Soc 315 final

research technique used to make replicable and valid interfaces by coding and interpreting the content in textual material

• who (does the reporting)
• what (gets reported)
• where (does the issue get reported)
• why (does the issue get reported)
• when (does it get reported)

any kind of messaging that can be communicated

anything written, visual, or spoken that serves as a medium of communication

• activists' texts, protest movements' facebook pages, protest signs, unofficial politics
• not studied as much

• police news releases (police have a large impact on how crime is reported on/received)
• job description postings
• monthly calendars

people are influenced by the messages distributed socially

strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media places on certain issues and their perceived importance by the mass public

• words
• subjects and themes (manifest [obvious] content and latent [underlying] content)
• value positions of the writer

form onto which the data are entered

set of instructions to coders that includes all possible categories for each dimension to be coded

• examines the long-term effects of television
• TV exposure plays an independent role in shaping individuals' sense of social reality

• valid
• rigorous
• reliable 
• replicable

• typically non-obtrusive and non-reactive (no ethics review)
• summarizes content of large volumes of info
• quantifying helps ensure the analysis is valid, rigorous, reliable, replicable
• useful as part of a mixed-method design

• doesnt answer effects of content
• labour intensive
• some texts hard to obtain
• measurement can be tricky
• validity issues
• can be reductionist, obscure the larger meaning

• mutually exclusive categories
• exhaustive
• clear instructions
• clear unit of analysis

consistency between coders

the degree to which an individual coder is consistent over time in the coding of an item

• magazines
• newspapers
• diaries 
• comics
• photo albums
• movies, tv shows
• social media 
• textbooks

• authenticity
• credibility
• representativeness (who wrote/produced, which strata/class)
• meaning (verestehen)

• coding data into predetermined categories 
• statistical analysis

seeking to uncover deeper meanings

• coding open-ended questions
• content analysis

• coding unstructured and semi-structured interviews
• narrative (life history) analysis
• critical discourse analysis

• analysis of signs and symbols encountered in everyday life and their underlying social meaning
• seeks to uncover the hidden meanings that resides in texts

• something that stands for something else
• each has two parts, the signifier (manifestation of sign) and the signified (the deeper meaning to which the signifiers refers)

manifest/obvious meaning of a signifier and as such indicates its function

can arise in conjunction with the denotative meaning

the notion that signs can be interpreted in many different ways

• qualitative
• analysis of a text must seek its meaning from the perspective of its author
• consider social and historical context in which it was placed

• analysis of "stories" told by interviews, texts, photos, etc 
• less emphasis on current beliefs and behaviour, more on how the past has shaped the present 
• need to understand it in social context; narratives also shape social reality

• how understandings of social world are produced through discourse 
• the way we collectively talk about social/economic phenomena 
• can focus on lots of different kinds of texts

• how unequal power relationships are maintained and reinforced through dominant discourses
• "regimes of truth": assumptions about what is "normal" and "right" are reinforced and shape people's beliefs, identities, actions
• "deconstructs" the dominant discourses, shows why its used and why it is effective
• those without power become self-diciplining by accepting the dominant discourses 
• alternative discourses tend to be silenced

• discourse and narrative analysis
• qualitative interviewing
• focus groups
• participant observation + ethnography
• case studies

• more flexibility in qualitative 
• more opportunity for novel answers in qualitative
• numbers vs words
• "hard" data vs "deep" data
• amount of contact bw researcher and participant
• point of view: researcher vs. study participant
• generalizeability vs conceptual understanding

• "soft science", not as reliable as the other sciences, not falsifiable 
• too hard to analyze
• difficult to code
• time-consuming and expensive
• face to face more, ethical breaches and social desireability 
• too subjective
• difficult to replicate 
• but this is all ok, because qualitative goals are different

• deeper understanding 
• contextual understanding: locating meaning and actions within locations they occur
• empathetic understanding: see through the eyes of others, try to understand the meaning of beliefs and behaviours

• typically inductive (no guiding theories or hypothesis usually)
• typically concept and theory developing rather than testing
• emphasis on process (understanding how beliefs, behaviours, practices evolve over time)
• emphasis on flexibility (allowing researcher to change focus and research questions depending on emerging findings)

• credibility
• transferability 
• dependability
• confirmability

• parallels "internal validity"
• how credible are the findings, and their interpretation by the researcher?

