Category: Qualitative Research

Categories
Methodology Qualitative Research Quantitative Research Research Process

Generalization – Generalizability

The generalization is the extent to which your study is true in different settings. The idea of making sure that your study is well represented makes your study findings generalized. If your sample is not representing the sample fairly, then probably the findings cannot be generalized to the entire population, rather generalized to those who participated.

Quantitative

If your study is quantitative, you need to address the issue of generalization in your study. This is an important question by anyone who evaluates your study. If your sample effectively represents the population, then your study findings have good chance of capturing the truth about your subject matter. This makes your study of value to be looked at. On the other hand, if your study sample did not include a good representation of the population, then your findings would not necessarily be true of the population.

The issue of generalization starts when you plan your methodology. Then, it is discussed in your findings. For example, if you use a random sample, or a quota sample, then you may want to compare distribution of the actual responses that were returned to you with those of the population. This will be discussed in the descriptive analysis of the sample in your findings chapter. If none of the commuters responded to your study, then your study is limited to the non-commuters. If a specific college is underrepresented in your study, then probably the findings may not accurately reflect that college.

Case Study

If your study is a case study, you will have some in-depth findings about your case. Then you may want to show how your case can provide a good sample that represents many other similar organizations. This is a generalization issue.

qualitative study

If your study is a qualitative study, then you assume that your findings may be true for a wider population. The thesis or dissertation is a journey of finding the truth about the world. Therefore, as you find the truth, you have to describe how much of this truth is applicable to the world.

Categories
Methodology Qualitative Research Quantitative Research Research Process

Pilot Study

Why do you do a pilot study? You do it in order to make sure that your methodology will generate the desired results. It is a reliability and validity check for your research method. You do not want to conduct your research method on your entire sample, and then discover different results than what you wanted.

For example, you have developed a survey that no one else has tested before to achieve a specific objective. You are planning to run the survey over tens or hundreds of participants. You may want to run this survey on a small number of participants in a pilot study.

In the pilot study, you almost do a qualitative mini research. You will be giving your survey to a few individuals who will answer the survey. Then you may sit with these participants, and make sure that they understood the survey questions correctly. Then, you will make sure that the way they answer the survey questions is exactly how the questions are intended to be answered.

During the pilot study, there is a good chance that you will better understand your topic. You may realize that you need to remove, modify, and add a question. You may want to reword the questions so that it implies the intended purpose of the question. Alternatively, you may realize you want to go one step backwards to achieve your purpose.

A pilot study is needed every time you do not have enough evidence that your questions have been tested. If you have translated questions from another language, then you need to test the new language wording. If you have modified existing survey, you want to make sure it holds the same level of validity. If you have developed your own questions, you want to make sure they are valid and can achieve their desired results.

During the pilot study, you will get a mini result of your research. These mini results provide you with sample data of your final results. It is a good choice for you to try the analysis you have planned for to make sure you know how it will turn out to be.

Doing the analysis based on the pilot study will pave the way for the final results. You may build your data sheet in your analysis software such as SPSS, Nvivo, or any other software. This same preparation will be used later on. This process may give you hints to modify the final methodology to better suit the following analysis stage.

For example, you may find out that the data you collected has open question that can be a multiple-choice question. This will help you a lot in the analysis later on. Another example, you may find out that you missed an important question that can enhance the validity of the survey sample. Let us say you forgot to ask if the respondent is over 18 years. How can you make sure to remove those who are not 18 years old from the final responses? One way would be having such question in the survey.

Study validity and reliability are major foundations for the entire study. If your methodology has been proven invalid or unreliable, then your entire study is meaningless. Pilot study helps in achieving reliability and validity.

Categories
Methodology Qualitative Research Quantitative Research

Mixed Method

This article addresses the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed method approaches to data collection and methodology.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative

Qualitative research occurs when you explore.  The key idea is to explore or find out.  On the other hand, quantitative research occurs when you want to examine.  The key idea is examination.

Qualitative research will give you the opportunity to go deep into a subject and investigate what is call phenomena.  A phenomenon is a fact that appears to you upon your research.  If you open your eyes after the rain, you may see a rainbow.  This phenomenon appears in the sky.  You may need to explore this phenomenon and write your thesis about it.  So all the people who come after you can build on the phenomena you found.15

Quantitative research will give you the opportunity to collect data about something specific to reach a generalization.  For example, if you had discovered the rainbow, you may decide to collect data about it.  You may then have concluded that there is association between rain and rainbows.  The generalization, a rainbow always appears after the rain, would have been new knowledge that the study found.

In qualitative research, you may use an interview, observations, and deep digging in a fact-finding journey.  While in quantitative research you may survey, measure, and check a specific phenomenon to reach a lasting conclusion.


Mixed Method

A mixed study occurs when you want to achieve both quantitative and qualitative research simultaneously.  For example, you want to investigate the colors that appear in the sky after rain.  You may want to explore the topic first.  Then you reveal the rainbow.  After that, you want to generalize this phenomenon by conducting quantitative research.

Here’s another example: you may be wondering why students do poorly on their exams.  You may want to explore this phenomenon by interviewing students who do poorly in their exams.  During this journey, you find out they have many absences.  Now you can say that you found a pattern that students who have done poorly on their exams missed many classes.  Then you want to generalize that students who attend classes do better on their exams.  This generalization requires a quantitative research to examine and to verify that student performance is related to student attendance.   Then you can survey students in a variety of circumstances, places and situations.  The survey will check their performance and their attendance.  After that, statistical tests will be conducted to reach a conclusion that this relationship was not due to coincidence.