BTM7303 Research Methods Week 6

Student: Christopher Walters

THIS FORM MUST BE COMPLETELY FILLED IN

Follow these procedures: If requested by your instructor, please include an assignment cover sheet. This will become the first page of your assignment. In addition, your assignment header should include your last name, first initial, course code, dash, and assignment number. This should be left justified, with the page number right justified. For example:

DoeJXXX0000-1 1

Save a copy of your assignments: You may need to re-submit an assignment at your instructor’s request. Make sure you save your files in accessible location.

Academic integrity: All work submitted in each course must be your own original work. This includes all assignments, exams, term papers, and other projects required by your instructor. Knowingly submitting another person’s work as your own, without properly citing the source of the work, is considered plagiarism. This will result in an unsatisfactory grade for the work submitted or for the entire course. It may also result in academic dismissal from the University.

BTM7303	Kelly Grattan
Research Methods	Qualitative Data Collection

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Faculty Use Only

Hi Christopher,

Please note that I corrected your coversheet again. Note that I will no longer accept submissions without this version as I’ve provided it each week to date.

From previous weeks: I’m very concerned about this submission because it appears none of the feedback was implemented from last week’s returned submission. For instance, your paper is not in APA format… From last week: Remember that all APA endeavors always include Introduction and Summary sections, which are missing from your paper. You need to introduce the topic to your audience before you jump into the rest of it.

Again, your paper is missing the following: statement of the problem, purpose of the study, and research questions (all sub-sections of the introduction section). From previous weeks: For the next assignment, be sure to consult the Concept Paper Template in the Dissertation Center for really great guidelines (that should be explicitly adhered to) for the problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions sections of a proposal/topic overview paper. The same thing applies to the hypotheses, methodology, etc. These items are part of assignment 2 and you’ll be constantly refining them because they are required in most of the assignments in the course.

Without that initial introductory info, I can’t really assess whether your discussion regarding the use of fieldwork, interviews, and interviews makes sense, nor can I accurately tell what ethical considerations exist in your proposed study. Each aspect of these mini-proposals flows, from the intro (which provides the context for your topic and any relevant background info and stats), to the problem, to the purpose of your study, to the questions you want to ask. From there, you need an approach/methodology and a data collection strategy that takes into consideration any ethical issues that might arise. Each week, you will follow this pattern, addressing whatever approach/data collection/ethics questions are posed in the assignment instructions.

Your proposals just aren’t developing because you haven’t yet defined the critical elements of the study, so applying the week’s methodology focus to it is not feasible. Additionally, nearly every sentence is not a full, complete, grammatically correct sentence, so the discussion is extremely difficult to follow. Please secure a meeting with a writing coach through the ASC and let me know that you’ve gotten the appointment. I can give you an extension for the upcoming assignment if need be.

As noted, the writing/formatting issues are again extensive. Please carefully review all corrections and comments below and let me know if anything is unclear as I’m happy to clarify. The same issues appear each week, so it’s vital that you review these corrections/comments and that you go back to your welcome email and review the attachments, as instructions for many of these formatting issues were provided.

As always, if you have any questions at all about the feedback, please email me anytime.

Grade 70

Completes some required parts of the assignment; demonstrates little understanding of readings; writing is somewhat clear, effective, and scholarly; and has many errors in grammar, mechanics, and APA formatting.

Kelly Grattan 3.5/5 4.24.16

Introduction

Research problem, purpose, and questions

The research problem for this paper is to find out the racial and gender wage gaps in the United States. A lot of research works have been carried out to find out the relationship between race, gender, and salary at places of work. What remains unsolved however, is the fact that for some time, despite the act on salaries and wages, that requires all the employees in an organization to be paid equally depending on their responsibilities without having to look at their races or gender, it has still been impossible to accomplish it (Jane, & Liz, 2002). The purpose of this paper is to find out the reason why gender and racial wage gaps exist in places of work, understand the various explanations that have been put forward concerning persistence in the issue of gender and racial wage gap and exploring ways in races and gender operate to affect the idea of wage equity at work places and the disadvantages that women who work in the white and black organizations generally face.

Some of the questions that are frequently asked concerning the same subject include: the reason why it is so impossible to achieve pay equity in work places, what needs to be done to ensure that everyone at a work place is viewed and paid in terms of the work that they do to the organization and not in terms of their color or gender. Ways in which gender, salary and labor institutions are working to ensure that the rights of the employees are obeyed at work place and finally, the role of the employees in ensuring that their rights are respected and that they are not exploited by their bosses in the process of looking for means of earning a living. Everyone has a role to play as far as wage equity is concerned, and the only way to accomplish is by everyone playing his or her roles faithfully. Whether it is true that women contribute less in the workplace compared to men when it comes to gender discrimination and lastly, is to whether the racial and gender wage gap is reducing or increasing in the United States. From the faculty feedback , one of the things that came out clearly is that the United States has not to yet accomplish the requirements of the federal laws as far as wage equity is concerned. The feedback also showed that generally, both women and men contribute equally to the development of the organization, and the fact that someone is black or white does not make them more superior or inferior as far as work delivery is concerned (Krathwohl, 2009).

