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Chapter 1 Lesson 2. Importance of Quantitative Research Across Fields
Chapter 1 Lesson 2. Importance of Quantitative Research Across Fields
Chapter 1 Lesson 2. Importance of Quantitative Research Across Fields
INTRODUCTlON
People do research to find solutions, even tentative ones, to problems, in order to improve or enhance ways of
doing things, to disprove or provide a new hypothesis, or simply to find answers to questions or solutions to problems
in daily life.. Research findings can affect people's lives, ways of doing things, laws, rules and regulations, as well as
policies, among others. Quantitative research, because of its emphasis on proof, rather than discovery, has been
widely used in most disciplines. .
In the natural and social sciences, quantitative research is the systematic, empirical investigation of
observable phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. The objective of quantitative
research is to develop and employ mathematical models, theories and/or hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. The
process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it provides the fundamental connection between
empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships.
Health Sciences (Medical Technology, Dentistry, Nursing, Medicine, etc.) use quantitative research designs
like the descriptive, pre-experimental, quasi-experimental, true experiment, case study, among others.
Bernard further says that true experiments with people are common in laboratory experiments and in the testing of
new medicines. Laboratory experiments often produce results that beg to be tested in the natural world by
anthropologists. Aaron and Mills (1959, as cited in Bernard, 1994) demonstrated in a lab experiment that people who
go through severe initiation to a group tend to be more positive toward the group than are people who go through a
mild initiation. They reasoned that people who go through tough initiation rites put a lot of personal investment into
getting into the group. Later, if people see evidence that the group is not what they thought it would be, they are
reluctant to admit the fact because of the investment.
When they are done outside the lab, experiments are called field experiments. Janet Schofield and her
colleagues did a 3-year ethnographic study of a middle school. During the first year, they noticed that African-American
and white children seemed to react differently to "mildly aggressive acts"-things like bumping in the hallway, poking one
another in the classroom, asking for food, or using another student's pencil without permission. There appeared to be
no event of racial conflict in the school, but during interviews white students were more likely to report being intimidated
by their AfricanAmerican peers than vice versa (Sagar & Schofield, 1980, as cited in Bernard, 1994).
Quasi-Experiments
Quasi-experiments are most often used in evaluating social programs. Suppose a researcher has invented a
technique for improving reading comprehension among third graders. She/he selects two third-grade classes in a
school district. One of them gets the intervention and the other doesn't. Students are measured before and after the
intervention to see whether their reading scores improve. This design contains many of the elements of a true
experiment, but the participants are not assigned randomly to the treatment and control groups. (Bernard, 1994).
In the one-shot case study design, a single group of individuals is measured on some dependent variable after
an intervention has taken place. The researcher tries to evaluate the experiment by interviewing people (0) and trying
to assess the impact of the intervention (X). The problem, of course, is that you can't be sure that what you observe is
the result of some particular intervention. In the 1950s, physicians began general use of the Pap Test, a simple
procedure for determining the presence of cervical cancer. Following the introduction of the Pap Test, measurements
were made for several years to see if there was any effect. Sure enough, cervical cancer rates dropped and dropped.
Later, it was noticed that cervical cancer rates had been dropping steadily since the 1930s. Of course, early detection
of any cancer is important in fighting the disease. But the data froin the 1930s and 1940s show that, initially at least,
the Pap Test was not responsible for lower rates of cervical cancer (Williams, 1978, as cited in Bernard, 1994).
For this research design, Bernard (1994) cites this example: Consider two villages in the same cultural region;
one village has experienced a major intervention (tourism, a factory, an irrigation system) while the other villages have
not. You measure a series of variables (income, attitudes toward the national government, the amount of time women
spend in child-rearing activities) in both villages. These are 01 and 02.
If the differences between 01 and 02 are small, you can't tell if the intervention, X, caused those differences. This
design is quite convincing , though, when the differences between 01 and 02 are large and where you have lots of
participant observation data to back up the claim that the intervention is responsible for those differences.
