The document discusses the fundamental principles of quantitative research, focusing on validity and the importance of scientific merit. It highlights the ethical considerations in research involving human subjects as established in the Belmont Report, outlining key principles such as respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. The report emphasizes the necessity of ethical review processes and proper guidelines to ensure the integrity and reliability of research outcomes.

1. Running Head: Quantitative research 1
Quantitative research 3
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH
Student
University
School
Couse
Course code
Lecturer
Due date
Type of quantitative research conducted
The study was a longitudinal nature as information was
collected continuously over a period of time of time in regards
to the variables. The article by Johnson, (1977), was to be

2. conducted all through time without proper specification of what
the data collection was to be conducted and its end.
Variables under investigation and their measurement
The article seek to measure to justify the overall connection
between the term validity and how it is utilized in quantitative
research. The article reviews five types of validity namely
descriptive, interpretive, theoretical, internal and external
validity. In relation to the nature to the research study
conducted, the discussions conducted are descriptive in nature
and therefore measurement was largely based on predictions
acquired from data sources, phenomenon, information acquired
from investigators, perspectives acquired from theories,
respondent reviews and from discussions acquired from peer
reviewed articles. Critical self-reflections and critical
examinations of the negative studies that offer alternative
explanations to what the original findings portray is about.
Scientific merit and how and it can be improved
Research studies must have a certain quality in order to exhibit
the most relevant results attainable. Quality in research can be
used by organizations in the effort to alleviate the situation that
a particular study reveals and should the results be incorrect it
would lead to wastage in resources. Scientific merit therefore
ensures that all research conducted is reliable and can be use
with other sources for positive actions.
Efforts to enforce and improve scientific merit must firstly
include expert review that should begin all through from
development of the proposal all through to the final research.
The advisors must also have the required expertise to ensure
quality of the papers. The peer reviewers must also be selected
in accordance to clearly articulated criteria. The researchers can
thereby acquire the proper and reliable feedback based on the
rules and procedures.
It would also be critical to fairly assess the research papers
based on the properly defined processes. Moreover, it would be
important to point areas where the study reveals conflict of
interest. Consequently, the process of review must be in relation

3. to the need of the area being addressed with regards to the
amount of resources invested and the how complex the study
is(Canadian Diabetes Association, 2016).
Lastly, all through the research study, and ethical committee
should be paramount to properly and effectively institute the
review process. Properly dealing with issues would help ensure
confidence in the review and utilization of is data and other
properties.
References
Canadian Diabetes Association. (2016). Tackling Peer Review:
How to Improve Reviews and Minimize Abuse. Canadian
Journal of Diabetes, 40. Retrieved from
www.canadianjournalofdiabetes.com
Johnson, B. (1977). Examining the validity structure of
qualitative research. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246126534
HHS.gov
The Belmont Report
Office of the Secretary
Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human
Subjects of
Research
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects
of Biomedical
and Behavioral Research
April 18, 1979

4. AGENCY: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
ACTION: Notice of Report for Public Comment.
SUMMARY: On July 12, 1974, the National Research Act (Pub.
L. 93-348) was signed into law, there-by
creating the National Commission for the Protection of Human
Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research. One of the charges to the Commission was to identify
the basic ethical principles that should
underlie the conduct of biomedical and behavioral research
involving human subjects and to develop
guidelines which should be followed to assure that such
research is conducted in accordance with those
principles. In carrying out the above, the Commission was
directed to consider: (i) the boundaries
between biomedical and behavioral research and the accepted
and routine practice of medicine, (ii) the
role of assessment of risk-benefit criteria in the determination
of the appropriateness of research involving
human subjects, (iii) appropriate guidelines for the selection of
human subjects for participation in such
research and (iv) the nature and definition of informed consent
in various research settings.
The Belmont Report attempts to summarize the basic ethical

