Chapter 3: Role of the Researcher (qual, mixed methods)

In qualitative and mixed methods you need to discuss your role as the researcher. Why? Because you are going to be doing the interviews, therefore, who you are and how you know and interact with the participant is essential to understanding the study.

You will want to first define and explain your role as an observer of the behaviors, a participant in the interview, and or an observer-participant. Next, you will discuss any relationships that you have with the participants, particularly if you have a supervisory relation (this will be a big issue for the IRB, so think if there is a way around using your supervisees).

Next, you will discuss how your own biases will be managed. Every researcher comes into a study with biases, if you didn’t have ideas as to what you thought would happen, you would not do the study! You may have been (or are) a member of the population group, how will you keep that from influencing your interview? You will need to be impartial and unbiased, how can you do that? One common way is to approach subjects/ participants neutrally and keep a journal where you relate your feelings that come up for you. It is common for new interviewers to want to engage in a social conversation with the participants and share their own experiences. Do not do this! Your story may influence how they respond to questions; you want to approach the topic as someone new to the topic. Do not assume that you know what they are going to say, let them explain the details.

Finally, you need to think through any other ethical issues, such as, doing a study within one’s own work environment, conflict of interest or power differentials, and justification for use of incentives. Then lay out a plan for addressing any issues that are present.

Next time we will look at Chapter 3: Participant Selection. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Chapter 3: Research Design and Rationale (qual, quant, mixed)

This section introduces the research design of your study. Each of the types of design has slightly different requirements for this section.

Quantitative: State your variables, indicate which are independent, dependent, moderating, etc. Then clearly state the type of research design you will be using, an example, might be a 2 (gender) x 3 (age: 20-30, 30-40, 50-60 yrs) repeated measure design. Which means that you will have an equal number of males and females; equal number of people from each of the age groups, and each person will be tested more than once. Relate the design to your research questions.

Discuss how your choice of designs makes sense with what is needed to advance the literature. Perhaps, a great deal is known about the variable, gender and people's age at a single point in time. However, your design allows a look at how things might change over time by testing them at 2 time points.

Qualitative: Begin by restating your research questions (from c. 1). Then you want to describe the main concepts that you will be addressing. Next, you will discuss the research tradition you are using, some examples include phenomenology, case study, narrative, etc. You need to then provide a rationale for using that tradition. Why is one you chose most appropriate for your study? Why not one of the other traditions?

Mixed: This one also begins by restating your research questions (from c. 1). Then you want to describe the main concepts that you will be addressing. You then need to identify how you are using a mixed method and how the data collection and analyses work together. Discuss how this is best approach to answer your research questions, and why you need to use both quantitative and qualitative elements.

Finally, discuss why you have chosen the analysis method you will use and how you will be analyzing the data.

Next time I will discuss the role of the researcher. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Chapter 3: Setting (Mixed Method)

Chapter 3 is going to be much trickier to explain than the previous discussions, because each research method has slightly different requirements. I am going to try to address all 3 research methods' sections. I will clearly indicate to which research method it applies.

Today, we will look at the Setting section, which is only included in the Mixed Method checklist. In this section you will describe where you will be collecting the data and why this setting is appropriate and relevant to your study. Describe the aspects of the setting that will affect your study, some examples, are geographical location and the size of the organization, indicate how these aspects will affect your study. Think in terms of replication, if someone wanted to replicate your study, what should they need to know about where you did your study?

Let's use an example, Walden students. Let's say you were going to do a mixed methods study of online students' opinions about variable X, using the Walden participant pool. You would describe Walden as a large online university (you would not give specific names of organizations). You would want to know how many students attend the university and any information you could gather about the participant pool. Then you would want to discuss why Walden is a good choice to examine your topics.

Next time we will look at Chapter 3: Research Design and Rationale. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Chapter 2: Summary

The Chapter 2 summary is very important; it should be much more than a quick overview. Think of this section as where the reader can go to understand the key points in the literature in just a few pages. It should provide the reader with a good understanding of the literature. First, summarize the major themes that you found in the literature, the themes will probably be related to your variables. How to do this? Think through: what are the main issues that you found in the chapter? As a writer, I would approach it by reading through the chapter and highlighting the major themes that I find in each subsection. Copy those into the summary and rewrite them so they make a coherent summary.

Second, summarize what is known and not known about your topic. What gaps are missing? Read through the paper again and highlight (in a different color – I love color coding!) everywhere that you found gaps in the literature. Again, copy those and rewrite them into a summary.

Then carefully explain how your study will fill at least one of those gaps. Talk about how your study will extend the knowledge of the topic.

If you have along the way, drawn out a concept; it will make the summary easier for you to write. It will be clearer where the gaps are and how your study will be addressing them.

