Exam 9: Qualitative Methods: Observing, Participating, and Listening

The participant observer role that is immersed in complete participation in the field of study is also known as covert participation.

Describe what field notes are and what jottings are. Then explain why jottings may be used instead of field notes during an observation. How soon after should jottings be transformed into extensive notes? Do you see any potential challenges with using the jotting technique?

One step in carrying out a field research project is to sample people and events. Dr. Smith carried out a study in which he used purposive sampling and asked those respondents to recommend others. This sampling technique is called ______.

Describe the six major ethical issues in qualitative research.

Once data collection is complete, a netnographer has an ability that traditional ethnographers do not have. What is it?

A netnographer, unlike a traditional ethnographer, can usually return to review original data.

A researcher spent a large part of nearly four years trying to be accepted by a community and seen as a good fellow. In order to do so, he participated enough in activities that so he could develop trust and ______.

Imagine you wanted to develop a focus group on college students' perception of crime on campus. Answer these questions: How would you recruit students for the group? What types of students would you try to include? How would you introduce the topic and the method to the group? What questions would you ask? What would you do if a person in your focus group monopolized the conversation?

Imagine you work at a state hospital to study the treatment of psychiatric patients and they do not know that you are studying them. Name two examples of specific problems that could arise because you are using covert participation.

Ethnographers are focused on causal explanations.

Focus groups are unstructured group interviews in which the focus group leader actively encourages discussion among participants on the topics of interest.

With a technique used to draw a representative sample of everyday activities, thoughts, and experiences, participants carry a pager and are beeped at random times over several days or weeks; upon hearing the beep, participants complete a report designed by the researcher is called ______.

When Jody Miller needed to back away from her study on gangs because her efforts to recruit new participants ended up in her respondents recruiting more people into their gang, her reasoning of ending the study was related to the ethical concern of ______.

Choose a research question. Then propose to answer this question with a qualitative research method discussed in this chapter. Why would you choose this particular method rather than the other methods? Then discuss some concerns you may have in carrying out your research project. Are there any ethical concerns you would have to keep in mind? Is there any way you could potentially avoid these ethical concerns?

One of the main differences between ethnography and netnography is that netnography is focused on ______.

Qualitative methods differ from quantitative methods from the outset due to quantitative methods focus on preformulated hypotheses. What is this research strategy called?

Imagine you are interested in the level of alcohol use among college students on a particular campus. You have decided that you are going to conduct focus groups instead of individual interviews. First, describe what a focus group is and then describe two ways a focus group would be beneficial to study the level of alcohol use among college students on campus.

List two stages to a field research project. Then describe the major challenges of these stages.

What is part of almost ALL qualitative research designs?

Describe the three types of participant observer role. Then provide one advantage and disadvantage of using each type of role.