Usefulness of fieldwork and observations in answering the research questions

Fieldwork entails the researchers availing themselves in the fields of the study so as to be able to collect the data that are needed for the success of their study. In the process of carrying out the fieldwork, one of the methods that can be used to gather the information is an observation by asking the questions in the field and taking the necessary results. In finding out whether it is true that women contribute less to an organization as compared to men, carrying out a field study to work premises can be helpful in observing the real work delivery that both genders contribute to the organization as far as their assignment is concerned. This can be helpful in finding out the exact information since the researchers can get their first-hand information rather than the rumors which go around (Jane & Liz, 2002).

Another way that fieldwork and observation can help the researchers is in the area of finding out the reason why most of the employers are affected by racial discrimination in wage payment. Fieldwork can assist in finding out from the employers the reason why they prefer paying whites more wages than the blacks who perform the same tasks under the same ranks. Fieldwork can also assist the researchers in finding out the effort that the department of labor and wages is doing to deal with the issues of wage inequality.

During the fieldwork, the field notes can assist the researchers in capturing the information from the field such that it can later be used for reference concerning the same field. It can also assist the researcher in capturing the information, which they can easily forget afterward. One of the advantages of using observation in the field is that it helps the observer to get the first-hand information in the field of research. As the researcher interacts with the individuals in the field, they can get the emotional response of the individuals, which helps them in making more appropriate conclusions. On the other hand, the disadvantage of using the observation is because it may be subjective at times since, whatever the researcher comes up with is dependent on what they have seen rather than the exact thing that is in the field (Krathwohl, 2009). Another reason why it is disadvantageous to use observation is because it is more time consuming compared to other methods since the researcher has to take their time before they can come up with a concrete conclusion.

Use of interview in answering the research questions

Interviewing involves administering asking the interviewees questions through administering questionnaires. This can help in gathering the information that the researcher needs since all they have to do is to come up with the exact questions that they need to get answers to. The interview is also helpful in getting the emotional and facial expressions of the interviewees as they answer the questions of the researchers. In research work, I would use a face-to-face interview with the clients. This is because the face-to-face interview gives the interviewer the opportunity to be able to judge the reaction of the interviewees about the answers that they give (Jane & Liz, 2002). Through the facial expressions and the emotional reactions, the researcher can tell whether the interviewee is honest with their responses or whether their answers do not march with their responses.

In carrying out interviews, I would prefer to interview individual people rather than dealing with a group. This is because, in a group, some people may not feel free to speak their minds sincerely for the fear of being ridiculed by the colleagues or being reported to the employers in case of the employees. Also, when dealing with individual, the researcher can get different views from every person though they may all be responding to the same thing, this is because people are different in the way they view things and what may be good to one person may be annoying to the other person (Jane & Liz, 2002). Hence, in conclusion, individual interview, gives room for more freedom of expression without fear.

One of the advantages of using interviews is that it gives the researcher the opportunity to study the reaction of the interviewees hence able to judge for themselves whether their responses are sincere or not (Jane & Liz, 2002). Interviewing also gives the researcher the privilege and freedom of comparing the various responses that they receive from the clients hence able to come up with a basis of the truthfulness of the case being studied. Alternatively, the disadvantage of using the interview is that at times, the clients being interviewed may not be sincere with their responses for the fear that the information that they give may be used against them or that their employers may know their take concerning the issue at hand.

Ethical issues to consider in qualitative data collection

Ethics refer to an acceptable way of doing things in the society. Every society has their ethical requirements as well as every field of study. One of the ways the ethical issue of research is honesty. In carrying out the qualitative data collection, the researcher needs to honest when it comes to the information that they give to the interviewees, they should not hide the truth about the research, and the importance of the research work form the interviewees so as to get easily an information from them in a way that is not right. They should also be open for any clarifications that the interviewees may need in the process of the interview or while carrying out the field worker observation since being in the field with a prior fixed mind may prevent an individual from getting the right response that they need. Lastly, there is a need to stick to the objective of the study so that the study does not go to the other details that are not necessary for the study being carried out (Jane & Liz, 2002).

Steps to consider in coding and analyzing the collected data

According to Krathwohl, the first step to take in coding and analyzing the collected data is to immediately process and record the data, secondly, start analyzing the data as it is being collected, reducing the data by eliminating the less important, identifying the trending patterns and themes from the data, displaying and the drawing the conclusion and verification from the collected data (Krathwohl, 2009). These steps among many others help in discovering important themes that emerge from the research that can be of useful information to the study and which may provide room for more study.

The steps can help in identifying the common patterns that emerge from the study of the racial and gender wage differences and how the trends can be used in the future to carry out more study. The second step can assist in determining the deviations from the common trends of racial and gender wage discrimination in the United States and finding out the reason for the deviations. They also help in finding out the some additional data needs to be collected considering the trends given that there are new patterns and the questions that can be added when dealing with racial and gender wage differences in the United States. Lastly, the steps help in finding out whether the trends that are emergent are in agreement with the qualitative analysis that has been made concerning gender and racial wage issues in the United States and what needs to be done more to correct the situation (Krathwohl, 2009).

References

Jane, R., & Liz, S. (2002). Qualitative data analysis for applied policy researchTop of Form

Krathwohl, D. R. (2009). Methods of educational and social science research: The logic of methods. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.

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