Published research methodologies: quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches

¶ … mixed methods research study. Each of the three studies must have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Analysis of a Qualitative Research Report: Problem statement:

What is the problem the study was conducted to address?

Many schools have not adopted new electronic-era media literacies into their core curricula, but understanding these new, evolving literacies is critical to understanding how students learn today, especially with regard to low-income students, for several reasons (Turner, 2011, p. 614).

Why is the problem an important one for someone in your discipline to study?

The ability to use multi-media communication technologies will increase in importance the more those technologies are deployed in education. The more technology proliferates in education, the more students will need skills to critically analyze such texts for validity and applicability. If those students will be the workforce of the next generation, the workers we manage will need critical multi-media literacy skills in order to separate authoritative text from say advertising or politically biased messaging in the workforce and daily life.

Study purpose: 1.). what is the purpose of the study?

Turner responds to a 2003 prediction by Kress that understanding a "shift to screen-based image literacy" (Kress, 2003, quoted in Turner, 2011, p. 613) would entail a concurrent shift in pedagogical research.

Research question:

1.). What is the research question?

Turner breaks his inquiry into multi-media production "in the development of information and communications technology literacies" (Turner, 2011, p. 614) into three questions, namely what specific skills students developed, how acquiring multi-media skills increased students' abilities "to interpret and produce texts" (Turner, 2011, p. 614), and how students' understandings of information and cummications technology literacies change per different contexts.

2.). Is the question stated broadly enough for a qualitative study? Why or why not?

The questions are stated broadly enough for qualitative research yes. Each question is open-ended, asking 'what' or 'how' questions without limitation as to how many answers or ranking of those answers, for example. Had these been asked 'which of the skills' or 'what is the best skill,' those questions would be more amenable to quantitative research due to the comparison for dominance within their respective groups, for example.

Study design:

1.). What qualitative design is used?

Taylor employed pre- and post-test subject (student) and proctor (educator) interview, where the test condition was a multi-media production class; participant observation, researcher selection on basis of interest (gender, race and ethnicity); answers were open-coded for "repeating, emergent themes that helped answer my three research questions" (Turner, 2011, p. 616); pre- and post-test Likert-type scale response analysis for specific skill attainment and technology mode. The last would approach quantitative analysis except that the responses were based on self-report rather than specific objectives determined within constrained test conditions, i.e. unobservable test conditions may have confounded students' responses before and after treatment.

2.). In what way is the chosen design an appropriate one for this study?

This design is appropriate because of the expense involved in treating a large number of such test participants, the subjectivity of response, and the subjectivity of terms of definition, i.e. Turner's (2011) "emergent themes" (616), which would be possible but difficult to restrict semantically for a large, heterogenous sample. Having students perform skills presentation of which constituted test conditions, was appropriate to identify whether they had indeed obtained the conditions the test sought to impose or not. This study could be performed quantitatively given extensive prior definition of the categories, say through standardized testing, and a larger budget.

Subjects and setting:

1.). How were the study subjects obtained?

The 30 students who began the program came from classes that approximated the population of an entire school

2.). What was the method of obtaining subjects and its appropriateness?

Students chose to participate in the treatment (class). Absent any given criteria to establish appropriateness or not, the method seems appropriate because if students choose traditional rather than screen-based literacy, they would not choose the treatment, and thus their absence in the sample would not affect generalization to the population 'multi-media learners' very much.

3.). Is the size of the sample adequate to the research design and variables? Why or why not?

The size of the sample is adequate to establish validity of the questions in this school perhaps, although since the absolute enrollment of that school is not given in the study, there is not enough information to determine if the resulting sample is large enough to generalize to the total population. We could work in the other direction and use any one of several canonical formulae to establish how large a population the sample would generalize to, given characteristics identical to those of the actual subjects.

4.) How is the setting in which data were collected appropriate or inappropriate for this study?

The study was conducted within the actual institution in which the target conditions 'multi-media critical reading' occurred at the time and in future, and therefore was the most appropriate possible setting.

Data collection procedures:

1.). To what degree were the data collection procedures consistent with the purpose of the study?

Without specified increments of measurement, the degree could be described as 'consistent' (vs. 'not consistent') in that data collection procedures did address ICT proficiency; to establish what varying technologies participants had access to before and after/during treatment, and thus what skills they had before and after; their ability to produce multi-media texts, their level of conviction regarding the value of applying critical thinking across technological platforms; and videotaped comparison of students' proficiency, which were then compared before and after treatment. Under a Likert-type scale of 'high, medium or low,' the data collection procedures could be argued to be high, but absent anything to compare that against, such a claim would be subjective and indefensible.