SOCI 3700 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Heath High School Shooting, Qualitative Research, Methylphenidate

• School: University of Georgia
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 3700
• Professor: Edgemon

Document Summary

Because qualitative research usually brings the researcher into close contact with the social reality of people, there are some unique ethical concerns. Voluntary participation: a huge issue in participant observation, especially in covert participation. Subject well-being: concern over feelings and reputation of informants. Identity disclosure: researcher should endeavor to fully disclose his or her identity. Confidentiality: make every effort to expunge all possible identifiers from published works. Text as a way of understanding what participants really think, feel, or do. Hermeneutic perspective: text is an interpretation, neither true nor false. Focus on meanings rather than quantitative phenomena. In depth and in detail rather than using predetermined general categories. Sensitivity to context rather than universal generalizations. Rich descriptions rather than specific measurement of variables. The positivist approach assumes a reality external to the observer that can be objectively described and analyzed with scientific standards.