research paper is the abstract

09 Oct research paper is the abstract

 Instruction: 

As you may have noticed during the course of your research one key component of a research paper is the abstract. Often the abstract is something that scholars put together before they start work on their research to help them focus their ideas. Then as the paper develops they come to refine the abstract to ensure that it reflects what was actually done within the paper. A good abstract sets the stage for the research topic, explains the method in use, notes the findings, and mentions important implications of the study. They are typically 150-200 words in length and allow researchers to quickly see what a paper is about prior to reading the work in its entirety.

Please post an abstract that accurately reflects your study up to this point. If you need some examples of abstracts to help you get started take a look at some of the abstracts found within the peer-reviewed journals you referenced within your own proposal.

Questions to Answer

1. In thinking about your research, how are you planning to assess your data?

2. How might you code your data?

3. Finally, what additional insight did this week’s material help provide that we haven’t covered yet?

Your posts this week should demonstrate critical reflection upon the assigned readings.

Instructions: Must be at least 300 words. 

Reading: Article

Reliability, Generalisation and Reflexivity: Identifying Validity and Trustworthiness

In: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology

By: Kerry E. Howell

Pub. Date: 2015

Access Date: June 27, 2019

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications Ltd

City: London

Print ISBN: 9781446202999

Online ISBN: 9781473957633

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473957633

Print pages: 182-192

© 2013 SAGE Publications Ltd All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

Reliability, Generalisation and Reflexivity: Identifying Validity and Trustworthiness

This chapter examines, reliability, generalisation and reflexivity as well as validity and trustworthiness. Chapter 12 also outlines a number of mechanisms relating to phenomenological or qualitative methodological approaches, which include worthiness, credibility, transferability and fairness. Reliability involves replication and asks how far another researcher could repeat the research undertaken at a given time. Replication is important for positivist and post-positivist approaches to research. A positivist and post-positivist study will usually use numerical data obtained through surveys from a particular sample population. Obviously, there are difficulties regarding replication but in such a study it is easier to repeat the experiment than it is to undertake observations on two or more occasions and come to the same understandings or interpretations reached during the previous studies. Indeed, reliability is a less important criterion for phenomenologists who follow criterion and procedures relating to trustworthiness and authenticity.

It is difficult to ensure high levels of both reliability and validity because if one is to accurately identify what is actually occurring in specific situations, it is necessary to go beyond the survey and involve oneself in the context of the research. Furthermore, it is more straightforward to generalise from a sample population to the population as a whole than it is to generalise from situation x to all situations. Consequently, it may be posited that generalisation is easier or more straightforward within a positivist or post-positivist research project. Within a positivist research project it is normally assumed that generalisation from sample to population should involve an intrinsic part of the research project. However, for a couple of reasons this does not always follow; on occasion one may be interested in specific cases alone because this has social significance in itself and/or it is important to understand that some research does not concentrate on generalisation but is more interested in theoretical inference. Reflexivity involves examining different conceptualisations of self when collecting and analysing data. This chapter assesses each of these areas in more detail then the next chapter relates these to methods of data collection in terms of surveys, interviews, focus groups and observations.

Reliability

For positivism, reliability is concerned with the extent that an experiment can be repeated or how far a given measurement will provide the same results on different occasions. Experimentation should reflect stability and ensure that any investigation of an individual or group at a given point in time can be repeated in exactly the same manner at another point in time. However, this is difficult to ascertain because one is never certain whether intervening factors during the two periods of time have changed the phenomenon and affected reliability. Given this problem it is useful to employ ‘equivalence validity’ and compare situations on separate occasions so as to determine whether different measurements of the same phenomenon correlate with each other. Phenomenological positions regarding reliability are concerned with whether observations made in an earlier research project can be observed in different or later projects; that is, projects in the future. Reliability

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Page 2 of 11 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology

may be sought through categorisation and a synthesis of a positivistic and phenomenological position. Grounded theory attempts this through coding procedures, but this approach does have its shortfalls. For instance, even though an objectivist position is pursued through procedures and coding these can become extremely complex. Also the categories and procedures may alienate the reader from the research. Diagrams and conceptual maps can again complicate matters and obscure experience. Grounded theory may also make analysis opaque. Conversely, coding and categorising help to preserve images of experience as well as sharpen and direct questions.

Definition Box: Reliability

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Stability: determines whether the measure is stable over time which provides confidence that the measure for a sample is consistent.

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Internal reliability: consistency of indicators that involves the scale or index.

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Inter-observer consistency: insurance that subjective judgements or the recordings and categorisations of data are consistent.

