DDBA 8427: Applied Research Methods Qualitative and Quantitative ROUNDTABLE: RESEARCH METHODS VOICEOVER : In this program, Dr. Gary Burkholder and members of the Walden community discuss the various research methods used in research design, from myths associated with them to how they are best used with a variety of research questions. At the conclusion of the roundtable discussion, you will hear from two students who share their ideas for their research studies. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : Historically introductory research design courses have focused on experimental method, what we might call quantitative methods or approaches. As psychology and counseling has matured, we find that other approaches are also becoming more accepted. We're here today to discuss three specific approaches: qualitative, quantitative and mixed message approaches. Each of you represents a different approach to, for research design. I'd like to ask each of you to introduce yourself, tell us what your particular approach is, and also what your area of research interest is. George? DR. GEORGE SMEATON : My name is George Smeaton, I have a doctorate in social personality psychology. My area of interest has been things like interpersonal attraction, relationships, and sexual behavior. I've been interested in the correlations between certain personality variables and other kinds of behaviors that I'm interested in. All these types of research questions require quantitative methods in order to be able to determine how much a particular variable affects some other types of variables, how much variables are interrelated to each other. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : Sreeroopa? DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : My name is Sreeroopa Sarkar and I'm a PhD in education and psychology. My research area includes mental health promotion within the school and community setting, cross cultural and multi cultural psychology, and gender related issues in the field of psychology. My area of expertise in research method is in qualitative research. Qualitative research entails looking at a phenomenon or an event from the perspective of the people we are studying. We try to understand, describe and define the event from the personal experiences of the people. And we do that by observing them, by interviewing them, or by collecting documentation about the research problem from the particular setting. Another important aspect of qualitative research is that it relies primarily on words, images, and some kind of descriptions, as opposed to numbers, as we see in quantitative studies. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : Debra? DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : I'm Debra Rose Wilson, and my background is in healthcare. I was a registered nurse and I have a PhD in health psychology.
My interest is mixed methodology. From a health perspective, those numbers, the quantitative pieces are are important. We can't ignore those in healthcare. The biomarkers, the blood results, the lab results. Those numbers are important. But also important from the health perspective is the participant's experience. So that's why qualitative is so important as well. And from mixed methodology we get the best of both worlds. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : Great thanks. Let's begin by talking about the different research approaches in terms of their legitimacy, their prestige or their acceptability. George, why don't you start and just talk to us about the preeminence of quantitative research methods in design. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Well quantitative methods are, are the methods that have been used since the beginning of the history of the field of psychology. It's been very important for the field of psychology to be able to quantify their variables and, and be able to precisely measure the effects of certain types of manipulations on human behavior. Because psychology is a new science, it needed to find a way of fitting into the scientific models that other sciences had used in the past. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : I think from a mixed methodology approach, especially in healthcare, quantitative can't be ignored. Those hard numbers are so important when it comes to healthcare issues, patient and participant health, and in research particularly, looking at outcomes, measuring cleanly outcomes before and after interventions in healthcare. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : Qualitative research has been lately becoming popular among the psychologies. It has been accepted as a valid research method for about the last 15 years. Previously there were some misunderstandings that qualitative research is not as scientific as quantitative research. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : That's true, because there was a period of time when qualitative research wasn't even allowed to be considered in psychology papers as valid. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : You're, you're right. And there is a belief that a qualitative research is not as scientific as quantitative research. But I'd like to emphasize that in qualitative research we scientifically observe, analyze, manage data, just as quantitative research. So qualitative research is as empirical and as scientific as quantitative research study. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : I think it's interesting that qualitative research has really been around for a long time and it really dominated the fields of anthropology and sociology and it's taken a long time for it to get to the point where it, where it's acceptable now. One of the other things I noticed is applying
for grants, for federal grants, that more and more it's becoming acceptable to do mixed method research. I don't know if you, doing mixed methods, have any comments on why that might be, or. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : Well I think mixed methods brings in the best of both worlds. We're still having that quantitative piece that's valid, but you're bringing in the lived experience of the phenomenon. Consider pain, for example. While we can measure the parameters of pain with quantitative blood pressure, pulse rates, those sorts of things, measurable types of things, the qualitative piece is the lived experience. What is the pain like? How does it influence your life? How does this impair your mobility for example? It's hard to describe that with just numbers when it's an experience that you have. So mixed methodology really does the benefit of - pull both of these very valuable research methods into one, especially in the area of healthcare. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : I think it's interesting you were talking, started to talk about a misunderstandings about qualitative research. And maybe we can talk a little bit about misunderstandings and myths around different research designs. I don't know if anybody has anything they want to begin with on that? DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Sure, Gary. One thing I hear a lot about qualitative research, that it's easier to carry out. (CHUCKLING) I'd like to say that it's a myth. Qualitative research is not as easy as is thought. And it requires a long time commitment on the part of the researcher. Sometimes it can get expensive. (It's very labor intensive.) Very labor intensive process, and it requires hard work on the part of the researchers. