Terms A
A research method where the researcher spends an extended period of time in a social setting, observing people’s behaviour, asking questions, and analyzing conversations to gain a richer understanding of the phenomenon
What is Ethnography?
This systematic assessment of the operation and/or outcome of a program is used to inform policy development or evaluation. External evaluators are independent from the program and its organization, making them more objective, and they often evaluate at key points. Internal evaluators are part of the organization running the program and can quickly address any issues that come up.
What is Program Evaluation
This data collection method can occur one-on-one, in focus groups, over the phone, or through email. It can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured and works best when using open-ended questions.
What is an Interview
Being (blank) is tied to conducting high-quality and valuable research; the study must address a question of sufficient value to justify the risks posed to participants, it must be conducted according to the protocol approved by the REB, and the research findings must be disseminated in an accurate and timely manner.
What are Research Ethics
This is a diminished ability to fully safeguard one’s own interests in the context of a specific research project, which may be caused by limited decision-making capacity or limited access to social goods, rights, or opportunities and power
What is Vulnerability
The probability of correctly concluding that a result was not due to chance; the higher the (blank), the lower the probability of incorrectly concluding a result is due to chance (type II error)
What is Power
What is the difference between Anonymized Information and Anonymous Information?
Anonymized Information: Information is irrevocably stripped of direct identifiers, no codes are kept for future re-linkage, and risk from indirect identifiers is low
Anonymous Information: Information never had identifiers associated with it.
Introduction of a problem; Research question; Literature Review; Theoretical Framework; Methodology; Methods; Results/Findings; Discussion/Conclusion/Implications/References
What are the parts of a Research Article
Examines human experiences through the descriptions provided by people involved, tries to understand how human awareness is implicated through social action, a social situation, & the social world, Aims to trace out precisely the lived experiences of people & generate theories or models of phenomena being studied, and examines how people describe things and experiences through their senses
What is Phenomenology
The probability of selection isn’t known; every member does not have an equal chance of being selected
What is a nonprobability sampling
This interview method aims to gather rich, quality data from a social context where individuals can contribute, consider, and reiterate their beliefs, opinions, and experiences alongside and within the context of other individuals who share similar characteristics or experiences.
What is a Focus Group?
What does TCPS-2 stand for, and what are the three core principles?
Tri-Council Policy Statement: A Document that guides most Canadian REBs, and most Canadian researchers, three principles guide research ethics: Respect for persons, Concern for welfare, and Justice.
This is the capacity to understand information and be able to act on it voluntarily; the ability of individuals to use their own judgement to make decisions about their own actions, like whether to participate in research.
What is Autonomy
This describes, summarizes, and presents data using frequency, central tendency, variation, and position; they do not attempt to infer or predict meaning. They are simply concerned with enumeration and organization
What are Descriptive Statistics
This is the process of setting aside the researcher’s experiences with the phenomenon to examine the consciousness itself better; by detailing the researcher's experiences, they highlight their biases.
What is Bracketing
Research topic -> Research Problem -> Purpose -> Research Question. Represent What?
How to develop a Research Question: Research questions should be Relevant, Manageable, Substantial/Original, Clear/Simple, and Interesting.
This involves a detailed and intensive analysis of a particular event, situation, organization, or social unit through an in-depth investigation of a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, which can include a single case or multiple smaller cases for comparative purposes.
What is a Case Study
A quality consideration in qualitative research regarding the degree of confidence in the data collection, analysis, and reporting process that involves Dependability, Credibility, Transferability, and Confirmability
What is TRUSTWORTHINESS
A written collection of self-report questions to be answered by the selected group of research participants
What is a Survey or Questionnaire
This involves a continuous self-awareness of the researcher’s role and influences throughout the research process, including design, data collection, and analysis. It challenges the traditional view of objectivity, particularly in sensitive topics where the researcher’s personal experiences and emotions can significantly impact their work. This allows researchers to be transparent about these influences, lending credibility and depth to their analysis.
This is a document that provides potential participants with a clean and concise summary of the research project, including the purpose, methodology, potential risks and benefits, and researcher’s contact information, to give the necessary information to make an informed choice about participating.