5. principles identified by the Commission in
the course of its deliberations. It is the outgrowth of an
intensive four-day period of discussions that were
held in February 1976 at the Smithsonian Institution's Belmont
Conference Center supplemented by the
monthly deliberations of the Commission that were held over a
period of nearly four years. It is a
statement of basic ethical principles and guidelines that should
assist in resolving the ethical problems
that surround the conduct of research with human subjects. By
publishing the Report in the Federal
Register, and providing reprints upon request, the Secretary
intends that it may be made readily available
to scientists, members of Institutional Review Boards, and
Federal employees. The two-volume Appendix,
containing the lengthy reports of experts and specialists who
assisted the Commission in fulfilling this part
of its charge, is available as DHEW Publication No. (OS) 78-
0013 and No. (OS) 78-0014, for sale by the
Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C. 20402.
Office for Human Research Protections
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

6. Unlike most other reports of the Commission, the Belmont
Report does not make specific
recommendations for administrative action by the Secretary of
Health, Education, and Welfare. Rather,
the Commission recommended that the Belmont Report be
adopted in its entirety, as a statement of the
Department's policy. The Department requests public comment
on this recommendation.
National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of
Biomedical and
Behavioral Research
Members of the Commission
• Kenneth John Ryan, M.D., Chairman, Chief of Staff, Boston
Hospital for Women.
• Joseph V. Brady, Ph.D., Professor of Behavioral Biology,
Johns Hopkins University.
• Robert E. Cooke, M.D., President, Medical College of
Pennsylvania.
• Dorothy I. Height, President, National Council of Negro
Women, Inc.
• Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Bioethics,
University of California at San Francisco.
• Patricia King, J.D., Associate Professor of Law, Georgetown

7. University Law Center.
• Karen Lebacqz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Christian
Ethics, Pacific School of Religion.
• *** David W. Louisell, J.D., Professor of Law, University of
California at Berkeley.
• Donald W. Seldin, M.D., Professor and Chairman, Department
of Internal Medicine, University of Texas
at Dallas.
• ***Eliot Stellar, Ph.D., Provost of the University and
Professor of Physiological Psychology, University of
Pennsylvania.
• *** Robert H. Turtle, LL.B., Attorney, VomBaur, Coburn,
Simmons & Turtle, Washington, D.C.
• ***Deceased.
Table of Contents
• Ethical Principles and Guidelines for Research Involving
Human Subjects
• A. Boundaries Between Practice and Research
• B. Basic Ethical Principles
1. Respect for Persons
2. Beneficence

8. 3. Justice
• C. Applications
1. Informed Consent
2. Assessment of Risk and Benefits
3. Selection of Subjects
Ethical Principles & Guidelines for Research Involving Human
Subjects
Scientific research has produced substantial social benefits. It
has also posed some troubling ethical
questions. Public attention was drawn to these questions by
reported abuses of human subjects in
biomedical experiments, especially during the Second World
War. During the Nuremberg War Crime
Trials, the Nuremberg code was drafted as a set of standards for
judging physicians and scientists who
had conducted biomedical experiments on concentration camp
prisoners. This code became the prototype
of many later codes[1] intended to assure that research
involving human subjects would be carried out in
an ethical manner.
The codes consist of rules, some general, others specific, that

9. guide the investigators or the reviewers of
research in their work. Such rules often are inadequate to cover
complex situations; at times they come
into conflict, and they are frequently difficult to interpret or
apply. Broader ethical principles will provide a
basis on which specific rules may be formulated, criticized and
interpreted.
Three principles, or general prescriptive judgments, that are
relevant to research involving human subjects
are identified in this statement. Other principles may also be
relevant. These three are comprehensive,
however, and are stated at a level of generalization that should
assist scientists, subjects, reviewers and
interested citizens to understand the ethical issues inherent in
research involving human subjects. These
principles cannot always be applied so as to resolve beyond
dispute particular ethical problems. The
objective is to provide an analytical framework that will guide
the resolution of ethical problems arising
from research involving human subjects.
This statement consists of a distinction between research and
practice, a discussion of the three basic
ethical principles, and remarks about the application of these
principles.

