PO939 Qualitative Methods: Data Collection and Analysis

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PO939 Qualitative Methods Data Collection and
Analysis Week 2 The role of the researcher
objectivity and values, validity and reliability
in qualitative research
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Following on from last weeks discussions
Why think about research methods? The nature of
qualitative research? When to use qualitative
methods?
Research question
Sites and subjects of research
Collection of data
Interpretation of data
Theory
Narrow picture versus big picture
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• This weeks agenda
• the role of the researcher
• why do we do research?
• for whom do we research?
• can (qualitative) research be value free or
  objective?
• scientific?
• how might we begin to think about whether our
  research is reliable or valid?
• a particular problem for qualitative research?

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• The role of the researcher some important
  questions
• Why do we do research?
• Who do we do research for?
• (How do we do research?)
• How is academic research in in political
  science/International Relations different from
  other types of inquiry (such as journalism)?
• What kind of impact do we want our research to
  have? When might we be able to say that our
  research is useful?

Is it possible to arrive to general answers to
each of these questions for all politics and IR
research? What might cause variation?
Think about these questions in terms of your own
research first make a few notes on your own
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remember the very differing time scales on
which academics (including scholars in Politics
and IS) are working, compared to policy-makers.
They often need input in 48 hours flat. We
typically need 48 months to research a
complicated issue, and inevitably so if academic
research is going to have the attributes that
policymakers value in it (rigorous,
peer-reviewed, standing the test of critical
comment once published, and so on). http//www.es
rcsocietytoday.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/P_IBR-F
inal_Report_tcm6-23426.pdf
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Objectivity and value freedom

• we can/should apply logic of scientific
  inference to qualitative as well as quantitative
  methods
• descriptive or causal inference using the
  data to do more than simply describe
• research as a public act methods explicit
  allows replication by others
• requires uncertainty estimates
• the content of science is methods and rules, not
  the subject under investigation

Gary King, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba
Designing Social Enquiry Scientific Inference in
Qualitative Research, Princeton University Press,
1994

• Can this approach to research be criticised?
  How?
• Is it ever appropriate to bring values into our
  research? Or should we always set our political
  beliefs/normative commitments to one side?

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it is fundamental that social science and
natural science come together in a common effort
to unite their forces in the greatest task that
humanity has yet faced the intelligent
understanding and control of human behavior
(Charles Merriam, Presidential Address to the
American Political Science Association, 1925
Progress in Political Science, American
Political Science Review 20 (1926), p.12
emphasis added)
science as the progressive, objective and
predictive study of objective reality
It is to the natural sciences that we may most
profitably turn for suggestions as to the
reconstruction of our postulates and methods
(William Bennett Munro, Presidential Address to
the APSA, 1927 Physics and Politics An Old
Analogy Revisited, American Political Science
Review 21 (1928), p. 10 emphasis added)
science as an approach, as a set of methods and
techniques
But what exactly is the scientific method?
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Political science and uncertainty
See Mark Blyth Great Punctuations, Randomness,
and the Evolution of Comparative Political
Science, American Political Science Review
100(4), 2006, pp. 493-498 core reading for week
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Type 1 world Sampling from the past is a
consistently reliable guide to the future
Type 2 world Sampling from past events helps, but
wont reveal the major event yet to come that
makes us wrong
Type 3 world The more we rely upon sampling from
the past, the more wrong we are likely to be
But what if we actually live in a type 3 world?
Much hard political science operates as if we
live in a type 1 world
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Validity and reliability
Discussion next week about sources

• Research is about finding facts and getting to
  the truth that lies behind the facts.
• What difficulties/issues might lie behind such a
  statement?
• What about situations where that which interests
  the researcher (the facts) is silent or
  doesnt happen? Can that be researched?