What is the Letter of Information
This strives to make inferences or predictions based on data gathered and use information from a sample to reach conclusions about a population.
What is Inferential Statistics
(Blank) is a summary of the data collected and the main results/findings; in Qualitative research, illustrative data samples are frequently used. In Quantatitive research, all relevant data that contradicts the hypothesis should be discussed. The reader should be clear about what the data provided means and why it is important.
What is Data Analysis
What are the Purposes of Theory?
To describe (concepts regarding phenomena and the relationships between them), explain (why a phenomenon occurs), predict (future events based on past occurrences), and change (or control situations).
A systematic, qualitative method used to create a theory that explains a process, action, or interaction related to a specific topic. It focuses on building theories, which is especially helpful for understanding how things change over time.
What is Grounded Theory
The use of multiple data sources, theories, data collection methods, and researchers to lower intrinsic bias that can be found in single-method, single-researcher, and single-theory studies
What is Triangulation
This form of data collection gathers data from a natural situation. There are two types of collection in this form. What is the data collection form, and what are the two associated types?
What is an Observation
Participant Observation occurs when the researcher participates in the situation while observing and collecting data, while Nonparticipant Observation occurs when the researcher observes and records behaviour but does not interact with or participate in the life of the setting under study.
What is the difference between Beneficence and nonmaleficence?
Beneficence: The intent to do good (or benefit) either the individual participant or society at large.
Nonmaleficence: The intent to do no harm
This is a document that serves as a formal agreement between the researcher and the participant, often requiring a signature to document the participant’s informed decision to join the study, which includes details specified in the letter of information and asks the participant to affirm their willingness to participate under the explained conditions.
What is a Consent Form
This form of research includes examining relationships between two or more variables, determining the strength and type of relationships, and explaining what is seen, but it does not determine cause and effect.
(Blank) is a process used by researchers to reduce meaning units and interpret them to derive insights. This process helps to reduce a large chunk of data into smaller fragments that make sense.
What is Coding/Research Data Analysis
What are the advantages and Disadvantages of Qualitative Research
Advantages of Qualitative Research: Flexibility, Natural settings, meaningful insights, and helps generate new ideas.
Disadvantages of Qualitative Research: Unreliability, Subjectivity, Limited generalizability, Labour-intensive.
An approach in which local people affected by a particular social problem collaborate as equals with professional researchers and stakeholders to generate knowledge related to the problem and take action to solve it.
What is Participatory Action Research
Combines multiple forms of analysis and multiple genres of representation into a coherent test or series of related tests, building a rich and openly partial account of a phenomenon that problematizes its own construction, highlights researchers’ vulnerabilities and positionality, and makes claims about socially constructed meanings.
What is Crystallization
Describe the two types of field notes
Descriptive Notes document contextual information during an interview, such as behaviours, activities, events, and other observations. Reflective Notes record the researcher’s thoughts, ideas, questions, and concerns as the interview is being conducted.
Participants have adequate information regarding the research and their role in it, can comprehend the information, and have the power of choice, which enables them to consent or decline participation voluntarily. (Blank) must be free of undue influence and coercion, and the incentives must not be so attractive that they encourage reckless disregard of the risks; this is an ongoing process.
What is Informed Consent
What is Assent?
A verbal (or nonverbal) expression of agreement by prospective participants to participate in the study.
A participant has the right to be free from intrusion or interference by others regarding their bodies, personal information, expressed thoughts and opinions, personal communications with others, and the spaces they occupy.
What is Privacy
Name and describe the five different methods of Coding
Thematic Coding: This is a method and a process to identify patterns/themes in qualitative data
Inductive Coding: Comes from new ideas we discern from the data
A Priori/Deductive Coding: Comes from a theoretical or conceptual framework
Open Coding: Develop and modify codes as the transcripts and coding process occurs, rather than using pre-set/pre-determined codes
In-Vivo Coding: Refers to the use as a conceptual category of a word/phrase used by research participants which seems to express the meaning of that category in a memorable way
What are the elements of a Research Procedure?
