Discussion question

DQ1 week 5

Qualitative researchers attempt to understand meanings that people give to their deeds or to social phenomena. In other words, researchers see people from the inside. For example, when you conduct interviews with farmers in the red river delta about diversification of production, you will have pictures of how they feel about introducing new crops. How do they think of theintroduction process? What sort of limitations do they notice? How do they deal with conflicts with other agricultural activities or even other famers (competition)? What tacit rules cover the human relations within the village? Quantitative researchers may be able to do surveys without direct contact with research objects: they can collect data by using hired and trained interviewers or by mailing outquestionnaires. Qualitative researchers, on the other hand, often enter into the natural fields of people whom they study, and have face-to-face interviews with them. Because of this, qualitative research is sometimes called "fieldwork." Although this direct connectedness with people and their lives attracts social workers, it also gives rise to several ethical problems, which quantitativeresearchers may not face. A small sample size may be more useful in examining a situation in dept from various perspectives, whereas a large sample would be inconsequential. The researcher making decisions on a sample size for qualitative inquiry can be even more difficult than quantitative because there are no definite rules to be followed (Leedy & Ormrod, 2010.) The selection of the sample size dependson what you want to know the software provides limited statistical performance and license to buy rights to use. Other challenges of the researcher is to define well the purpose of the inquiry, what is at stake, what will be useful, what will have credibility and what can be done with available time and resources. With fixed resources which are always the case, you can choose to study one specificphenomenon in depth with a smaller sample size or a bigger sample size when seeking breadth. In purposeful sampling, the sample should be judged on the basis of the purpose and rationale for each study and the sampling strategy used to achieve the studies purpose. The validity, meanings, and insights generated from qualitative inquiry have more to do with the information-richness of the casesselected and the observational/analytical capabilities of the researcher than with sample size. Leedy & Ormrod (2010) mentioned that sample size depends on the nature of the analysis to be performed, the desired precision of the estimates one wishes to achieve, the kind and number of comparisons that will be made, the number of variables that have to be examined simultaneously and how heterogeneousa universe is sampled. For example, if the key analysis of a randomized experiment consists of computing averages two variables in a project and comparing differences, then a sample under 100 might be adequate, assuming that other statistical assumptions hold.
Leedy, P.D. & Ormrod, J.E. (2010). Practical research: Planning and design (9th ed.) Upper
Saddle River NJ: Pearson.
DQ2
According toAtieno (2009) in a research the validity has two essential parts: internal and external. Internal validity encompasses whetherthe results of the study (e.g. mean difference between treatment and control groups) are legitimate because of the way the groups were selected, data was recorded or analysis performed. For example, a
study may have poor internal validity if testing was not performed thesame way in treatment and control
groups or if confounding variables were not accounted for in the study design or analysis. External
validity, often called “generalizability”, involves whether the results given by the study are transferable to
other groups (i.e. populations) of interest (Atieno, 2009). A study performed exclusively in a particular
gender, racial, or geographic sub-group, such...