10. [RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS]
Part A: Boundaries Between Practice & Research
A. Boundaries Between Practice and Research
It is important to distinguish between biomedical and behavioral
research, on the one hand, and the
practice of accepted therapy on the other, in order to know what
activities ought to undergo review for the
protection of human subjects of research. The distinction
between research and practice is blurred partly
because both often occur together (as in research designed to
evaluate a therapy) and partly because
notable departures from standard practice are often called
"experimental" when the terms "experimental"
and "research" are not carefully defined.
For the most part, the term "practice" refers to interventions
that are designed solely to enhance the well-
being of an individual patient or client and that have a
reasonable expectation of success. The purpose of
medical or behavioral practice is to provide diagnosis,
preventive treatment or therapy to particular
individuals [2]. By contrast, the term "research' designates an

11. activity designed to test an hypothesis,
permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or
contribute to generalizable knowledge
(expressed, for example, in theories, principles, and statements
of relationships). Research is usually
described in a formal protocol that sets forth an objective and a
set of procedures designed to reach that
objective.
When a clinician departs in a significant way from standard or
accepted practice, the innovation does not,
in and of itself, constitute research. The fact that a procedure is
"experimental," in the sense of new,
untested or different, does not automatically place it in the
category of research. Radically new procedures
of this description should, however, be made the object of
formal research at an early stage in order to
determine whether they are safe and effective. Thus, it is the
responsibility of medical practice
committees, for example, to insist that a major innovation be
incorporated into a formal research project
[3].
Research and practice may be carried on together when research
is designed to evaluate the safety and

12. efficacy of a therapy. This need not cause any confusion
regarding whether or not the activity requires
review; the general rule is that if there is any element of
research in an activity, that activity should
undergo review for the protection of human subjects.
Part B: Basic Ethical Principles
B. Basic Ethical Principles
The expression "basic ethical principles" refers to those general
judgments that serve as a basic
justification for the many particular ethical prescriptions and
evaluations of human actions. Three basic
principles, among those generally accepted in our cultural
tradition, are particularly relevant to the ethics
of research involving human subjects: the principles of respect
of persons, beneficence and justice.
1. Respect for Persons. -- Respect for persons incorporates at
least two ethical convictions: first, that
individuals should be treated as autonomous agents, and second,
that persons with diminished autonomy
are entitled to protection. The principle of respect for persons
thus divides into two separate moral
requirements: the requirement to acknowledge autonomy and the

13. requirement to protect those with
diminished autonomy.
An autonomous person is an individual capable of deliberation
about personal goals and of acting under
the direction of such deliberation. To respect autonomy is to
give weight to autonomous persons'
considered opinions and choices while refraining from
obstructing their actions unless they are clearly
detrimental to others. To show lack of respect for an
autonomous agent is to repudiate that person's
considered judgments, to deny an individual the freedom to act
on those considered judgments, or to
withhold information necessary to make a considered judgment,
when there are no compelling reasons to
do so.
However, not every human being is capable of self-
determination. The capacity for self-determination
matures during an individual's life, and some individuals lose
this capacity wholly or in part because of
illness, mental disability, or circumstances that severely restrict
liberty. Respect for the immature and the
incapacitated may require protecting them as they mature or
while they are incapacitated.

