Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

Permalink: https://collepals.com/assignment-halas…ket-photolibrary/ ‎

Chapter Contents

• Qualitative Methods • Case Studies • Archival Research • Observational Research • Describing Your Data

CO_

CO_

new66480_03_c03_p089-132.indd 89 10/31/11 9:39 AM

CHAPTER 3Introduction

In the fall of 2009, Phoebe Prince and her family relocated from Ireland to South Hadley, Massachusetts. Phoebe was immediately singled out by bullies at her new high school and subjected to physical threats, insults about her Irish heritage, and harassing posts on her Facebook page. This relentless bullying continued until January of 2010, ending only because Phoebe elected to take her own life in order to escape her tormentors (UPI, 2011). Tragic stories like this one are all too common, and it should come as no surprise that the Centers for Disease Control have identified bullying as a serious problem facing our nation’s children and adolescents (CDC, 2002).

Scientific research on bullying began in Norway in the late 1970s in response to a wave of teen sui- cides. Work begun by psychologist Dan Olweus— and since continued by many others—has docu- mented both the frequency and the consequences of bullying in the school system. Thus, we know that approximately one third of children are vic- tims of bullying at some point during develop- ment, with between 5% and 10% bullied on a regu- lar basis (Griffin & Gross, 2004; Nansel et al., 2001). Victimization by bullies has been linked with a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems, including depression, anxiety, self-reported health problems, and an increased risk of both violent behavior and suicide (for a detailed review, see

Griffin & Gross, 2004). Recent research even suggests that bullying during adolescence may have a lasting impact on the body’s physiological stress response (Hamilton et al., 2008).

But most of this research has a common limitation: It has studied the phenomenon of bul- lying using self-report survey measures. That is, researchers typically ask students and teachers to describe the extent of bullying in the schools, and/or have students fill out a collection of survey measures, describing in their own words both bullying experiences and psychological functioning. These studies are conducted rigorously, and the mea- sures they use certainly meet the criteria of reliability and validity that we discussed in Chapter 2. However, as Wendy Craig, Professor of Psychology at Queen’s University, and Debra Pepler, a Distinguished Professor at York University, suggested in a 1997 article, this questionnaire approach is unable to capture the full context of bullying behaviors. And, as we have already discussed, self-report measures are fully dependent on people’s ability to answer honestly and accurately. In order to address this limitation, Craig and Pepler (1997) decided to observe bullying behaviors as they occurred naturally on the playground. Among other things, the researchers found that acts of bullying occurred approximately every 7 minutes, lasted only about 38 seconds, and tended to occur within 120 feet of the school building. They also found that peers intervened to try to stop the bullying more than twice as often as adults did (11% vs. 4%, respectively). These findings add significantly to scientific understanding of when and how bullying occurs. And for our purposes, the most notable thing about them is that none of the findings could have been documented without directly observing and recording bullying behaviors on the playground. By using this technique, the researchers were able to gain a more thorough understanding of the phenomenon of bullying and thus able to provide real-world advice to teachers and parents.

William Gottlieb/Corbis

Most studies on bullying rely on self-report surveys.

TX_

TX

new66480_03_c03_p089-132.indd 90 10/31/11 9:39 AM

CHAPTER 3Section 3.1 Qualitative Methods

One recurring theme in this book is that it is absolutely critical to pick the right research design to address your hypothesis. Over the next three chapters, we will be discussing three specific categories of research designs, proceeding in order of increasing control over elements of the design. This chapter focuses on descriptive research designs, in which the primary goal is to describe attitudes and behavior. We will begin by contrasting qualita- tive and quantitative approaches to description. We will then discuss three examples of descriptive designs—case studies, archival research, and observational research—cover- ing the basic concept and the pros and cons of each. Finally, this chapter concludes with a discussion of guidelines for presenting descriptive data in graphical, numerical, and narrative form.

3.1  Qualitative Methods

We learned in Chapter 1 that researchers generally take one of two broad approaches to answering their research questions. Quantitative research is a systematic and empirical approach that attempts to generalize results to other contexts, whereas qualitative research is a more descriptive approach that attempts to gain a deep understanding of particular cases and contexts. Before we discuss specific examples of descriptive designs, it is important to understand that these can represent either quantitative or qualitative perspectives. In this section, we examine the qualitative approach in more detail.

In Chapter 1 we used the analogy of studying traffic patterns to contrast qualitative and quantitative methods—a qualitative researcher would likely study a single busy intersec- tion in detail. This illustrates a key point about this approach: Qualitative researchers are focused on interpreting and making sense out of what they observe rather than try- ing to simplify and quantify these observations. In general, qualitative research involves a collection of interviews and observations made in a natural setting. Regardless of the overall approach (qualitative or quantitative), collecting data in the real world results in less control and structure than does collecting data in a laboratory setting. But whereas

Increasing Control . . .Increasing Control . . .

• Case Study • Archival Research • Observation

Descriptive Methods

• Survey Research

Predictive Methods

• Quasi-experiments • “True” Experiments

Experimental Methods

Figure 3.1: Descriptive Designs on the Continuum of Control

new66480_03_c03_p089-132.indd 91 10/31/11 9:39 AM

CHAPTER 3Section 3.2 Case Studies Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

quantitative researchers might view reduced control as a threat to reliability and validity, qualitative researchers view it as a strength of the study. By conducting observations in a natural setting, it is possible to capture people’s natural and unfiltered responses. Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

As an example, consider two studies on the ways people respond to traumatic events. In a 1993 paper, psychologists James Pennebaker and Kent Harber took a quantitative approach to examining the community-wide impact of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (near San Francisco). These researchers conducted phone surveys of 789 area residents, asking people to indicate, using a 10-point scale, how often they “thought about” and “talked about” the earthquake over the 3-month period after its occurrence. In analyz- ing these data, Pennebaker and Harber discovered that people tend to stop talking about traumatic events about 2 weeks after they occurred but keep thinking about the event for approximately 4 more weeks. That is, the event is still on people’s minds, but they decide to stop discussing it with other people. In a follow-up study using the 1991 Gulf War, these researchers found that this conflict leads to an increased risk of illness (Pennebaker & Harber, 1991). Thus, the goal of the study was to gather data in a controlled manner and test a set of hypotheses about community responses to trauma. Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

Contrast this approach with the more qualitative one taken by the developmental psy- chologist Paul Miller and colleagues (in press), who used a qualitative approach to study- ing the ways that parents model coping behavior for their children. These researchers conducted semistructured interviews of 24 parents whose families had been evacuated following the 2007 wildfires in San Diego County and an additional 32 parents whose families had been evacuated following a 2008 series of deadly tornadoes in Tennessee. Due to a lack of prior research on how parents teach their children to cope with trauma, Miller and colleagues approached their interviews with the goal of “documenting and describing” (p. 8) these processes. That is, rather than attempt to impose structure and test a strict hypothesis, the researchers focused on learning from these interviews and letting the interviewees’ perspectives drive the acquisition of knowledge.

In the following three sections, we examine three specific examples of descriptive designs— case studies, archival research, and observational research. Because each of these methods has the goal of describing attitudes, feelings, and behaviors, each one can be used from either a quantitative or a qualitative perspective. In other words, qualitative and quantita- tive researchers use many of the same general methods but do so with different goals. To illustrate this flexibility, we will end each section with a paragraph that contrasts qualita- tive and quantitative uses of the particular method. Assignment: Halaska/Ticket/Photolibrary

3.2  Case Studies