Participants -> Recruitment Techniques -> Ethics -> Instruments/Data collection steps -> Data processing & Storage -> Analysis
What is the difference between Harm and Risk
Harm is anything that has a negative effect on participants’ welfare, broadly construed; the nature of the harm may be social, behavioural, psychological, physical, or economic. Risk is the possibility of harm, or the level of foreseeable risk posed to participants by their involvement in research, is assessed by considering the magnitude or seriousness of the harm and the probability that it will occur.
Groups should not bear an unfair share of the direct burdens of participating in research or be unfairly excluded from the benefits of research participation; researchers are encouraged to include participants based on criteria that directly relate to the research objectives and not on unrelated attributes like culture, language, or age unless justified by the study's scope.
What is participation Inclusion and Exclusion in a research study
This is the study of knowledge and how it is acquired. (Blank) is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. (Blank) is concerned with the nature of knowledge and ways of knowing and learning about social reality.
What is Epistemology
This is the nature of reality. The branch of philosophy studies concepts such as existence, being, becoming, and reality. (Blank) refers to what sort of things exist in the social world and assumptions about the form and nature of that social reality. (Blank) is concerned with whether or not social reality exists independently of human understanding and interpretation; for instance, is there a shared social reality or multiple context-specific realities.
What is Ontology
Describe the differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Research and what Mixed Methods Research design refers to.
Quantitative Research: Gathers numerical data and uses statistical analysis
Qualitative Research: Gathers data comprised of words, images, and non-numerical symbols
Mixed Methods Research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis to answer specific research questions; using this method stems from a research question that can not be answered by quantitative or qualitative methods alone.
The researcher has an obligation to an individual or organization to safeguard entrusted information; the researcher knows the identity of a participant but takes steps to protect that identity from being discovered.
What is confidentiality
What are Seminal Works?
Foundational work in the field. Something older and often referred to, as we understand new research—The building blocks for what comes after.
What is the quality consideration of Qualitative Research and what does it include?
Trustworthiness is the degree of confidence in the data collection, analysis, and reporting process - Dependability, Credibility, Transferability, and Confirmability
What does Grey Literature include?
Newspapers, websites, Blogs, podcasts, documentary films, and government documents.
What is the difference between Deductive Reasoning and Inductive Reasoning?
Deductive Reasoning: Top-down approach in a research study (Theory -> Hypothesis -> Observation -> Confirmation)
Inductive Reasoning: Bottom-up approach in a research study (Observation -> Pattern -> Themes -> Theory)
This is a set of concepts and relational statements that organize scientific knowledge in a focused way.
What is a Theory
What is the difference between Theoretical and Operational Definitions?
Theoretical Definition: A description in words of the meaning of the concept.
Operational Definition: A description of how the concept will be measured
Any empirical or quasi-empirical theory of social and/or psychological processes at a variety of levels that can be applied to the understanding of phenomena
What is a Theoretical Framework
(Blank) is a condition in which the identity of individual participants is not known to researchers
What is Anonymity
Coding Scheme: An arrangement of related categories into which data elements are to be classified.
Codebook: A list of codes with code definitions allows researchers to keep track of how the codes are used to make sense of the data. The definitions can come from the literature review or from the participants' reference to a topic.
What is the difference between a research question and a research problem?
A research question is a specific question that a researcher aims to answer, while a research problem is a statement about the issue or concern that the research will address.
What is the difference between Exploratory Research and Explanatory Research?
Exploratory Research: A new topic—little is known in the area
Explanatory Research: The study tries to identify the cause or effect of the phenomenon being studied.
What are some examples of Peer Reviewed literature?
Includes journal articles, conference proceedings, books (edited/ handbooks/ textbooks), dissertations and theses.
This is a written overview of major writings and other sources on a selected topic. It provides a description, summary, and evaluation of each source where you sort articles by themes/categories, historically/chronologically, or sometimes by methodology/method.
What is a Literature Review
The procedure by which we break down an intellectual or substantial whole into parts or components.
