VL2

• Replicability:

  the procedures by which research outputs are created should be conducted and documented in a manner that allows others outside the research team to independently repeat the procedures and obtain similar, if not identical, results.

• Independence

  – the extent to which the research conduct is impartial and freed from any subjective judgment or other bias stemming from the researcher or research team itself.

• Precision

  – The request to define all concepts, constructs, and measurements should be as carefully and precisely as possible to allow others to use, apply, and challenge the definitions, concepts, and results in their own work.

• Falsifiability

  – Ensuring the logical possibility than an assertion, hypothesis, or theory can be contradicted by an observation or other outcome of a scientific study or experiment.

  
  

• Intercoder reliability refers to the extent to which two or more independent coders agree on the coding of the content of interest with an application of the same coding scheme.

• Such coding is most often applied to respondents' answers to open-ended questions, but it can also be used to analyze other types of written or visual content (e.g. newspaper stories, people's facial expressions, television commercials, etc.).

• Intercoder reliability is a critical component during content analysis because otherwise the interpretation of content cannot be considered objective and valid, although high intercoder reliability is not the only criteria necessary to argue validity, independence, and objectivity...

• Equivocal generation

  • The hypothesis that life can originate from inanimate matter

  • Later disproven by Pasteur and other advocates of germ and cell theory.

• Phrenology

  • The study of the shape of skull as indicative of the strengths of different faculties.

  • Modern scientific research proved that personality traits cannot be traced to specific portions of the brain.

• Phenomenology: the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from a first- person point of view

• Ethnomethodology: a mode of inquiry devoted to studying the practical methods of common-sense reasoning used by members of society in the conduct of everyday life.

• In the natural sciences, scientists try to understand and theorize about the way the natural world is structured.

• The understanding is one-way ("single hermeneutic“): While we seek to understand the actions of minerals or chemicals, these do not seek to develop an understanding of us.

• By contrast, some of the social sciences don't just study what people do, they also study how people understand their world, and how that understanding shapes their practice.

• Because people can think, make choices, and use new information to revise their understandings (and hence their practice), they can use the knowledge and insights of social science to change their practice.

• This means social scientists engage in a double hermeneutic: The findings of the social sciences very often enter constitutively into the world they describe.

Positivism:

• A wordview where researchers assume that reality is objectively given and can be discovered by a researcher and described by measurable properties independent of the observer (researcher) and their instruments.  A realist and objectivist ontology and an empiricist epistemology.

• Science, according to positivism, is about solving problems by unearthing truth. It is not about fitting theory to observations. Induction and introspection are important, but only as a highway toward creating a scientific theory. But such a theory must always be empirically distinguished from “myth” through falsification.

Interpretivism:

• A wordview where researchers assume that access to reality (given or socially constructed) is only through social constructions such as language, consciousness, and shared meanings.

• Simple example: The concept of currency: only exists because people have agreed to give it importance/value

• Very difficult example: The concept of self-identity and the relation to sex and gender.

• Science, according to interpretive researchers, is thus generally about understanding phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them.

• Validity

  • Types of Validity

    • Internal validity

    • Construct validity

      • Convergent validity

      • Discriminant validity

      • nomological validity

    • External validity

• Reliability

• Peer debriefing

• Spend enough time in the research setting, and explore things in depth (avoid premature closure)

• Triangulation of sources and methods

  • Sources: different people, different material traces

  • Methods: ask, observe, read, interpret, analyse (qual and quant)  find people that are different to you

• Think about your own personality, position, goals and beliefs

  • E.g., me (business and IT background) vs. Imke (social economics background)

• Record and describe everything, including interpretation process

• Respondent validation (during and after)

• Collect data as rigorously and completely as possible

  • Complete on the day, but don’t converge (keep detail)

  • Record if you can

  • Transcribe, even if it seems too tedious/useless

  • Provide transparency on coding

• Use multiple coders to increase intersubjective objectivity.

• Thick descriptions

• Replication through theoretical sampling:

  • Careful case selection = choosing cases where the focal phenomenon is likely to occur,

  • Choosing case designs where the similarities and differences across cases are likely to improve theory building.

  • Examples:

    • Matched pair design

    • Racing car design

• Transferability through analytical generalization

  • Claims of generalizability are made on basis of the developed theoretical concepts, not on basis of the empirical sample.

• Researchers Conception and Use of Data

  • Data as Facts

  • Data as Subjective Understanding

  • Data as Socially Constructed Reality

• The Nature and Role of Theory

  • A set of generalizable, falsifiable propositions or laws

  • A coherent framework with identified variables and relationships

  • A conception or mental scheme, lens or scaffolding

• The Analysis Strategy

  • Polyphonic presentation

  • Induction / abduction

  • Deduction

  • Interpretation (elaboration or iterative understanding)

• The Nature of Claims about the Findings

  • Uncover what happened: the search for truth

  • Develop a plausible understanding of a poorly understanding phenomenon

  • Generate new concepts and novel insights, move from description to abstraction

  • Construct evocative, experiential text

  • Seek to influence the views of a specific audience

1. “What,” “who,” and “where” questions tend to focus on issues we seek to explore or describe because little knowledge exists about them.

2. “How” and “why” questions are explanatory as they seek to answer questions about the causal mechanisms that are at work in a particular phenomenon.