• parallels "external validity"
• qualitative research is highly context-specific; goals are not really to generalize as much as possible
• thick description: highly detailed accounts of contexts and findings, allowing other researchers to determine whether this aplies to their study 
• generalization of theoretical concepts more than specific findings

• parallels measurement "reliability" (inter-observer reliability)
• auditing of research conclusions by other researchers

• similar to emphasis on "objectively" in quantitative research
• have personal values or biases influenced how the research was conducted and how the findings were interpreted?
• more detailed discussion of researcher's background and values

• almost always non-probability sampling
• combo of voluntary, quota (judgement), and snowball sampling
• still important for some level of representativeness

• approach to the analysis of qualitative data in which the goal is to use the data to generate theory
• data collection and analysis proceed in an iterative (recursive) fashion
• highly inductive
• not an excuse for no research questions

• strong emphasis on understanding behaviour within culture and spatial context
• researcher immersed in a particular social setting for an extended period of time 
• primary method for anthropology, less common in sociology 
• typically multi-method
• theoretical sampling and grounded theory are typical

• open: nothing restricting you from going and becoming part of an environment you want to study
• closed: hard to get into the setting you want to study, ex. gangs

• overt: very open that you are a researcher, are there for research
• covert: not as outwardly obvious you are researching

• staying undercover 
• "going native"
• getting involved in illegal/problematic activity
• credibility of findings if you're the only person observing the research

• risk of incorrect interpretation of activity
• only relying on sight
• reactivity (by subjects of study)
• failing to really understand

• typically qualitative
• goal is to solve some problem for the population (increase the group's ability to act in its own interest)
• participatory because the participants are helping collect the information
• researchers act as resources to those being studied
• report back to locals as well as scholarly community

• legal constraints: Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• funding source constraints: from federal agencies
• professional constraints: ex. Canadian Sociological Association Code of Ethics

• there is always some risk!!!
• the only kinds of social science research that is exempt from REB assessment is secondary data analysis (usually), and public activity by public features (ex. writing about what politicians say in the news, etc)

• animal research
• medical research
• invasive medical research
• interviews, ethnography, etc (qualitative)
• quantitative

• multiple methods to answer a single question to corroborate findings
• goal: increased external validity
• usually combo of qualitative + quantitative

use of 2 or more different research strategies to investigate diverse aspects

• mostly quantitative term
• the degree to which a study can be replicated

• mostly quantitative term
• the degree to which the items that make up a scale or index are consistent or correlated

• mostly quantitative term
• whether there is a good match between the researchers' observations and the theoretical ideas they develop

• mostly quantitative term
• degree to which findings can be generalized across social settings

• parallels internal validity
• how credible are the findings, and their interpretation by the researcher?
• do findings appear credible to the participants in the study?

• a process where researchers provide the people who they conducted research on which an account of their findings and request their feedback on it 
• aim: to seek corroboration or feedback on the researcher's observations and interpretations

• parallels external validity
• since qualitative research is very context-specific, the goals aren't really to generalize as much as possible, so researchers want thick description to provide others with the database they need in order to assess the possible transferability of findings to other projects/areas?

highly detailed accounts of contexts and findings, allowing other researchers to determine whether this applies to their study

• parallels reliability
• auditing of research conclusions by other researchers

• parallels objectivity in quantitative research
• have personal values or biases influenced how the research was conducted and how the findings were interpreted?
• more detailed discussion of researcher's background and values

• no new or relevant data seem to be emerging regarding a category
• category is well-developed in terms of proportion and dimensions demonstrating variation 
• the relationships among categories are well-established and validated

bring out how interviewees themselves interpret and make sense of issues and events

• shorter and less detailed than a structured interview schedule
• brief list of prompts for areas to be covered for unstructured interviews, more elaborate list of questions or issues for semi-structured interviews
• make sure actual questioning is flexible

• introducing questions
• follow-up questions
• probing questions
• specifying questions
• direct questions
• indirect questions
• structuring questions
• silence
• interpreting questions

how individuals collectively make sense of a phenomenon and construct meanings of it

• meanings and understandings are not derived by individuals in isolation, rather they develop out of interactions and discussions with others
• part of what focus groups help get at

• researcher probably has less control over proceedings than in individual interviews
• an unwieldy amt of data is sometimes produced
• data may be difficult to analyze
• focus groups are difficult to arrange
• group effects may be a problem
• group pressure to conform? to present socially-acceptable views?

• Dorothy Smith
• type of ethnography that explains how institutional discourses (like workplace documents) relate to people's everyday experiences with institutions, and how institutional relationships intersect with larger systems of social control and power in a society
• has its roots in feminist methodologies

studies that combine qualitative and quantitative methods in the same project

approach to the analysis of qualitative data in which the collection of data continues and the hypothesis is modified until no cases inconsistent with it are found

• sees quantitative and qualitative research as grounded in incompatible epistemological principles (and ontological ones)
• sees multi-strategy research as not possible in principle

• research methods are perceived as independent of any specific epistemological position
• a research method from one research strategy can be pressed in the service of another
• quantitative and qualitative methods can be used

a branch of philosophy concerned with what constitutes knowledge and how knowledge is to be acquired

• a branch of philosphy concerned with the nature of reality
• ex. whether social entities can and should be considered objective entities with a reality external to specific social actors, or as social constructions built up through the perceptions and actions of these actors

an ontological position according to which social phenomena and their meanings are continually being created by social actors

an ontological position according to which social phenomena have an existence independent of social actors or their perceptions

an epistemological position that advocates using the methods of the natural sciences int he study of social reality