What is an Analysis
(Blank) is the combination of separate elements or components to form a coherent whole. An integrated analysis of different subtopics helps the writer and reader come to a greater understanding of the state of knowledge on a larger issue. Real (Blank) only occurs if a relationship between the sources is apparent.
What is a Synthesis
When researchers seek to collect, use, share, and access different types of information or data about participants, they are expected to determine whether the information or data proposed in research may reasonably be expected to identify an individual.
What is Identifiable Information
This measures the extent to which different coders or analysts agree on their observations or ratings of the same data; this ensures that findings are not biased by individual coder
What is Intercoder Reliability?
What is the Consent Process?
1. Design the study, write the letter of information and consent forms, apply for ethical approval from your institution
2. Revise design and documents per REB instructions
3. Recruit participants following through on providing information and obtaining consent
4. Obtain consent at all stages of the study
5. Protect data and participant confidentiality/anonymity
Describe Data Saturation
The point where no new data adds anything to the theory being generated
This approach focuses on searching for and analyzing stories that people use to understand their lives and the world around them.
What is Narrative Research
This form of research examines cause-and-effect relationships. The studies are highly controlled, objective, and systematic. They involve measuring the independent and dependent variables and controlled manipulation of at least one independent variable. They use experimental and control groups and random assignment of the sample to experimental and control groups
What is Experimental Research
What are Variables?
A concept translated into a measurable attribute that holds different values that are manipulated or controlled in a study.
A (Blank) result is one for which chance is an unlikely explanation. If p ≤ 0.05, we have evidence that the effect exists in the population.
What is Statistical Significance?
What is Directly Identifying Information
Information that identifies a specific individual (Name, SIN)
(Blank) is a process to connect categories and subcategories, which helps develop a central narrative, and refine initial codes
What is Axial Coding
What are the Goals of Qualitative Data Analysis?
Meaning (how people see the world), Context (The world in which people act), Process (The actions and activities people do), and Reasoning (why people act and behave the way they do).
This is used in addition to or in place of statistical significance to determine how important the difference between two variables is and quantifies that difference.
What is the Effect Size
This quality consideration in quantitative research is the extent to which the results can be reproduced when the research is repeated under the same conditions
What is Reliability
This quality consideration in quantitative research is the extent to which the results really measure what they are supposed to measure.
What is Validity
This is a relational statement that provides a conjecture of the relationship between two concepts that can be empirically tested—it does not prove or disprove—it supports or does not support
What is a Hypothesis
The selection of participants is determined by chance, every member of the population has an equal chance at participating.
What is Probability Sampling
Explain Coded Information
Direct identifiers are removed and replaced with a code; access to the code list allows specific individuals to be re-identified.
(Blank) are patterns that capture something significant or interesting about the data and/or research question.
What are Themes
What are the Steps in Thematic Coding?
1. Become familiar with the data. 2. Generate initial codes. 3. Collapse into categories. 4. Identify themes 5. Review themes. 6. Write-up
(Blank) encompasses all computer-mediated internet and digitally enabled media through which data may be collected. For research, emphasis has been placed on using digital communication tools to collect data and then as platforms to disseminate research findings, and (Blank) is both a phenomenon and an instrument of research; it is about the digital domain and its characteristics, as well as research that uses the digital domain as a source of and means to access information.
What is Digital Media and Digital Media Research
(Blank) is the assumption is that there is a need for some separation between the researcher and the researched and that this separation impacts the researcher’s ability to conduct unbiased data collection
What is Critical Distance
(Blank) is a procedure that occurs at the conclusion of the human subject’s participation in the study through which the subject is provided the opportunity to discuss with the researcher the details of the research.
What is Debriefing
KMb is a process of transforming research findings into accessible, actionable knowledge; the aim is to maximize research’s societal impact by bridging academia and practice.
What is Knowledge Mobilization
(Blank) refers to the approach to how data will be dealt with once it is gathered
What is Methodology
(Blank) refers to the data collection techniques (a research tool)
(Blank) refers to the steps or phases of a research design, such as what actually happens and when.
What is a procedure
What are the three Rs of KMb?
Reach, Relevance, and Relationships