14. Some persons are in need of extensive protection, even to the
point of excluding them from activities
which may harm them; other persons require little protection
beyond making sure they undertake activities
freely and with awareness of possible adverse consequence. The
extent of protection afforded should
depend upon the risk of harm and the likelihood of benefit. The
judgment that any individual lacks
autonomy should be periodically reevaluated and will vary in
different situations.
In most cases of research involving human subjects, respect for
persons demands that subjects enter into
the research voluntarily and with adequate information. In some
situations, however, application of the
principle is not obvious. The involvement of prisoners as
subjects of research provides an instructive
example. On the one hand, it would seem that the principle of
respect for persons requires that prisoners
not be deprived of the opportunity to volunteer for research. On
the other hand, under prison conditions
they may be subtly coerced or unduly influenced to engage in
research activities for which they would not
otherwise volunteer. Respect for persons would then dictate that
prisoners be protected. Whether to allow

15. prisoners to "volunteer" or to "protect" them presents a
dilemma. Respecting persons, in most hard cases,
is often a matter of balancing competing claims urged by the
principle of respect itself.
2. Beneficence. -- Persons are treated in an ethical manner not
only by respecting their decisions and
protecting them from harm, but also by making efforts to secure
their well-being. Such treatment falls
under the principle of beneficence. The term "beneficence" is
often understood to cover acts of kindness
or charity that go beyond strict obligation. In this document,
beneficence is understood in a stronger
sense, as an obligation. Two general rules have been formulated
as complementary expressions of
beneficent actions in this sense: (1) do not harm and (2)
maximize possible benefits and minimize
possible harms.
The Hippocratic maxim "do no harm" has long been a
fundamental principle of medical ethics. Claude
Bernard extended it to the realm of research, saying that one
should not injure one person regardless of
the benefits that might come to others. However, even avoiding
harm requires learning what is harmful;

16. and, in the process of obtaining this information, persons may
be exposed to risk of harm. Further, the
Hippocratic Oath requires physicians to benefit their patients
"according to their best judgment." Learning
what will in fact benefit may require exposing persons to risk.
The problem posed by these imperatives is
to decide when it is justifiable to seek certain benefits despite
the risks involved, and when the benefits
should be foregone because of the risks.
The obligations of beneficence affect both individual
investigators and society at large, because they
extend both to particular research projects and to the entire
enterprise of research. In the case of
particular projects, investigators and members of their
institutions are obliged to give forethought to the
maximization of benefits and the reduction of risk that might
occur from the research investigation. In the
case of scientific research in general, members of the larger
society are obliged to recognize the longer
term benefits and risks that may result from the improvement of
knowledge and from the development of
novel medical, psychotherapeutic, and social procedures.
The principle of beneficence often occupies a well-defined

17. justifying role in many areas of research
involving human subjects. An example is found in research
involving children. Effective ways of treating
childhood diseases and fostering healthy development are
benefits that serve to justify research involving
children -- even when individual research subjects are not direct
beneficiaries. Research also makes it
possible to avoid the harm that may result from the application
of previously accepted routine practices
that on closer investigation turn out to be dangerous. But the
role of the principle of beneficence is not
always so unambiguous. A difficult ethical problem remains, for
example, about research that presents
more than minimal risk without immediate prospect of direct
benefit to the children involved. Some have
argued that such research is inadmissible, while others have
pointed out that this limit would rule out
much research promising great benefit to children in the future.
Here again, as with all hard cases, the
different claims covered by the principle of beneficence may
come into conflict and force difficult choices.
3. Justice. -- Who ought to receive the benefits of research and
bear its burdens? This is a question of
justice, in the sense of "fairness in distribution" or "what is

18. deserved." An injustice occurs when some
benefit to which a person is entitled is denied without good
reason or when some burden is imposed
unduly. Another way of conceiving the principle of justice is
that equals ought to be treated equally.
However, this statement requires explication. Who is equal and
who is unequal? What considerations
justify departure from equal distribution? Almost all
commentators allow that distinctions based on
experience, age, deprivation, competence, merit and position do
sometimes constitute criteria justifying
differential treatment for certain purposes. It is necessary, then,
to explain in what respects people should
be treated equally. There are several widely accepted
formulations of just ways to distribute burdens and
benefits. Each formulation mentions some relevant property on
the basis of which burdens and benefits
should be distributed. These formulations are (1) to each person
an equal share, (2) to each person
according to individual need, (3) to each person according to
individual effort, (4) to each person
according to societal contribution, and (5) to each person
according to merit.

19. Questions of justice have long been associated with social
practices such as punishment, taxation and
political representation. Until recently these questions have not
generally been associated with scientific
research. However, they are foreshadowed even in the earliest
reflections on the ethics of research
involving human subjects. For example, during the 19th and
early 20th centuries the burdens of serving as
research subjects fell largely upon poor ward patients, while the
benefits of improved medical care flowed
primarily to private patients. Subsequently, the exploitation of
unwilling prisoners as research subjects in
Nazi concentration camps was condemned as a particularly
flagrant injustice. In this country, in the
1940's, the Tuskegee syphilis study used disadvantaged, rural
black men to study the untreated course of
a disease that is by no means confined to that population. These
subjects were deprived of demonstrably
effective treatment in order not to interrupt the project, long
after such treatment became generally
available.
Against this historical background, it can be seen how
conceptions of justice are relevant to research

20. involving human subjects. For example, the selection of
research subjects needs to be scrutinized in order
to determine whether some classes (e.g., welfare patients,
particular racial and ethnic minorities, or
persons confined to institutions) are being systematically
selected simply because of their easy
availability, their compromised position, or their
manipulability, rather than for reasons directly related to
the problem being studied. Finally, whenever research
supported by public funds leads to the
development of therapeutic devices and procedures, justice
demands both that these not provide
advantages only to those who can afford them and that such
research should not unduly involve persons
from groups unlikely to be among the beneficiaries of
subsequent applications of the research.
Part C: Applications
C. Applications
Applications of the general principles to the conduct of research
leads to consideration of the following
requirements: informed consent, risk/benefit assessment, and
the selection of subjects of research.
1. Informed Consent. -- Respect for persons requires that
subjects, to the degree that they are capable,

21. be given the opportunity to choose what shall or shall not
happen to them. This opportunity is provided
when adequate standards for informed consent are satisfied.
While the importance of informed consent is unquestioned,
controversy prevails over the nature and
possibility of an informed consent. Nonetheless, there is
widespread agreement that the consent process
can be analyzed as containing three elements: information,
comprehension and voluntariness.
Information. Most codes of research establish specific items for
disclosure intended to assure that
subjects are given sufficient information. These items generally
include: the research procedure, their
purposes, risks and anticipated benefits, alternative procedures
(where therapy is involved), and a
statement offering the subject the opportunity to ask questions
and to withdraw at any time from the
research. Additional items have been proposed, including how
subjects are selected, the person
responsible for the research, etc.
However, a simple listing of items does not answer the question
of what the standard should be for

22. judging how much and what sort of information should be
provided. One standard frequently invoked in
medical practice, namely the information commonly provided
by practitioners in the field or in the locale, is
inadequate since research takes place precisely when a common
understanding does not exist. Another
standard, currently popular in malpractice law, requires the
practitioner to reveal the information that
reasonable persons would wish to know in order to make a
decision regarding their care. This, too, seems
insufficient since the research subject, being in essence a
volunteer, may wish to know considerably more
about risks gratuitously undertaken than do patients who deliver
themselves into the hand of a clinician for
needed care. It may be that a standard of "the reasonable
volunteer" should be proposed: the extent and
nature of information should be such that persons, knowing that
the procedure is neither necessary for
their care nor perhaps fully understood, can decide whether they
wish to participate in the furthering of
knowledge. Even when some direct benefit to them is
anticipated, the subjects should understand clearly
the range of risk and the voluntary nature of participation.

