Terms A-E
Aggregative: An adjective for aggregate, which means to sum existing parts into a whole.
Analysis: The process of breaking apart a unit into its component parts.
Anti-positivism: Anti-positivism is the perspective that the social realm should not be subject to the same methods of investigation as the natural world; and that academics should reject empiricism/positivism in favor of more interpretive, constructivist and critical perspectives.
Armchair fieldwork: In this type of fieldwork, the researcher does not travel to and stay at the research site but, rather, works with materials collected by others. In the past, examples of material collected by others included those acquired by traders, explorers and colonial officials. Today, materials include those such as documents and artifacts (see Chapter 26).
Audit or paper trail: The process of keeping meticulous records of research processes so that they may be documented and replicated in the future.
Autoethnography: An approach that combines life history, ethnography and self-narrative in either an ethnographic study of oneself in the social and cultural context or an autobiographical account that includes ethnographic data. See also ethnography.
Cartesian: Those things that are of or related to René Descartes, his mathematical methods, or his philosophy, especially in regard to an emphasis on logical analysis and mechanistic interpretation of physical nature.
Case: The bounded case.
Case narrative: The written description of the case.
Case study: In-depth, intensive analysis of the single (or multiple) case within its naturalistic context, valuing its particularity, complexity and relationships with the context. This approach uses multiple methods and perspectives to look at the case holistically.
Case study method: The approach to data collection and analysis.
Choice: An act of making a selection among options.
Choosing: A process of examining available options and making a decision about the best among them, given a particular set of circumstances.
Coding: A system of symbols used to represent themes and concepts.
Coding paradigm: A coding paradigm is a generic structure used to guide coding (see Chapter 27).
Collaboration: Sharing the work between individuals who then come together to solve or manage a problem.
Conceptual or theoretical framework: An existing concept or proven theory that serves to guide study design as well as interpretations.
Confirmability: The idea that the researcher has remained neutral in data analysis and interpretation. It is based upon the notion that the researcher needs to demonstrate that results could be and at times even should be confirmed or corroborated by others.
Context: When viewing a question or topic, this term means to survey the existing situation or situations in which it is occurring to better understand it as a whole.
Cooperation: Mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together.
Credibility: The term credibility is centered on the idea that results are credible and therefore to be believed. It is the idea that the reader can have confidence in the data and their interpretation. The focus is on the trust that can be placed in the accuracy of data and the process by which it was acquired, the sense that it is believable and confidence can be placed in it.
Deconstructionism: A form of criticism (usually of literature or art) that seeks to expose hidden contradictions in a work by delving below its surface meaning; it is often associated with post-structuralism.
Dependability: The notion that the research can be trusted over time. Dependability is derived from the more positivist perspective of reliability and replicability.
Delimit: To determine the limits or boundaries of.
Disciplinarity: All that is seen as central to a given discipline; its pedagogy, values, beliefs, rhetorics and expected norms that are embodied by the academics who guard it.
Disjunction: A sense of fragmentation of part of, or all of the self, characterized by frustration and confusion, and a loss of sense of self, which often results in anger and the need for right answers.
Documents: Written, printed, visual or electronic matter that provides information or evidence or that serves as an official record.
Duo-ethnography: Duo-ethnography uses conversation with another to explore how cultural influences have shaped a person’s beliefs and decisions.
Empiricism: Empiricism is a philosophy about the nature of knowledge that suggests that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge. This term is closely related to positivism, and at times the terms are used interchangeably.
Ethnography: A research approach aimed at understanding an insider perspective on a particular community, practice or setting by focusing on the meaning of social action from the point of view of the participants. Methods of progressively focused observation and interview are used by the researcher who is immersed in the situation, generating complex, detailed data to enable deep descriptions and theorization of the cultural context.
Evaluation: The process of studying an organization or activity to understand, improve or change it.
Evidence-based medicine: An approach to medical practice in which research is used to inform clinical practice. The intent is to use best evidence for making decisions about patient care.
Evidence-based practice: Evidence-based practice began its development as evidence-based medicine and, as such, began from a very quantitative and ‘hard science’ perspective. It is currently used to refer to practices in healthcare that use a range of studies, both qualitative and quantitative to inform the way practices are carried out thus it is an approach to treatment rather than a specific treatment.
Exclusion criteria: The criteria used to decide which studies will be excluded from the review.
Explanatory literature review: Reviews that explore a particular topic with a view of explaining the issue under study. These do involve analysis, the form generally is not specified, although at times there is a general mention of ‘weight of evidence’ criteria, in the sense that if a preponderance of evidence demonstrates a finding, it is considered credible.
External validity: External validity is an evaluation of the extent to which results may be assumed true for other cases.
Terms F-J
Factor analysis: The use of statistical methods to reduce correlational data to a smaller number of dimensions is regarded as the basic variables accounting for the interrelations observed in the data.