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : And you really embed yourself in the data. (Absolutely.) And also in qualitative research what's very difficult is recognizing and putting forward your own biases. You have to recognize your bias in that research, and that's a difficult thing to do. Standing back and objectively looking at where your biases might be coming from. That may be influencing how you're perceiving what these participants are telling you. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : I think in the area of quantitative research there's been some misconceptions. For one thing I think that many people might assume that you need very sophisticated laboratory equipment or that you need to have large quantities of participants, and neither of these types of things are true. Survey research, where you're collecting objective survey data, can be done in almost any setting, with - and that would be a quantitative approach. So, so that's, that's an important thing I think people need to understand with that method. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : And I don't know if it's a method or not but mixed methodology really does require expertise in both areas, and quantitative, understanding statistical analysis, as well as qualitative, understanding the
qualitative analysis, two different approaches. So I think from a mixed methodology approach, it is a great deal more work than either. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : And also I think just the, the idea that so there's something more scientific about numbers and statistics that makes people for some reason want to do that. And also I was interested about the qualitative and talking about that myth, because I get students who will tell me that I don't like statistics so I want to do a qualitative approach, and I think it's really important for the student to understand that, that it is very difficult, but that both of them are equally accepted. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Well one thing I'd want to add to that is that you can use qualitative methods with open ended responses. So for example you can find a way of coding a statement for, for example, optimistic attitudes, or achievement motivation, and then you can assign numbers to blocks of text and use that correlate with other kinds of behaviors. So you don't have to have multiple choice tests, fill in the blank kinds of tests in a survey to use quantitative methods. VOICEOVER : Next, the roundtable participants consider how particular topics might be addressed by each of the three methodologies. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : One of the research areas where I see a lot of researchers using qualitative studies is in the area of HIV AIDS or STD prevention. And they use this qualitative research method in their formative research study, particularly when they want to learn about various constructs related to the research question. They want to learn about sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and risky sexual practices from people. And they wanted to capture the personal experiences of the people and the data they collect, they use towards building quantitative research instruments. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Right, and that's the kind of research that I've encountered in that area. For example, there might be tests of sexual knowledge. And you would administer that test of sexual knowledge along with the measure of risky sexual behavior to see if knowledge of this correlates with action. And that's what, type, the type of thing that you would be examining use, using quantitative methods in that area. The, the key thing there would be if we want to assess the level of some type of behavior or the interrelationship of some type of variables, we want to test hypotheses related to that. That's when we'd need the quantitative approach for that area. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : And I think too that mixed methodology would fit really well into, depending on how they set up their research question. For example if they were doing an intervention on education. They had a brochure and they wanted to see if that changed sexual practices. They may gather quantitative data which will really tell them, did their sexual practices change, but what if it wasn't the brochure. What if there was something about the brochure
that didn't work? You're going to get that from the qualitative interview. So a mixed methodology would provide an understand of what it was like to be educated, and how they applied it, or how it didn't work, or what did work. But the quantitative data will give us the results, give us some numbers of how, what actually effect that it had. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : Now Debra you've done some work with different therapeutic interventions. Can you talk a little bit about your and, and how you see this applying? DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : Well, I have a lot of students that are interested in doing intervention of some sort. Perhaps something in complementary alternative therapies or a psychological intervention. And they want to examine what happens before and after. So I think that we can each of us examine from a mixed qualitative or a quantitative perspective how they might be able to look at an intervention before and after the efficacy. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : I think you are very right, Debra. We can use qualitative research method by doing a pre and a post interview, and try to gather their personal experiences before they went to intervention and after they went to the intervention. And that will in fact add to the richness of your study when you combine qualitative data with the quantitative data. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : And actually measure the outcomes. And then compare it and triangulate the data, and compare it, mixing the qualitative and quantitative to see if we're going in the same direction, is the answer the same from both the lived experience of the phenomenon, as well as the numbers that show outcomes. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : What about some examples in organizations? DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Well, the organizations, there's often a lot of training programs and other types of interventions that are implemented by well meaning managers without any real quantitative evidence on how they've actually affected the workers. And the reason why quantitative evidence is important is because in many cases, workers may feel like this particular intervention, maybe a safety program, maybe a, some type of motivational speaker, some of that nature, really made them feel good. It really made them feel like they were motivated to change their behavior, but in the long run they may not have changed their behavior at all. And so that's the kind of thing that is really important in an organization when resources are being allocated towards interventions of that nature. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : George, I think we can use qualitative research method in the studies that you just gave an example of. We can actually try to understand the perspectives of the employees. For example if we are
looking into why employees don't use the safety equipment that they are supposed to use, we can try to understand their personal experiences, we can try to look into their personal experiences, and try to see what ideas is preventing them from using that equipment. Is it a discipline issue? Or is it the attitude about not caring for their safety? Or - DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : Is it just uncomfortable to wear, for example. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : That, that's correct. (Yes.) And I guess qualitative data can help us in terms of understanding the personal experiences and you can again combine qualitative and quantitative data to get a wider range of responses. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : And I think if you're going to use a mixed methodology in that approach, you're going to understand why, what parts of the intervention worked, and maybe you'll find out that it wasn't the intervention that worked. Maybe they were answering the questions correctly because that was what they were - thought they were supposed to answer post intervention. So with a mixed methodology we're going to get a feel for qualitative and, what was it like to go through that training? What isn't going to work? What worked in that training? What didn't? And then we're going to actually be able tone measure, did the training work with some numbers. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Yeah and I think that you just mentioned something that was important with a quantitative approach that you have to be careful with, and that is, sometimes people think that they know what you're looking for, and they may respond in that way, and so you may think that you've got a quantitative effect, but really it's just the workers anticipating what you're looking for, and giving you what you want to hear. So that could be a really advantage - real advantage of using a qualitative method in that situation. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : And I think an important point that we're, that we're talking about here is that students really need to develop the research question first, and then let the research question drive the particular approach or methodology or approach that's going to be used. And I think, going back to something we talked about earlier, students will come to us and say, I want to do a quantitative study. And then try to back into the, the research question from that angle. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : Got a perfect example. Had a student who came to me that wanted to do a quantitative study. He had an experience, he was an Ethiopian refugee who had come to the United States. And when he first entered the United States he had a really negative experience in healthcare. His, his companion got quite ill, and he was afraid to enter the healthcare system. There were myths that were associated with it, don't go in there, they'll take your kidneys. And sell them. There was a lot of myths that he had, he was, he wasn't
educated in our system. And then after he went to school and became a nurse and then later worked on his master's degree, he want, he didn't want that to happen to other refugees. But had the understanding that it continued to happen. And he wanted to somehow measure whether it happened. But for him, what we wanted to know was, is it happening, is it a similar experience, what is the experience like for other refugees? So when we worked on his study we looked at it from a qualitative perspective, asking other refugees from Ethiopia, what was their experience entering the healthcare system in the United States? How frightening was it? What kind of barriers were in their way? What myths blocked their ability to do some, to, you know, to get some help when they needed it. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : I had a student who came to me who wanted to do a research with women with sickle cell disease. Particularly the women who came from Caribbean islands. And she wanted to start with a qualitative research method, because she wanted to understand their lived experiences of the women who were suffering from sickle cell. And also there are not too many research available with that particular population. So she wanted to start out with a qualitative research study and the qualitative data that she collected from the study. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : That's not uncommon that a qualitative study first kind of seeks theory, seeks ideas, and then leads them to a quantitative study later. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Well that could also help with the wording of surveys so that you'll be using words and concepts that are familiar with the people that you're working with. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : I think, let's talk about a, a, a slightly different situation where the student comes to you, the student has a very specific topic of interest, and doesn't exactly know what the methodology or approach should be. Give us some examples of some very, those specific kinds of questions that really clearly lend themselves to one approach or another. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : Yeah. I have a student who was interested in the effects of early childhood reading experiences on the likelihood of becoming arrested and incarcerated in prison. And so she had a group of convicted prisoners that she was going to be using for this study. And for, she wanted to use a qualitative method. She wanted to interview these individuals in an indepth manner to understand their experience that they had in first grade reading classes. The problem I had with that was that she may well have understood that group very well, and maybe that group would have told her that they had some very difficult time, learning to read in first grade. But that may have been well true for anyone of that group, of that socioeconomic group, lived in those areas. Might have all those kinds of people might have had that same kind of difficulty, even those who weren't in prison? So that particular question really called for a
