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week3qualitativemethodsrefiningresearchquestions.pptx

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PSC 401:

Senior

Research

Project: Qualitative Options

Developing Hypotheses:

*Possible explanations to your research question

Research and writing is very rarely a completely linear sequence. With our lectures in Weeks 2 & 3, Dr. Delshad and I are jumping ahead to get you thinking about the entire process, beyond what is your research questions and annotated bibliographies… So today, we will again fast-forward to think through what methods you might want to use, building on Dr. Delshad’s comprehensive lecture from last week.

Question

Theory

Hypothesis

Methods?!

Have you provided a strategy for operationalizing (transforming concepts into knowable values) all of your variables, independent and dependent? Have you explicitly explained why these variables are valid and reliable? Have you explicitly considered any questions that might arise about their validity and reliability? Have you explained which values of the independent variables (or the indicators that you create to operationalize them) will be associated with which values of the dependent variable?	Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______
Have you looked to see whether and where you can get the information that you need for this project? Have you evaluated the sources to make sure they are appropriate and they have what you need?	Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______
If necessary, have you created a questionnaire for creating your data? This is useful as a kind of checklist to evaluate any hypothesis and makes your analysis and assessment much easier. (See Sam’s example.)	Yes ______ No ______
If necessary, have you created an interview sheet for obtaining data? Have you done what you need to receive permission at your university to conduct research on human subjects?	Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______
Have your discussed your methodology and explained exactly how you are going to conduct your research?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you written a concluding section that is honest about any weaknesses but explains why you are moving forward this way and why these results will still be valuable?	Yes ______ No ______

Checklist from Baglione Website, Ch. 6 Research Design…

jumping around

This is one of the resources you have at your disposal to help you organize your research and writing process.

If your are using more Qualitative Data:

Variation across individuals you interview

Variation in policy over times

Quick Review of some qualitative methods…

Content analysis

News media

Congressional speeches, debates (“for the record…”)

Presidential speeches, Cabinet secretaries…

Etc, etc. etc…

Historical analysis

Archives, Govt. records

Video, film, commercials..

Interviews!

Getting inside the “black box” of policymaking

Ethnography => fuel for “thick description”

Translations! Transcriptions!

Themes?

From Raw data to Codes to Themes…

Building Country-level Expertise

Africa vs. Asian cultural competency

Face-to-Face, electronic means…

Trust…

1) Dependent variable (DV) – What we want to explain

2) Independent variable (IV) – What we hypothesize causes changes in the DV

AKA Explanatory variable – it explains some important variation in the DV

IV = Cause, DV = Effect

Which qualitative Methods could be used to answer the following research questions?

From Baglione, p. 50:

Gabriela: Why is U.S. politics so polarized now, and what are the policy consequences of polarization?

Kevin: Why did the Arab Spring occur in 2011?

Max: Why did Russia intervene in 2008 and 2014 in the disputes between separatists and the leaders of post-Soviet states (Georgia & Ukraine)?

Zoe: Why do legislators vote as they do? Do female legislators seek and achieve women issue legislation more frequently than their male counterparts?

We are now going to break into 6-7 small groups to discuss the different methods that the students from the text (and a few other local researchers) could use to seek evidence to answer their questions. What are their DVs and IVs?

We could Use your help with some RESEARCH QUESTIONS:

Dr. Stevenson’s ongoing research Qs: Immigration Policy in the PA context:

To what degree is the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals Act of 2012 benefiting the target group?

In what ways does DACA and its recipients contribute to or create costs and benefits

Comparative Gender Equity in the Workplace

To what degree do female presidents and legislators have more of an impact on policies of equal pay for equal work or sexual harassment in the workplace, than their male counterparts?

Dr. Delshad’s ongoing Research Questions

1) How has media coverage of fracking (aka hydraulic fracturing) influenced public attitudes on the issue?

2) How has presidential discourse on environmental problems changed over the course of the Obama administration?

Back to the present moment in our process…

Research Question

Hypothesis(es)

What do the experts say about it? Whose shoulders do you most prefer to stand on?

Schools of Thought handout

Annotated Bibliography => Building your Literature Review

Meet in Library next week…

Check out Baglione Checklist for Annotated Bibliography (next slide pls!) or website for all of her goodies: https:// study.sagepub.com/baglione3e

Let’s use your Schools of Thought and Resources handouts ! For some it will be very helpful.

Have you used the recipe, the supplied tables, and Gabriela’s example to help you write your AB? If not, go back to them before proceeding any further with the AB.	Yes ______ No ______
Revised RQ is (type here):
Have you used an approved citation form for my source entries?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you provided summaries of the arguments of these works and have not simply summarized the topic? (Thus, are the summaries relatively long and do they contain footnotes or in-text documentation, depending on the format?)	Yes ______ No ______
Are you “sitting on the shoulders of giants” and have found the most important sources, ones that several people cite as the key works?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you identified a fundamental factor (or set of factors) for each source, which is the element or cause that the author cites as having the most important effect on the phenomenon of interest? Can you state this key point succinctly and use it as a label?	Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______
Have you grouped your sources into schools using this basic factor and typically used more than one source in each group so that each of the works in a school asserts a common answer to the research question?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you found at least two, but preferably three or more, schools?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you found a variety of sources—some books, some journal articles—and are the vast majority of them are scholarly?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you found gone back to course materials from related classes to help you find additional works that you have added to your list and summarized?	Yes ______ No ______
Have you used the various search techniques identified in the chapter for finding useful works? Do you have a list of important research that you still need to find and plan to include? Have you made ILL requests when necessary?	Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______ Yes ______ No ______
Are you keeping track of your sources for a final reference list through either citation management software or by creating a new document that is a bibliographic file which includes all of the works (without the summaries) alphabetized and formatted appropriately according to the style you are supposed to use?	Yes ______ No ______

Checklist 2: Annotated Bibliography