DB #2 Student Post Replies

Albert Lopez

    A smart and objective research plan includes elements of scientific research for both qualitative and quantitative studies. These elements include a purpose statement, hypothesis, research questions, justification, and others, which researchers use to construct a solid foundation for their study. Rozny (2019) explains that serious scholarly works require a purpose statement and research question, even if they are not indicated with subheadings, since some studies argue that doing so confuses editors, readers, and peer-reviewers. This discussion focuses on defining the role of a purpose statement and research questions, including how these two are interrelated. The discussion also explores various concepts applied in qualitative research, including dependability, reliability, validity, credibility, transferability, and generalizability.

Purpose Statement and Research Questions

    The University of Wisconsin – Madison (n.d.), the Writing Center identifies the role of a purpose statement as announcing the main elements of the study’s goal, including objective, scope, and direction. A researcher provides a purpose statement to tell readers what they should expect in the report and the specific focus of the discussion. In contrast, research questions articulate the expectations of the researcher concerning the intentions and viewpoints of the subjects participating in the study of phenomena. As seen above in the roles that each play, these two elements are related and influence each other. For instance, an inquirer narrows down each research question to construct the scope of the purpose statement. Similarly, the purpose statement is the basis upon which the research questions are developed. In other words, the purpose statement is the extensive version of the research questions, while the latter is the simplified version of the former.

Definitions

Dependability: In qualitative research, this term usually alludes to the consistency of the results/research process in that another researcher must come to the same outcomes if they implemented the research process.

Reliability: When conduting a qualitative study, reliability means whether the responses to various coders of narrative data are stable.

Validity: It refers to whether the instruments, tools, data, and/or research process are appropriate to the study/question/issue.

Credibility: When conducting qualitative research, the researcher’s goal should be to provide accurate and correct findings that are verifiable and believable. In other words, credibility is the element of truth or instrument for measuring the truth value of the researcher, exercise, and findings.

Transferability: One of the major reasons for conducting the study is to obtain answers to the selected problem, but the results should also apply to similar situations or other settings. In other words, it means the extent to which the findings can apply to other phenomena or environments with different participants.

Generalizability: This concept is related to transferability, but it alludes to the extent to which results of an inquiry can be extrapolated to explore the whole population from which the researcher extracted the sample.

    In brief, qualitative research follows the standard plan of scientific research and comprises the purpose statement and research questions. The purpose statement is described as an announcement that a researcher incorporates in the introductory section of the paper to direct readers to the goal, scope, and direction of the report. These two elements are interrelated and play a key role in defining what the researcher intends to achieve from the inquiry.