Focus group: A group interview method in which participants are invited to explore a given topic in a group discussion. Participants respond to each other, to activities or stimuli rather than just to the researcher’s questions. The researcher aims to facilitate discussion as much as direct it.
Free imaginative variation: This is when researchers believe they have a sense of the essential characteristic of a phenomenon and then ask themselves what they can change without losing the phenomenon. The researcher changes this aspect of it and evaluates what alteration then takes place.
Grey literature: ‘Grey’ literature comprises unpublished studies, such as conference presentations and dissertations.
Grounded meta-analysis: Technique for comparing organizational interventions that have been derived from rational-based strategies such as management-by-objectives, planned change.
Grounded theory: A type of qualitative research in which theory is generated from data.
Honesties: The idea that there needs to be a sense that what counts as trustworthiness and truth is a negotiated position in research.
Ideographic: Methods that highlight the unique elements of the individual phenomenon – the historically particular.
Inclusion criteria: The criteria used to decide which studies will be included in the review.
Incident: In grounded theory, an incident is a selection of the data, whether a word, line or paragraph, that the researcher has labeled.
Informed consent: Informed consent is the legal embodiment of the idea that a researcher should provide information to participants about the potential risks and benefits of participating in a study and should make clear their rights as participants so that they can make informed decisions about whether to take part.
Intended audience: The intended audience is the group of readers that the researcher is specifically targeting.
Internal validity: Internal validity refers to the true causes of the results you uncovered; in short, how do findings match reality?
Iterative: Repeating again and again.
Terms K-O
Knowledge: The body of ‘truths,’ information or awareness that humans have acquired or constructed.
Liminal: A threshold or a sense of being on a threshold in an in-between space.
Liminal space: A liminal space is an in-between space or a space at the margins, often used to describe rites and ritual spaces (marriage, coming of age) where people are in transitions between states.
Liminality: A state of being in-between two positions, so that there is a sense of being a ‘transitional being’ (Turner, 1967) for which confusion and ambiguity become the norm.
Literature review: A critical overview of literature in order to identify and make clear the current state of knowledge about a given topic.
Literature summary: The use of research as information, to describe knowledge about a given topic.
Member checking: A process for ensuring plausibility in which participants (in the case of synthesis subjects or authors) are contacted to ask whether data interpretations or findings are accurate.
Meta-analysis: A process through which statistical methods are used to analyze results from several studies on a given topic, often to determine effect size.
Meta-ethnography: An approach to synthesizing and interpreting findings from multiple qualitative studies. Noblitt and Hare (1988), from the field of education, developed this interpretive approach which has served as the basis for most qualitative approaches to synthesizing qualitative research.
Metaphysics: A branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being. Metaphysics attempts to answer two questions: ‘What is there?’ and ‘What is it like?
Meta-synthesis: An approach to synthesis of qualitative studies (or qualitative and quantitative studies) that tends to be aggregative (as opposed to interpretive) in approach. However, the term is sometimes used interchangeably with meta-ethnography.
Minimal risk: Minimal risk means that the risk associated with the study is similar to that typically encountered in daily life or during the performance of routine physical or psychological examinations or tests.
Naturalistic inquiry: It is research that takes place in the natural setting, sees the researcher as the primary data-collecting instrument and is often characterized by the use of an emergent design.
Nomothetic: Methods that call for the formulation of general or universal laws.
Terms P-T
Paradigm: A paradigm is a belief system or worldview that guides the researcher and the research process (Guba & Lincoln, 1994).
Participation: Taking part, sharing something, often in a group who are involved in shaping and implementing research.
Participant observation: Studying people by participating in social interactions with them to observe and understand them.
Philosophical mashups: We define philosophical mashups as the integration of two different philosophies, often within a single study. We encourage novice researchers to be aware of philosophical mashups in principle so that they can recognize these mashups when they occur. However, we believe it is best initially for new researchers to identify, stay within and fully comprehend one philosophical tradition, before trying a mashup themselves.
Philosophy: The term philosophy, broadly conceived, means the study of both knowledge and the nature of reality and existence. Qualitative researchers tend to choose from interpretive, constructivist and critical philosophical stances.
Plausibility: A technique for ensuring rigor is qualitative research synthesis that involves locating the truths and the realities in the study, adopting a critical approach and acknowledging the complexities of managing ‘truths’ in research.
Positivism: A philosophical system that recognizes only positive facts and observable phenomena, thus the only reliable knowledge of any field of phenomena reduces to knowledge of particular instances of patterns. Therefore reality is single and tangible, research is value-free and generalizations are possible.
Post-positivism: A philosophical approach that argues that realities are multiple, that research is value bound and is affected by time and context.
Pragmatic: Concerned with practical results.