23. A special problem of consent arises where informing subjects of
some pertinent aspect of the research is
likely to impair the validity of the research. In many cases, it is
sufficient to indicate to subjects that they
are being invited to participate in research of which some
features will not be revealed until the research is
concluded. In all cases of research involving incomplete
disclosure, such research is justified only if it is
clear that (1) incomplete disclosure is truly necessary to
accomplish the goals of the research, (2) there
are no undisclosed risks to subjects that are more than minimal,
and (3) there is an adequate plan for
debriefing subjects, when appropriate, and for dissemination of
research results to them. Information
about risks should never be withheld for the purpose of eliciting
the cooperation of subjects, and truthful
answers should always be given to direct questions about the
research. Care should be taken to
distinguish cases in which disclosure would destroy or
invalidate the research from cases in which
disclosure would simply inconvenience the investigator.
Comprehension. The manner and context in which information
is conveyed is as important as the
information itself. For example, presenting information in a

24. disorganized and rapid fashion, allowing too
little time for consideration or curtailing opportunities for
questioning, all may adversely affect a subject's
ability to make an informed choice.
Because the subject's ability to understand is a function of
intelligence, rationality, maturity and language,
it is necessary to adapt the presentation of the information to
the subject's capacities. Investigators are
responsible for ascertaining that the subject has comprehended
the information. While there is always an
obligation to ascertain that the information about risk to
subjects is complete and adequately
comprehended, when the risks are more serious, that obligation
increases. On occasion, it may be
suitable to give some oral or written tests of comprehension.
Special provision may need to be made when comprehension is
severely limited -- for example, by
conditions of immaturity or mental disability. Each class of
subjects that one might consider as
incompetent (e.g., infants and young children, mentally disable
patients, the terminally ill and the
comatose) should be considered on its own terms. Even for

25. these persons, however, respect requires
giving them the opportunity to choose to the extent they are
able, whether or not to participate in research.
The objections of these subjects to involvement should be
honored, unless the research entails providing
them a therapy unavailable elsewhere. Respect for persons also
requires seeking the permission of other
parties in order to protect the subjects from harm. Such persons
are thus respected both by
acknowledging their own wishes and by the use of third parties
to protect them from harm.
The third parties chosen should be those who are most likely to
understand the incompetent subject's
situation and to act in that person's best interest. The person
authorized to act on behalf of the subject
should be given an opportunity to observe the research as it
proceeds in order to be able to withdraw the
subject from the research, if such action appears in the subject's
best interest.
Voluntariness. An agreement to participate in research
constitutes a valid consent only if voluntarily
given. This element of informed consent requires conditions
free of coercion and undue influence.
Coercion occurs when an overt threat of harm is intentionally

26. presented by one person to another in order
to obtain compliance. Undue influence, by contrast, occurs
through an offer of an excessive, unwarranted,
inappropriate or improper reward or other overture in order to
obtain compliance. Also, inducements that
would ordinarily be acceptable may become undue influences if
the subject is especially vulnerable.
Unjustifiable pressures usually occur when persons in positions
of authority or commanding influence --
especially where possible sanctions are involved -- urge a
course of action for a subject. A continuum of
such influencing factors exists, however, and it is impossible to
state precisely where justifiable
persuasion ends and undue influence begins. But undue
influence would include actions such as
manipulating a person's choice through the controlling influence
of a close relative and threatening to
withdraw health services to which an individual would
otherwise be entitled.
2. Assessment of Risks and Benefits. -- The assessment of risks
and benefits requires a careful arrayal
of relevant data, including, in some cases, alternative ways of
obtaining the benefits sought in the
research. Thus, the assessment presents both an opportunity and

27. a responsibility to gather systematic
and comprehensive information about proposed research. For
the investigator, it is a means to examine
whether the proposed research is properly designed. For a
review committee, it is a method for
determining whether the risks that will be presented to subjects
are justified. For prospective subjects, the
assessment will assist the determination whether or not to
participate.
The Nature and Scope of Risks and Benefits. The requirement
that research be justified on the basis of
a favorable risk/benefit assessment bears a close relation to the
principle of beneficence, just as the moral
requirement that informed consent be obtained is derived
primarily from the principle of respect for
persons. The term "risk" refers to a possibility that harm may
occur. However, when expressions such as
"small risk" or "high risk" are used, they usually refer (often
ambiguously) both to the chance (probability)
of experiencing a harm and the severity (magnitude) of the
envisioned harm.
The term "benefit" is used in the research context to refer to
something of positive value related to health

