Lesson 8: Qualitative methods

Each question has only one best answer. Circle clearly the letter of the best answer. If you make a mistake, cross out the circle, and write the letter in capitals next to the question. If a question has both a capital letter and is circled, the letter will be considered to be the answer.

1. Which statement about participant observation below is true?

a. People who use participant observation for more than six months typically go native.

b. Researchers only do participant observation in cultures outside of their own.

c. Participant observation is used by both positivists and interpretivists.

d. Participant observation takes at least a year’s worth of research.

e. You must speak a foreign language to do participant observation.

2. Which of the suggestions below is good advice to begin your fieldwork?

a. Spend time getting to know the physical and social layout of your field site.

b. Spend time and resources at the beginning of your project to get into difficult field sites, as they inevitably produce the most interesting data.

c. In order not to take sides in a community, it is best to enter without using previously established contacts.

d. The less people know about who you are and what you are doing, the better. This way, they are less likely to change their behavior when you are around.

e. 1 and 2 are correct.

3. What is the objective of objectivity?

a. To act like robots without opinions or memories.

b. To reduce our biases.

c. To achieve value neutrality.

d. To eliminate our interpretations of events.

e. To find the truth.

4. Which advice about field notes should not be followed?

a. Set aside a block of time every day to write-up your field notes.

b. If you have a lot of notes after a long day, get some rest and write them up in the morning.

c. Create lots of small notes rather than one long note.

d. Don’t rely exclusively on tape recordings. Write it down, as well.

e. Write down not only your observations but your feelings and reactions as well.

5. Josh studies how systems analysts make decisions about what to recommend to their clients. When Josh is in the field (at software design firms), he is always pulling out a little note pad and scribbling down observations, quotes, and reminders to himself.

a. He is taking his jottings or scratch notes.

b. He is writing up his field notes.

c. He is maintaining his daily log.

d. He is writing up his diary.

e. None of the above.

6. Where do most descriptive notes in participant observation come from?

a. Listening.

b. Reading

c. Watching.

d. a and c

e. a, b, and c

7. When is a participant observation most powerful?

a. As a stand-alone method.

b. When quantitative methods will not work.

c. When you don’t know what is going on.

d. When combined with other qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques.

e. It is not a powerful technique.

8. T F Collecting both qualitative and quantitative data is a better research approach than just collecting one or the other.

a. True

b. False.

9. T F Understanding how an organization works is best achieved through pure observation.

a. True

b. False

10. T F You should never pay informants when conducting participant observation.

a. True.

b. False.

11. What are the two general strategies for direct observation?

a. Reactive and non-reactive

b. Direct and indirect

c. Continuous and sporadic

d. Time allocation and indirect observation.

e. Continuous monitoring and unobstrusive studies.

12. John is interested in the frequency of website use. He is considering collecting his data by asking users to describe their own web interactions. Why is this not a good idea?

a. Most users talk to other users, which is a bias.

b. There are gender differences in web use and John is male.

c. Some people don’t use paper anymore

d. John would have to interrupt users to interview them, which could alter their web use.

e. Personal interviews do not tell you what people actually do.

13. What is an ethogram?

a. A kind of indirect observation.

b. A kind of participant observation.

c. A close-ended version of an ethnography.

d. An ordered list of behaviors that a person performs during an event or over a fixed time period.

e. A respondent’s description of his or her behavior.

14. Why do you need to develop a coding scheme to analyze continuous monitoring data?

a. Coding schemes allow researchers to segment continuous streams of behaviors into specific categories of behavior that can be more readily analyzed.

b. Coding schemes are like free lists. They represent the complete set of behaviors observed during the monitoring process.

c. Coding schemes are just convenient ways for researchers to talk about their data.

d. Researchers use coding schemes only when they want to make comparisons across research projects.

e. Coding schemes are not necessary for analyzing continuous monitoring data.

15. What kind of recording medium provides the most information during continuous monitoring?

a. Tape-recorded observations by researcher.

b. Tape-recorded conversations of subjects.

c. Written notes by researcher.

d. Checklists filled out by researcher.

e. Videotaped observations of subjects.

16. Joe wants to know how much time people in his dorm spend working on computers. He does 40 random spot observations on a random sample of 30 of his dorm mates. To make it manageable, he decides to do the spot observations between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. Why is this not a good idea?

a. He has no idea what people are doing when they are not in the dorm.

b. Computer use probably occurs quite frequently between 10p.m. and 7 a.m. This time period is not covered in Joe’s sample strategy.

c. He does not control for what programs people were using.

d. He does not know whether on some days dorm mates use computers more than on others.

e. He needs to do spot observations on everyone, not just a sample.

17. Jan is using spot observation to find out how office workers spend their time. On her first day, she notices that people are often multitasking. For example, they might be talking on the phone and surfing the Web at the same time. What should she do?

a. Code the first behavior she notices.

b. Decide what the primary behavior is and write it down.

c. Record all behaviors she observes in order based on her best judgment at the time.

d. Try to get inside the worker’s head.

e. Pick one of the observed behaviors at random and write it down.

18. What kind of things do investigators studying proxemics observe?

a. People’s perceptions of space.

b. The spacial orientations of actors.

c. Children’s interactions.

d. Deviant behaviors.

e. Telephone conversations.

19. When should you use deception in research?

a. Some researchers advocate never using deception?

b. You can use deception when you think the data are important enough to warrant the risks to your informants.

c. The decision to use deception is up to you, provided that the risks of detection are your own and that there are not risks to those you are observing or to others.

d. There are no problems with deception. You can use it whenever you want.

e. 1 and 3 are correct.

20. T F Data collected from continuous monitoring usually produce the same results as data gathered from 24-hour recall.

a. True

b. False.

21. T F if you need to know how often people engage in a particular behavior, then you should collect quantitative data.

a. True

b. False.