Next time we will look at Chapter 3: Setting. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Chapter 2: Literature Review

We have talked quite a bit about organizing the literature review (see the index for dates of posts), but a few key points to keep in mind. Do an outline! Start broad- what is the broadest topic that applies to the study? So for example if you are interested in the elderly's opinions of their physician – the broadest area is aging- start there and narrow it as you go.

Keep in mind that you are to synthesize the literature, meaning you are not making a list of the studies have been done. Instead, you are looking for commonalities between the studies. One way to think about this is that you are writing about the topic, using previous studies to support your arguments. Thus, if you are writing about a specific variable, let's say resilience, you will want to look at how others have examined the topic, the populations they have used, and what the results were. Let's use an example from my oldest old and physician paper (Stadtlander et al. 2013), here is the section on resilience:

Resilience moderates the negative effects of stress and promotes adaptation (Wagnild, 2009; Wagnild & Young, 1993), and is described as an enduring personality characteristic (Foster, 1997).  Nygren et al. (2005) suggested that the development of resilience constitutes a form of compensation for losses of functional capacity and physical health. Leppert, Gunzelmann, Schumacher, Strauss, and Brahler (2005) reported that higher scores on the resilience scale correlated with lower rates of subjective complaints, and has been associated with health-promoting behaviors (Wagnild, 2000).  Higher resilience has been found to be correlated with higher self-efficacy (Caltabiano & Caltabiano, 2006); it has also been found to be correlated with LOC in women with traumatic experiences (Friedman, 2009), but this relationship has not been previously examined using the Wagnild and Young scale in the oldest old [as in the current study].

There are a number of techniques used in this paragraph – in yellow highlight are ones in which other research has been used to support arguments. In blue highlight are where other researchers' conclusions are brought in. Green highlights are where the results from previous studies are given. Finally, pink highlight is where the current study is tied to previous work.

In your paper, you will go into more detail, but the same techniques may be used. Remember, that you want to put your study into the context of the literature, so keep relating it back to your study.

Next time we will look at Chapter 2: Summary. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Stadtlander, L., Giles, M., Sickel, A., Brooks, E., Brown, C., Cormell, M., Ewing, L., Hart, D., Koons, D., Olson, C., Parker, P., Semenova, V., & Stoneking, S. (2013). Independent Living Oldest-Old and Their Primary Health Provider: A Mixed Method Examination of the Influence of Patient Personality Characteristics. Journal of Applied Gerontology. Advanced online publication. doi:  10.1177/0733464813482182

Chapter 2: Theories and Conceptual Framework

In Chapter 2, you will be expanding on the theories you mentioned in Chapter 1. This is where you go into the background of the theory, where did it come from and why was it developed? Talk about the major ideas of the theory, and go into some depth on how the theory has been applied in studies similar to yours (giving citations of course). Then you will want to discuss why you are using this theory as opposed to other ones. Finally, you will want to go into some detail as to how the theory relates to your study and to your research questions. What does the theory predict will happen in your study? Yes, you can have multiple theories, they should each offer different insights in your problem and each needs to be discussed. You will also want to compare and contrast the different theories' predictions.

You may also wish to discuss the conceptual framework of your study. A conceptual framework is a less developed form of a theory and consists of statements that link abstract concepts, in psychology it is often described by the term "model." You can build your own conceptual model by thinking through how you think your variables are related to the main concept. Draw a picture of how you think the relationship works. Then think through what aspects you will be examining in your study. If you want to address this area in your paper, you will need to discuss other key theorists and researchers who have done related studies and how their results fit into your conceptual ideas. You will also want to discuss how the concept has been used previously in research; keeping in mind other researchers may only have examined a portion of the model.

Next time we will examine the literature review. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu

Chapter 2: Literature Search Strategy

The next section in chapter 2 is the literature search strategy. This section will go easily if you kept track of all of your literature searches in your research journal. If not, you may need to rerun them.

You need to walk your reader through how and where you did your literature search; you are demonstrating the thoroughness of your scholarship. List the databases you searched, they should go beyond the psychology ones, include academic search premier, Thoreau, perhaps education and medical ones, dissertations, and Google scholar. List the search terms that you used, and the combinations of keywords that you used.

One of the most common questions I get is how to do literature searches. A brief review: You need to think about both breadth and depth in your searches. Let's do an example together, let's say we are interested in the elderly and resilience. Some words to start with would be elderly, seniors, older adult, I would also try young-old, middle-old, and oldest old (these are terms you see in the literature). I would combine each of these with resilience. When I find relevant articles, I will check out their keywords and add those into my combinations.

If you have difficulty finding appropriate literature and terms, please talk to the Walden librarians. They are a wonderful resource and will give you all kinds of ideas that you have not considered. Keep track in your research journal: everyone you talk to, all literature searches, and everything you do related to your project.

Next time we will examine Chapter 2: Theories and Conceptual Framework. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu