PSYC 255 Week 6 DB Forum 4 Example

Discussion Board Forum 4: Thread and Two Replies

PSYC 255 Introduction to Research, Discussion Board Forum 4 (thread and two replies)

Thread by [Student Name]

The prompt, the example study and the classmates' posts are composites standing in for the course's own forum; the textbooks, Scripture and published reporting standards are real; the requirements follow Liberty's public course guide for PSYC 255.

Thread

Suppose a university counseling center notices that first-generation college students use its services less than other students and wants to know why. A survey could measure how many first-generation students know the center exists, how they rate its convenience and whether they have ever attended. Those numbers would be useful, but they might not explain the decision itself. A student might know about the center, find it convenient and still not go. The survey would tell the center that something is wrong without telling it what.

A qualitative study would ask a different kind of question: how do first-generation students think about seeking counseling? Crawford (2019) describes qualitative research as seeking to understand experiences and meanings in depth, typically through interviews, observation or documents, with smaller samples chosen purposefully rather than randomly. A researcher might interview fifteen students, ask open questions about their families' views of counseling and their own expectations, and analyze transcripts for recurring themes. The findings might reveal themes no survey had asked about, such as a sense that counseling is for people whose families can afford it, or a fear of being seen as ungrateful. Interviews would continue until new conversations stopped producing new themes, the point researchers call saturation.

Qualitative work is not a lesser form of research; it simply has different standards of rigor. The JARS-Qual report by Levitt et al. (2018) gives authors a checklist of what to disclose: the tradition the study works in, the way participants were found, how the researchers kept their own expectations in view and what was done to test the analysis.

Proverbs 20:5 pictures a person's real intentions lying deep like water in a well, waiting for someone wise enough to bring them up (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). A good interview is a disciplined way of lowering the bucket.

Classmates: what question in your area of interest would be better answered with interviews than with a survey?

Reply to Aaliyah

Aaliyah, you suggested combining a survey with interviews to get both breadth and depth, and I agree that a mixed methods design could be ideal here. The key is deciding how the two parts relate. In an explanatory design, the survey comes first and interviews follow to explain surprising results, such as why students who rated the center highly still did not use it. In an exploratory design, interviews come first and their themes shape the survey items. Levitt et al. (2018) ask mixed methods researchers to state how the qualitative and quantitative parts are integrated, not just that both were used. Either design could answer the center's question, but the explanatory order would let the counseling staff act on survey results quickly. Which order do you think would work better for the counseling center question?

Reply to Ethan

Ethan, you asked how qualitative researchers can be confident in their findings without statistical tests, since interviews seem so subjective. It is a fair concern, and qualitative researchers take it seriously. Instead of statistical significance, they rely on strategies for trustworthiness. They can use more than one coder and compare interpretations, return findings to participants to check whether the themes ring true, triangulate interviews with documents or observations and keep an audit trail of analytic decisions. Crawford (2019) notes that qualitative and quantitative research answer different kinds of questions, so their checks on quality look different too. Researchers also report their own background and assumptions, so readers can judge how those might have shaped the analysis. Would participant checking change your view of how subjective the findings are?

References

Crawford, R. (2019). Introduction to research: Less fright, more insight. Kendall Hunt.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 26-46. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000151