In the one-group pretest-posttest design, some variables are measured (observed), then the intervention takes
place, and then the variables are measured again. This takes care of some of the problems associated with the one-
shot case study, but doesn't eliminate the threats of history, testing, maturation, selection, and mortality. Most
importantly, if there is a significant difference in the pretest and posttest measurements, we can't tell if the intervention
made that difference happen. (Bernard, 1994).
Relationship questions tend to explore how one behavior exhibited by people is related to other types of
behavior. Examples are verbally aggressive behaviors related to physical aggression-that is, when a person has high
level of verbally aggressive behavior, does he or she tend to be physically aggressive? Are certain supervisor
communication skills related to the emotional experiences of employees?
Questions of difference explore how patterns of behavior or perceptions might differ from one group or type of
person to another: Do people with disabilities experience emotional labor differently from those without disabilities? Do
women perceive talkativeness (or lack of it) differently from men? Do communication styles differ from one culture to
the next? (Allen, Titsworth, Hunt, 2009).
When quantitative researchers explore questions of differences or questions of relationships, they do so in an
attempt to uncover certain patterns of behavior. If the researcher discovers that a certain relationship exists in a sample
that she or he has drawn from the population, she/he is then in a position to draw generalizations about patterns
expected of human behavior.
Research Question: What are the- predictors of victimization for a sample of adolescents with disabilities in
transition from high school to adult life?
Method: Students with disabilities and their parents in two western states were interviewed during the
students' last year in school and once again, when students were 1 year out of school.
Participants: Participants were students with disabilities who were identified by their school as in their last
year of high school or who had dropped out of high school sometime during what would have been their last
year (sample size=422).
Instruments and Procedures: A fixed- response interview was conducted by telephone with students and
their parents by trained interviewers. Predictor variables were selected based on previous research; these
included gender, minority status, serious emotional disturbance (SED), specific learning disability (SLD),
dropout status, family socioeconomic status, parent rating of academic skills, and a rating of personal-social
skills. The outcome variable of victimization was defined as experiencing more than one of the following: being
teased or bothered, having something stolen from them, or being hit hard or beaten up.
Results,: The following characteristics were associated with a greater likelihood of being victimized during the
first year out of school: prior victimization while still in school in the previous year, being female, having low
post school personalsocial achievement, and having both SED and an arrest record within 1 year of leaving
school.
Discussion: The greatest risk for victimization was for the group who had serious emotional disturbance and
low personal-social achievement. The authors recommend increasing social skill training directed to this
specific group in terms of appropriate ways to behave in community settings where victimization could occur.
The methods employed in this type of quantitative social research are most typically the sample survey and the
experiment, a method that is particularly popular in psychological research.
The sample survey is the most commonly used technique for gathering information, whether by quantitative or
qualitative means. Surveys are based on using statistical sampling methods. By taking a representative sample from a
given population and applying a standardized research instrument in the form of a structured questionnaire, surveys
enable descriptive and explanatory generalizations to be made about the population in question.
Experimental Research
Experiments are most commonly used in psychological research and in the broad field of business studies in the form
of action research. Experimental research is based on the researcher manipulating certain conditions in order to
identify the relationship between particular variables, in the hope that it will explain cause and effect relationships. In
seeking to measure the impact that one factor has on another by controlling all other factors that might have an effect,
experimental research builds on the principles of a positivist approach to science, more than any other research
technique.
Experiments can be carried out in a laboratory or a field setting. Laboratory experimentation is the most closely
regulated method of experiment, involving the introduction of certain conditions into a controlled environment that
stimulates key characteristics of a natural environment. An example might be examining the extent to which the
responses of a group of voters to questions about political attitudes after exposures to a series of party election
broadcast might be different to another (yet identical) group's responses who are not confronted with such images.
Such experiments allow for very considerable time on behalf of the researcher who is able to effect change and
observe the research participants' subsequent behaviour.
Social research is all around us: Educators, government officials, business, managers, human service providers and
health care professionals regularly use social research methods and findings. People use social research to raise
children, reduce crime, improve public health, sell products or just understand one's life. (Neuman, 2007).