Reliability is extremely difficult for phenomenological studies as the ability to repeat research projects’ programmes is difficult to realise when individual situations in relation to multiple interpretation underpin the research process. Reliability is more easily realised when a structured, positivistic approach to the research programme is prioritised. In such a context, theory involves prediction so necessitates reliability through specified criteria and requires some form of hypothesis testing. Indeed, from a positivist perspective, validation requires a similar grounding to this as does the generalisation that follows in terms of laws that are immutable or remain until falsified. However, if we re-assess these positions from a phenomenological perspective different criteria emerge. For example:

credibility, validity and reliability in action research are measured by the willingness of local stakeholders to act on the results of the action research, thereby risking their welfare on the ‘validity’ of their ideas and the degree to which these outcomes meet their expectations. (Greenwood and Levin, 2000: 96)

The positivist position provides an image of a scientist in a lab with the work outlined in organised reports regarding concepts, evidence and procedures. Conversely, the phenomenological position identifies the image of the writer or storyteller balancing theoretical interpretation with aesthetics. With a phenomenological, critical theory or/and postmodern approach the reader is provided with an interpretation of the stories uncovered during the research.

Generalisation

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As noted above, it is more straightforward to generalise using a positivist approach than it is when undertaking a phenomenological-based research project. The main point of a positivist investigation involves identifying relationships between samples and the general population, this is not the case for phenomenological, constructivist or participatory studies.

A generalisation of qualitative … studies is often called into question or regarded as infeasible, something which has weaknesses compared to quantitative set-ups … Only a statistical study that can establish the probability of the findings have not emerged by chance is … justified to make generalisations. (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 1999: 21)

However, this means that we must accept that a study of ‘surface regularities’ will provide identical patterns time after time. If it is accepted that non-observable phenomenon impact on the forms patterns take, such a position becomes untenable. Fundamentally, for a positivist research project generalisation involves the probability that patterns observed in a sample population can be extrapolated to a wider population from which the sample population is taken. Whereas a phenomenological project will be more concerned with generalisation from one setting to another; the extent that theoretical frameworks developed in one setting can be applied to other situations.

Difficulties for the social sciences have involved criteria for natural sciences being imposed upon it; generalisation is one such criteria. Positivism and post-positivism are based on empiricism, which as discussed in Chapter 3, was perceived as the correct and only way of undertaking scientific studies; a position that not only distorted social science but painted a false picture of how the natural sciences themselves actually worked. Given the necessities determined by natural science and quantitative perspectives, generalisation of phenomenological studies is often thought unrealistic. If simplified surface regularities are the benchmark then it is probable that such can be generalised from sample population to total population. It is probable that the findings are reliable and do not come about by some fluke or chance. However, this assumption depends on one’s interpretation of theory in relation to epistemological and ontological positions as well as what is considered to incorporate generalisations. There is a debate regarding the level natural science preconditions should be imposed on the social sciences, especially when underpinned by different paradigms of inquiry in terms of critical theory, constructivism and participatory.

Strauss and Corbin (1998) argued that generalisation from sample to population encompassed only one type of generalisation and a study may generalise from situation to situation. However, how may one generalise from stories? An answer is mainly through empathy and understandings that provide the basis for an acknowledgement of socialisation and the fact that we are human beings investigating human beings. Generalisation may be achieved through assessing how individuals feel in different situations and how they may act in certain circumstances. Consequently, given the dislocated nature of reliability and validity (see below) within the phenomenological approach a number of interpretations and subsequent generalisations may be forwarded in relation to a specific study. There must be connections between the researcher and researched as well as the intended, and in some contexts, unintended audience.

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Reflexivity

The core of reflection incorporates reflexivity and involves how we are constructed in a social construct while at the same time acting as constructing agents. Without a constructed constructing self within a construction all is meaningless; through interpretation meaning is constructed. Construction requires something to be constructed, the researcher as a constructing subject and an object or a community that constructs the researcher. Reflexivity involves acknowledging the constructive elements without giving precedence to any part of the process; construction requires a continuum of interaction, a form of symbolic interaction or Hegelian recognition. Consequently, the relationship between selves and others provides the foundations for social constructivism. However, a concentration on reflexivity can conjure criticisms regarding ‘narcissistic self-centredness’, ‘self-absorption’ and ‘self-reflective isolationism’. One way of dealing with these criticisms involves researchers recognising themselves as elements of the wider social and political context and that we ourselves are caught up with and intrinsically linked to these contexts; others consider that the link between context and self should be negated. ‘The very idea of reflexivity … is the … ability to break away from a frame of reference and to look at what it is not capable of saying’ (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009: 270).