1,721,113 research outputs found
Set them free. Improving data quality by broadening interviewer’s task
No full textThe paper deals with a highly controversial issue in survey data collection: the standardisation of the interviewer's behaviour during the interviewee’s selection of response alternatives. In the light of a large set of data drawn from several methodological studies published in the last 50 years, the author documents a counter-intuitive issue:
1. interviewer’s errors are of secondary importance and far smaller than respondent’s errors.
2. in order to minimise respondent’s errors, we need to broaden the interviewer’s tasks.
Focusing on the unsolved problem of multiple word meanings of response alternatives as a relevant part of response bias, the author argues that data quality can be achieved by entrusting to the interviewer a more active role. Of course the aim of reducing respondent’s errors by broadening interviewer’s tasks will surely produce an increase in the interviewer’s effects on answers. However the dilemma to be faced is which kind of errors we prefer (and are more useful) to minimise
Creolizating social science methodology : joining the local and the global
No full textEurope and USA have been the cradle of methodology. Consequently most of
the contemporary methodological knowledge has been invented by Western academic
culture. Throughout the twentieth century this indigenous culture has
been transformed into a type of general knowledge, and social science methodology
has become one of the most globalized knowledge. However the limits of
globalization are evident in many fields, from economy to politics, from marketing
to culture and social life. Methodology is not free from these limits. There
is an emerging need for finding postcolonial methodologies and making culturally
flexible contemporary research methods. The author explores the proposal
for a glocal methodology, the possibility of thinking (methodologically) global
and acting (methodologically) local, and its ambiguity. Finally, indigenous methodologies
and participatory action research are questioned as effective ways out
of methodological colonialism
Space constraints and turn-taking : The role of furniture in focus group research
No full textA great deal of qualitative research collects its materials through talk: interviews, focus groups and (even) ethnography are primarily based on discourses or conversations. However for many decades social scientists have used naïvely these discourses as pure data, focusing on their verbal content only (the outcome or the “what”) and paying little attention to the context of production (the process or the “how”).
From the middle of the 1960s the consciousness of the context has slowly grown and many researchers have seriously begun to consider the social interaction in which research conversations (e.g. interviews) are embedded.
Notwithstanding this important methodological improvement, the role of the setting is often missing even in the recent literature. In other terms too little attention is still devoted to the function played by the physical features of the setting (such as space, furniture, technology) in the production of discourses that constitute the essence of interviews and focus groups.
Through some videotape excerpts the author will document the affect of furniture on turn-taking and the making of opinion leader in focus groups. The empirical evidence will then lead to formulate some practical suggestions on how to improve the quality of focus groups
Glocalization : a critical introduction
No full textAs Victor Roudometof immediately points out, glocalisation is an undertheorised
concept: strictly speaking, there is no theory or school of theories on
glocalisation, as such, in the literature. This is quite amazing, particularly given
the popularity of the term and its large diffusion in different social, economic,
and political spheres, as well as in academic discourse. Surprisingly, to date
there is no book in circulation that specifically discusses this concept. Consequently,
Glocalization: A critical introduction is a welcome novelty, which fills
this gap. However, while there is no attempt to distinctly theorise glocalisation
on its own terms, this does not mean that there are no relevant interpretations,
whereby theorists have sought to creatively engage with it. Nevertheless, what
is needed (and where the author greatly succeeds) is to add glocalisation to the
social-scientific vocabulary, as an analytically autonomous concept, and not as
a mere appendage to globalisation, cosmopolitanisation, or theories of global
diffusion
Glocalizing methodology? The encounter between local methodologies
Full text linkEurope and USA have been the cradle of methodology. Consequently most of
the contemporary methodological knowledge has been invented by Western academic
culture. Throughout the twentieth century this indigenous culture has
been transformed into a type of general knowledge, and social science methodology
has become one of the most globalized knowledge. However the limits of
globalization are evident in many fields, from economy to politics, from marketing
to culture and social life. Methodology is not free from these limits. There
is an emerging need for finding postcolonial methodologies and making culturally
flexible contemporary research methods. The author explores the proposal
for a glocal methodology, the possibility of thinking (methodologically) global
and acting (methodologically) local, and its ambiguity. Finally, indigenous methodologies
and participatory action research are questioned as effective ways out
of methodological colonialism
The Renaissance of Qualitative Methods
No full textEven though qualitative research was first done more than a century ago, the first texts that tried to define its methodology appeared only eighty years later, in the late sixties. This article explores the reasons why there was such a long delay and why many sociologists who worked using qualitative methods and techniques for a long time did not care about the need for methodological training. After having seen how qualitative methods and their use in contemporary social science developed, the author outlines the future prospects for qualitative research. With the freedom usually given to those that construct scenarios, we can identify at least five directions: (a) the major formalization of the methods; (b) the development of data analysis; (c) the marriage between computers and qualitative research; (d) the necessity of qualitative methods in a multicultural society; and (e) the implications for applied research.
URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs050342
Per un’uguaglianza di genere nelle carriere scientifiche : il fattore F
Full text linkPer raggiungere un’uguaglianza di genere nelle carriere scientifiche è necessario adottare criteri differenziati per la valutazione dei cv, e in particolare della produzione scientifica. Se uomini e donne sono diversi (e spesso diseguali) nella società, non possiamo pensare che gli effetti di questa diversità (e diseguaglianza) si sospendano quando passiamo alla produzione scientifica.
Invece attualmente non c’è alcuna attenzione (almeno in Italia, almeno nell’ANVUR) verso una valutazione differenziata della produzione scientifica, fingendo così che in questo ambito uomini e donne sono (o debbano essere) uguali
Beyond mixed methods? : The ‘inter-vey'
Full text linkFor decades, the dilemma between open-ended and closed-ended response alternatives occupied the methodological debate. Over the years, dominant approaches in survey have reacted to this dilemma by opting for fixed response alternatives and the standardization of interviewer’s behavior. If this methodological decision has been the survey’s fortune, making it the methodology most widely used in the social sciences, however it produces a large amount of biases well known in the literature: misunderstanding of the response alternatives by the interviewees, the multiple word meanings of response alternatives due the communicative functions of quantifiers, the invented opinions (or lies) phenomenon, the influence of the response alternatives on formation of the judgment, social desirability effects, the yea-saying and response set phenomena, etc..
In order to remedy these biases an alternative proposal can be designed by re-discovering and adapting two “old” proposals: Likert’s technique called “fixed question/free answers” (1940s), and Galtung’s (1967) procedure named “open question/closed answer”. Both procedures are guided by the same discursive principles: make the interview into a conversation, let the interviewee answer freely in his/her own words, and thus release him/her from the researcher’s schemes, making an “interviewee-centered” survey.
These principles have been recently blended in an innovative technique for collecting survey data, which has been named “inter-vey” (Gobo and Mauceri 2014), blending in-depth and survey interview (or unstructured & structured interview). “Inter-vey” is based on the idea of the “conversationalzing survey” (Schober and Conrad 1997; Maynard and Schaffer 2002, Gobo 2011).
An experimentation (and a procedural example) of this technique will be presented
Doing Ethnography
No full textEthnographic methodology seeks to understand, describe and explain the symbolic world (of beliefs, languages and conventions) lying beneath the social action of groups, organizations and communities. The ethnographer immerses himself or herself in the everyday lives of the participants, taking part in their rituals, ceremonials and routines. Observing, listening and participating gradually bring underlying cultures to light, revealing their meanings, symbols and tacit knowledge.
The aim of the book is to set out the coordinates and foundations of a research practice which has recently attracted renewed interest. Although ethnography has been long and unjustly criticized as anti-methodological, devoid of standard procedures, and without codified rules, it is in fact based upon an array of conventions and strategies deployed according to the theoretical perspective adopted. There is no single, universal ethnographic approach, of course; but nor does arbitrariness reign in the discipline. In this regard the book sets itself the audacious tasks of walking the knife-edge between a ‘non-postmodern constructivist ethnography’ and a ‘non-realist phenomenologically-oriented ethnography’.
The book systematically describes the various phases of an ethnographic inquiry (the research design, access to the field, collection, organization and analysis of the data, and communication of the results). As it does so, it provides numerous examples while also offers suggestions and advice for the novice ethnographer
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