Privacy: expressive: The desire to protect one’s self from peer pressure or ridicule in order to express one’s own identity (DeCew, 1997).
Privacy: informational: The protection of personal information relating to the privacy of finances, personal information and lifestyle (DeCew, 1997).
Privacy: institutional: The protection of personal information and monitoring by organizations such as governments and bank through CCTV, genetic screening and credit cards.
Privacy: social: Ensuring privacy on social media sites by using pseudonyms, false accounts and by regularly deleting wall posts, photographs and untagging themselves from other peoples’ posts.
Probabilistic sampling: When conducting research on a large population, it is often impractical to study every single member of the group. Instead, researchers attempt to determine a portion or sample of the population. Probability sampling refers to methods of selecting individuals to include in a study, where each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected (that is, it is randomly selected).
Probability sampling: It refers to methods of selecting individuals to include in a study, where each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected (that is, it is randomly selected).
Problem: The reason the study should be done.
Prolonged engagement: Prolonged engagement means staying in the research context long enough to understand what is taking place in terms of language, cultures and interactions.
Purpose: What the research will accomplish, what its intent is.
Qualitative research: Social research that is aimed at investigating the way in which people make sense of their ideas and experience.
Quantitative research: The systematic collection and analysis of numerical data used to prove or disprove a hypothesis. It is based on the premise that something is meaningful only if it can be observed or counted.
Quasi-experimental design: Research that takes an experimental style approach without the core ingredient of random assignment of subjects to groups. Quasi-experimental designs are more commonly used in education than experimental designs as they raise fewer ethical concerns and fit better with real-life contexts.
Questionnaire: Administration of a pre-prepared set of (usually written) questions for obtaining data usually for statistical analysis.
Randomized control trials: An experimental study where subjects are randomly allocated to different control groups for the allocation of different interventions.
Rapport: A close connection or relationship.
Reader: The reader might be anyone who comes across the report and reads it for any number of purposes.
Referent: What the sign ‘stands for.’
Reflexivity: Seeking to continually challenge our biases and examining our stances, perspectives, and views as researchers. This is not meant to be a notion of ‘situating oneself’ as formulaic as pronouncing a particular positioned identity connected with class, gender, race but rather situating oneself to interpret data demands so as to engage with critical questions.
Reliability: Ensuring that the experiments can repeatedly measure these variables accurately.
Research question: An interrogative sentence that highlights the phenomenon to be studied and indicates what the researcher wishes to know about it.
Research review: The use of a review of research to demonstrate information in a particular way, for example, to develop a comprehensive picture of knowledge about a topic or issue.
Research synthesis: A stand-alone report that combines evidence in a way that aggregates information from a body of studies into a new whole.
Researcher bias: The acceptance that in qualitative studies bias exists and is understood as inevitable and important by most qualitative researchers. However, processes such as reflexivity are adopted to gain ‘a better set of biases.’
Saturation: Saturation is a point at which no new themes are being uncovered.
Sense: The sense made of the sign.
Sign vehicle: The form of the sign.
Socialization: Socialization is a process by which individuals acquire the habits, beliefs and accumulated knowledge of society through education and training for membership in a group or organization.
Subject: The general field or area.
Thick description: Thick description involves an explanation of the context as well as the importance of interpretation thus it is not just reporting detail but instead demands interpretation that goes beyond meaning and motivations.
Transferability: It refers to the idea that findings may be applicable in similar situations. While transferability is generally considered the responsibility of the one who wishes to apply the results to new contexts, the researcher is generally expected to have provided sufficient information about context and assumptions to determine whether the research is transferable.
Transparency: Ensuring research processes are documented and presented as rigorously as possible to make the research process clear.
Triangulation: The use of different types of methods, researchers and or theories in a study in an attempt to maximize the validity of a study.
Trustworthiness: The process of checking with participants the validity of data collected and checking with participants that data interpretations are agreed upon a shared truth. It is evidence of research accountability and involves both integrity and rigor.
Topic: The specific matter of interest.
Terms U-Z
Unit of analysis: Unit of analysis simply means the specific element that the researcher will be able to say something about at the end of the study; the unit then drives the analysis (see Chapter 6).
Validation: In educational research, validation refers to the process of ensuring that the instrument in question will gather the information that it intends to gather (see Chapter 30 for additional information about validity).
Validity: Ensuring that the experiment is designed effectively to measure the subject variables.
Verbatim: To express in exactly the same word.
Verisimilitude: Demonstrating the appearance of truth; the quality of seeming to be true, which is arguably a more realistic quest than uncovering ‘truth.’
Viral methodologies: Instead of research methodologies being specifically ‘located’ in areas such as post-structuralism and constructivism, the underlying theories are seen as mutable and liquid.
Virtual ethnography: Methodology that seeks to understand, from a sociological perspective, what people ‘do’ on the Internet (Hine, 2000).