Goubil Practitioner's Guide notes

Goubil-Gambrell, Patricia
A Practitioner's Guide to Research Methods

582
quant's strength: ability to describe cause-effect
qual strength: depiction of subjects in actual setting

research methodology in Rhet COmp not widely understood

583
links to MacNealy article we just read
more cites on how/why research in TC is so important
two goals of article: ID main types of methodology business & tech writing; second, help folks in TC understand the difference in the methodologies
omitting methodology unfortunately common but causes some issues

583-4
empirical methods: quant & qual

584
2 other methods in Eng Dept
scholarly inquiry and Practitioner inquiry
quant: establish cause/effect
qual: descriptive
scholarly inquiry: goal is dialectic, confront opposing view
practitioner inquiry: goal is to report/tell story of how a person handled a specific situation

585
generalization a big issue
quant characteristics:
random sampling/select of subjects
intro of a treatment
use of control group
quasi experimental method
subjects are not random
researcher will use intact groups
(this sounds like a lot of comp/TC research)

random samples can be stratified

in quasi-exp, groups not random so R must pull on power of exp method to show grps are comparable
PRE-TEST



586
Five points to examine hypothesis' quality
conceptually clear & concepts defined operationally
have empirical referents, not value judgments
be specific to determin if testable
related to available testing techniques
related to a body of theory

Two kinds of stats
descriptive: describe data in orderly fasion (mean, meidian, mode)
inferential infer relationships

Causes manifest in 4 ways
in a sequence to produce effect
converge/cluster to produce effect
single cause may disperse into many areas
all three may occur & create a complex net of causes & effects

587
indie variable: cause of something in a relationship; treatment in a experiment--activity that will make a difference in the outcome
dependent variable: effect is change/difference that is the result of changing the indie variaable

validity: does experiment measure what it says it will
internal: change in dep var actually result of ind variable
external: results are generalizable to other groups
Reliability: whether experiment precisely measure a single dimension of human ability

quant issues
isolated variables--not realistic
other variables are eliminated
587
char of qual research
case study: small group or individual
ethnographic study: whole environment in which folks function as communicatiors

588
in qual, subjects not random
extreme case sampling: subjects are unusual
intensity: have skill/ability, but not best
maximum variation: what common patterns emerge from diverse groups

in qual, no treatment
no isolation of variables

purpose in qual is to identify salient features/variable
giving a treatment would interfere
in qual, researcher usually participates

589
triangulation important: reduces bias & helps validate 7 verify data
data
methods
researcher
theory


judging a qual study
data coll methods explicit
data used to document analytic constructs
neg instances of findings are shown/accounted for
biases discussed
strategies for data collection/analysis are clear
field decisions that change approach are documents
competing hypotheses presented/discussed
data preserved
participants truthfulness assessed
theoretical sig & gernalizability made explicity

pro/con of qual research
pro: depicts writing situations as they are
con: thus they cannot be generalized because it's not randomized

590
develop methodological literacy

Qual can be judged by 4 constructs
credibility of study
transferability of conclusion
dependability
confirmability