Sensitizing Concepts

1
Sensitizing Concepts

• Concepts, ideas, notions, or questions that guide
  observations and data collection in inductive
  qualitative research and some exploratory
  quantitative research.
• Are the starting point.  They inform the
  researcher where to look, for what to look, and
  may give him/her some idea of what they can
  expect to see.  In the latter sense, they serve
  as pseudo-hypotheses.
• Sensitizing concepts and questions often evolve
  over the course of a research project.

2
Hypotheses

• Hypotheses are statements about the empirical
  world that are logically derived from theory.
• They express theory in ways that can be
  empirically observed and verified. 
• They typically express relationships between two
  or more variables.
• Hypotheses are statements, not questions.
• Hypotheses need to be clear, explicit, and
  concise.

3
Developing Hypotheses

• 1.  Indicate the independent, dependent, and
  intervening variables.
• a.  The characteristic, attitude, pattern or
  behavior you are trying to explain is your
  dependent variable.
• b.  The characteristics, attitudes, patterns or
  behaviors that precede and influence, affect, or
  cause change in your dependent variable are your
  independent variables.
• c.  If the effects of the independent variables
  pass through or change depending on other
  variables, these other variables are called
  intervening variables.
• 2.  Indicate the type of causal relationships.
• a.    Direct.
• b.    Indirect.
• c.    Interaction.
• 3.  Indicate the type of association between the
  variables.
• a.  Positive associations.
• b.    Negative associations.
• c.    Curvilinear associations.
• d.    Non-directional associations.
• e.    No association (spuriousness).

4
Reliability - Validity
5
Types of Reliability

• Inter-Rater or Inter-Observer ReliabilityUsed to
  assess the degree to which different
  raters/observers give consistent estimates of the
  same phenomenon.
• Test-Retest ReliabilityUsed to assess the
  consistency of a measure from one time to
  another.
• Parallel-Forms ReliabilityUsed to assess the
  consistency of the results of two tests
  constructed in the same way from the same content
  domain.
• Internal Consistency ReliabilityUsed to assess
  the consistency of results across items within a
  test.

6
Validity

• Inferences about cause-effect relationships based
  on a specific scientific study are said to
  possess external validity if they may be
  generalized from the unique and idiosyncratic
  settings, procedures and participants to other
  populations and conditions
• Inferences are said to possess internal validity
  if a causal relation between two variables is
  properly demonstrated

7
Validity

• Content validity refers to the extent to which a
  measure represents all facets of a given concept.
• Face validity means it looks like it is going to
  measure what it is supposed to measure.
• Construct validity refers to whether a scale
  measures the unobservable social construct.
• Convergent validity shows that the assessment is
  related to what it should theoretically be
  related to
• Discriminant validity operationalization is
  different from other operationalizations