quantitative comparison between the control group that wasn't incarcerated, and the experimental group that was in the prison sys-, system. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : You've each provided some really good examples for students about different approaches for their research. Do you have any final comments that you'd like to make to the students, or suggestions about what they can do to be good research designers. DR. DEBRA ROSE WILSON : I think that you need to choose something you're really interested in. You're going to be with this for a while. You're going to be expert in this area. So make sure it's something that you love. That draws you. Because you don't know what doors are going to open because of this research that you've done. DR. SREEROOPA SARKAR : I'd like to emphasize the same thing too. You should select a topic that you are interested in, because you have to work hard and for a long time at the particular research area. You may not want to pick qualitative research because you think it's easier to carry out. So my suggestion would be to pick a research topic that you are interested in, and then formulate your research question and select the appropriate research method that's applicable to your study. That's going to answer your research questions. DR. GEORGE SMEATON : The suggestion I have is that students should never feel that they need to invent a measure, invent methods, out of the clear blue from - on their own. It's a lot of work to try to create something out of thin air. And in fact it's not good science. The best science is when methods used in earlier studies are changed slightly to test new variables. Or to test a measure in a new population that has been normed with another population. So it's very important to try to use the measures and the methods as much as possible, that you've read about in earlier studies of the topic that you're investigating. DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : I think these are all great suggestions for the students who are doing research, and also that there's a number of faculty members that they'll be working with on their research who will provide the different expertises that they need. And they don't have to go in and do this research design on their own. That they're going to have support to help them to make sure that they pick they right research design for their, for their particular research question. Thank you everybody for providing these suggestions for the students. ALL : Thank you. (Thank you for having us.) DR. GARY BURKHOLDER : You're welcome. VOICEOVER : Now you will meet the two students mentioned at the beginning of this video program. They will describe their research studies and designs. First,
you will hear from Tina Bloom. Tina is representative of students at the initial phases of the research design process, just beginning to articulate a research question, and considering different research approaches. Then you will hear from Amy Gearhard. Amy represents students at the final phases of the research continuum, where the research question is clear, and the research methodology is defined. TINA BLOOM : I have been a professional dog trainer for 20 years, and I've worked with a lot of police dogs and service dogs. And I've always been fascinated by the interaction between dogs and people and recently I've become interested in pet assisted therapy and I've done some of that. And there is a lot of research in pet therapy showing that pets have a incredible impact on people, but there's really no research showing how or why or explaining this. So I found a body of information called "mood contagion" where people catch the emotion from the people around them. So if I'm with someone who's nervous, I'll become nervous. If I'm with someone who's calm, I become calm. And it's a perceptual process, it's unconscious, and I'm wondering if possibly this is how dogs make people feel better. Is they catch the emotion from their dog. TINA BLOOM : My hypothesis is that we actually catch through an unconscious process the emotion that our pet is feeling, specifically how our dog is feeling. So we have a terrible day at work, we come home, we feel stressed out, we walk in and we see that happy dancing little body, and we just kind of absorb that emotion from them. And I'm, I'm looking at what mechanism might cause that. The pet assisted therapy pre-, literature, has basically no explanation of why dogs affect people, and what I'd like to do is that the methodology from mood contagion and use that looking at the human-canine interaction and emotional process. And I can do quantitative and qualitative studies. As far as quantitative I can look at physiological aspects of the relaxation response. I can look at heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, and as far as qualitative I can ask for ratings of mood. How did your mood change? From happy to angry? So I can do quantitative and qualitative which would be a mixed design. TINA BLOOM : Having been a person from a rural area and coming into a more suburban lifestyle after college, I see that people are just not connected to nature and animals like they have been historically. And I'm think my study will help institutions and policy makers see how important the link is between animals and humans, and how emotionally connected they are. AMY GEARHARD : My research has been drawn from a very strong professional and academic interest. I had worked in the field of autism spectrum disorders for about 12 years in private practice now. About three years ago went ahead and started a non profit organization and trying to pull from different sources in the field, trying to pull from different treatment in the field and realized there's nothing out there that really suits the needs of the children, of every single family that comes to me. And I have been doing a lot of interest, a lot of research
on my own, looking for what's out there, what's good, what's not so good and why isn't it so good. And so from there, pulled together and integrated treatment approach, and Walden has provided that background through the courses to build that approach. And now I'm to the point in, in research design and in my dissertation that it's time to put some numbers to it, and time to run the study and see where we're at and see what we've come with. AMY GEARHARD : I am looking to find out whether or not or to what degree an integrated treatment approach works effectively for children on the autism spectrum. And I am starting now, very narrow, I'm looking at individuals ages two to five years old with an autism diagnosis. The methodology that I will be using is quantitative. I will be doing a repeated measures ANOVA approach. That will allow me to get in and get the, the type of detail that I need. The field of autism is very particular in the research that they're looking for and the research that is acceptable. It's a very competitive field and I need those numbers. The implications for social change from this is what I am the most excited about. It's what I'm the most passionate about. The field is waiting for a treatment approach to come out and say hey this is another way to do this, this is a new way to do this, and here's approach that can help any child with autism instead of my study works for you know, five people with autism. So the possibilities with this are really endless and I intend to set it up in such a way that as I get it done it's, it's, it's no, opening a door to, you know, to another study. It's opening a door to another study that somebody else can do, that we can do at another site. AMY GEARHARD : My hopes for this study is that it will lay the groundwork for the field for millions of children in years to come. I truly believe through my experience in the field and as I'm getting into the research aspect that we can do this in such a way that every family will have the ability to access such a, a model of treatment.