take on these roles - technical skills of being precise, observant and passive (pg 270) -ethnographic self as the ways of presenting oneself and one’s work (pg 270) - being someone who is considered to have all above traits and you’re a deep involved researcher, exploring the situations and then trying to share them Case Studies: Unique Qualitative Methods : * great way to show what the community means and creating social change - theatre of the oppressed/ theatre for health - ohio state university centre for science and clinical translation science 2013 - innovative approaches to CBPR: theatre for health research - can theatre change the world? - family of theatrical methods used in society - audience becomes active; as spectators they explore, show, analyze, and transform the reality in which they’re living - engages community in identifying problems and solutions through plays (theatre for health); evolved from theatre of oppressed; this allows everyone to have a voice in local issues in the community - you’re tailoring your methods to what is of interest to them - what is the role of education and community involvement? - heavily rooted in community interests - soap-opera production techniques to allow the people to have a voice, leading to education and better hygiene and sanitation - how is this a unique perspective? - yes, because you’re developing these theatrical approaches and relating them to research methods - how was this technique tailored to the community? - rooted in interests of those particular individuals - allowing people to take on different roles, explore their opinions, and share their voice - moving away from traditional approaches, for sure
Fox 6 Lecture 5 Unique Qualitiative Methods : * in order to understand children, you cannot look to adults for answers, you have to study children - children as photographers and creator of their pseudonyms (clancy, 2011) - used child-friendly techniques - told children to come up with a fake name for the study; reaction gotten to choose names was pure joy - wanted the kids to feel comfortable to participate and feel like their contributions were important because they were - used a digital camera - brought in two magazines and children were able to cut out things they thought were interesting and liked, etc - the new sociology of childhood - study of children by speaking to children themselves (albanese, christensen and james, christensen and prout) - others such as boden et al. (2004) have mentioned looking through catalogues with their participants - took on the ‘least adult role’ (Mendell, 1988:433) and gave children a voice - when you’re researching with children, you don’t want to go in with a very authoritarian attitude - one advantage was that she looked young; she knew a lot about tv shows and researched a lot to try to learn about the things they like prior; tried not to wear visibly branded clothing because it could’ve led to different results that could lead to suggestible answer they thought the researcher wanted - kids cut out pictures of zac efron, taylor swift, and miranda cosgrove - pictures they thought were appropriate and that their parents would be okay with - kids cut out pictures of a girl with a shirt showing off her stomach, and a girl who looked too old for her age (girl in picture wearing something she thought would be for someone older or from the 1800’s) - pictures they thought were inappropriate Archival/Secondary Research - this is often used to compliment qualitative and quantitative research techniques - ex. content analysis, documentary analysis, etc., - helpful to grasp an understanding of how issues were/are understood - you’re trying to understand how something existed in a specific time to give you a broad understanding of how particular meanings were perceived and derived in that group setting Case Study - content analysis of images of childhood in Tiger Beat and Today’s Parent magazines over a 12-
month period (Clancy, 2011)
Fox 6 Lecture 5 - protection of youth in the past to hyersexualized males and females today - important to understand how parents conceptualized about parents, comparing them
to kids - used frame analysis - role of selection and salience of images - selection - why were particular images selected in both magazines? - something becomes more salient to us the more we see it - ex. if we see more traditionally-based non-sexualized role models in the parent magazine, the idea of this child will be more salient within us Today’s Parent - the use of fashion images to project the innocence of children and to reinforce traditional gender roles - the asexual, non-erotic depicting of anonymous - this is non-celebrity - children in the images (every day looking individuals; no celebrity identification) selected for inclusion in this magazine Tiger Beat - magazine uses of recognizable tween popular culture icons to promote certain styles of dress - tweens exposed to increasingly sexualized fashion - gendered marketing of adult fashions to boys as gentleman and girls as sexual through celebrity role models Multi-method Approach - often the best way to reach the widest group of participants is through multi-methods - can involve a survey with in-depth interviews or focus groups, etc., - this allows for greater reliability and validity because the multi-method technique balances out of the disadvantages of each technique - also provides a greater range of depth of data from which to draw results
