Ethics of politics and social work research

Sociology- Social Work

Ethics of Politics & Social Work Research

When undertaking research in the nursing profession it is very important to understand the difference between qualitative research and quantitative research. Understanding this difference will allow one to make sure that they undertake the right kind of research in order to get to the bottom of the questions that they are asking. It is of no use to anyone to have a question that needs to be answered and go about it the wrong way to get a good answer.

Any course of focal inquiry is thought to be directed by a set of fundamental beliefs. These ideas which shape the foundation of a research model are intended to answer basic questions. Research information in the reality-based paradigm of quantitative research is usually quantified numerically. In this model information is relative. The detection of information is understood as the formation of an interface between the researchers and researched. The methods utilized in this model in the search for meaning involve the analysis of images or discourse (Hill, 1997).

Quantitative social work researchers often follow a linear path or a fixed sequence of steps utilizing variables and hypotheses and highlighting measurement and causal enlightenments while qualitative social work researchers follow a non-linear path that utilizes intuition or insight. The variable is fundamental to quantitative social work research and is defined as a notion that varies. Variables are measures of a concept that take two or more values. Variables are categorized into three basic kinds: the independent variable, the dependent variable and the intervening variable. The independent variable is the supposed cause, and comes before the effect in time. The dependent variable is the effect or outcome and comes after the cause in time (Neuman, 2006).

Qualitative research is often known as natural inquiry, interpretive research, hermeneutical research, post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism. The word qualitative involves a stress on procedures and connotations that are not thoroughly looked at, or considered, in terms of quantity, amount, intensity, or frequency. Qualitative researchers highlight the socially erected nature of reality, the close association between researcher and what is being examined, and the situational restraints that form the question (Hill, 1997).

There are three major qualitative methods that are frequently used. The first is phenomenology. This theory basically attempts to comprehend the nature of the being, the lived understanding by way of language. In this framework, the vital task of language is to communicate information and to explain reality. A researcher utilizing this theory has to be familiar with the subjectivity of human understanding and try to uncover and explain the spirit of being as represented by the informant's language and behavior. The second theory is that of grounded theory. This is a kind of naturalistic inquiry. This strategy shares the data gathering methods of other qualitative research models. The main difference though is its stress upon theory development. The third theory is ethnography. The central aim of ethnography is to understand another way of life from the indigenous point-of-view. Unstructured interviews and participant surveillance are two of the most common tools utilized in the qualitative methodology (Hill, 1997).