Qaulitative Methods

PSYC 641 - Spring 2025

Reminders/Updates

  • Design & Measures Draft - Turned in!

  • Peer Review of Drafts (2) - Due April 6

    • Will be sending out the drafts for you to review

    • Similar a traditional peer review

      • Provide feedback on areas of improvement

      • Remains anonymous

Overview

  • Quasi-Experimental Revisit

    • Applying to a study

    • Implementing Stats

  • Reading Question Check-in

  • Defining Qualitative Research

  • Example

Computational setup

# load packages
library(RedditExtractoR)   # for pulling reddit posts
library(tidytext)      # for text investigation
library(ggplot2)       # for pretty visualizations
library(ggwordcloud)   

# set default theme and larger font size for ggplot2
ggplot2::theme_set(ggplot2::theme_minimal(base_size = 20))
08:00

From Last Time: Building Blocks to a study

Pick and choose the things that are going to most accurately assess your question

1. Observations/Measurements

When measurements are taken (pretest, posttest, multiple time points)

Types of measures used (standardized tools, observation protocols)

2. Treatments or Interventions

Implementation strategies

Dosage or intensity levels

3. Groups

Experimental groups (receive intervention)

Control groups (no intervention)

Comparison groups (alternative intervention)

4. Assignment Strategies

Random assignment

Matching

Self-selection

Cutoff-based assignment (as in regression discontinuity designs)

5. Time Elements

Data collection points (past, present, future)

Time frame of research

Number and spacing of observations

Review Previous Studies

In your previous group, you came up with a new design. Let’s modify them to be a quasi-experimental design.

But what about statistics??

Let’s walk through how to determine the stats methods being used

https://statsandr.com/blog/what-statistical-test-should-i-do/

https://www.scribbr.com/wp-content/uploads//2020/01/flowchart-for-choosing-a-statistical-test.png

Go back to your research question.

Qualitative Methods

Aims to gather and examine non-numeric data in an attempt to understand an individual’s experience and their “social reality”.

Ecological Systems Model

Approaches to Qualitative Research

  • Ethnography
  • Phenomenology
  • Discourse Analysis
  • Narrative
  • Grounded Theory
  • Action Research
  • Historical Research
  • Case Studies

Approaches to Qualitative Research

Always consider how the information is being collected and what the research question is

  • Grounded Theory

    • Using data to inform the research

  • Participatory Action Research

    • Working with stakeholders to inform/guide research

What is the unit of analysis?

What is the information that we are collecting to investigate?

  • Text Based (e.g., Narratives, written reports)

  • Observational

  • Audio

What is the GOAL of the project?

Trying it out? - Text Based

https://github.com/ivan-rivera/RedditExtractor

https://r4np.com/14_mixed_methods.html

https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ggwordcloud/vignettes/ggwordcloud.html

Trying it out? - Observational

Link to Guidelines(if we have time)

![](https://youtu.be/g5aBGapsxG8)