28. or welfare. Unlike, "risk," "benefit" is not a term that expresses
probabilities. Risk is properly contrasted to
probability of benefits, and benefits are properly contrasted
with harms rather than risks of harm.
Accordingly, so-called risk/benefit assessments are concerned
with the probabilities and magnitudes of
possible harm and anticipated benefits. Many kinds of possible
harms and benefits need to be taken into
account. There are, for example, risks of psychological harm,
physical harm, legal harm, social harm and
economic harm and the corresponding benefits. While the most
likely types of harms to research subjects
are those of psychological or physical pain or injury, other
possible kinds should not be overlooked.
Risks and benefits of research may affect the individual
subjects, the families of the individual subjects,
and society at large (or special groups of subjects in society).
Previous codes and Federal regulations
have required that risks to subjects be outweighed by the sum of
both the anticipated benefit to the
subject, if any, and the anticipated benefit to society in the form
of knowledge to be gained from the
research. In balancing these different elements, the risks and
benefits affecting the immediate research

29. subject will normally carry special weight. On the other hand,
interests other than those of the subject may
on some occasions be sufficient by themselves to justify the
risks involved in the research, so long as the
subjects' rights have been protected. Beneficence thus requires
that we protect against risk of harm to
subjects and also that we be concerned about the loss of the
substantial benefits that might be gained
from research.
The Systematic Assessment of Risks and Benefits. It is
commonly said that benefits and risks must be
"balanced" and shown to be "in a favorable ratio." The
metaphorical character of these terms draws
attention to the difficulty of making precise judgments. Only on
rare occasions will quantitative techniques
be available for the scrutiny of research protocols. However, the
idea of systematic, nonarbitrary analysis
of risks and benefits should be emulated insofar as possible.
This ideal requires those making decisions
about the justifiability of research to be thorough in the
accumulation and assessment of information about
all aspects of the research, and to consider alternatives
systematically. This procedure renders the

30. assessment of research more rigorous and precise, while making
communication between review board
members and investigators less subject to misinterpretation,
misinformation and conflicting judgments.
Thus, there should first be a determination of the validity of the
presuppositions of the research; then the
nature, probability and magnitude of risk should be
distinguished with as much clarity as possible. The
method of ascertaining risks should be explicit, especially
where there is no alternative to the use of such
vague categories as small or slight risk. It should also be
determined whether an investigator's estimates
of the probability of harm or benefits are reasonable, as judged
by known facts or other available studies.
Finally, assessment of the justifiability of research should
reflect at least the following considerations: (i)
Brutal or inhumane treatment of human subjects is never
morally justified. (ii) Risks should be reduced to
those necessary to achieve the research objective. It should be
determined whether it is in fact necessary
to use human subjects at all. Risk can perhaps never be entirely
eliminated, but it can often be reduced by
careful attention to alternative procedures. (iii) When research

31. involves significant risk of serious
impairment, review committees should be extraordinarily
insistent on the justification of the risk (looking
usually to the likelihood of benefit to the subject -- or, in some
rare cases, to the manifest voluntariness of
the participation). (iv) When vulnerable populations are
involved in research, the appropriateness of
involving them should itself be demonstrated. A number of
variables go into such judgments, including the
nature and degree of risk, the condition of the particular
population involved, and the nature and level of
the anticipated benefits. (v) Relevant risks and benefits must be
thoroughly arrayed in documents and
procedures used in the informed consent process.
3. Selection of Subjects. -- Just as the principle of respect for
persons finds expression in the
requirements for consent, and the principle of beneficence in
risk/benefit assessment, the principle of
justice gives rise to moral requirements that there be fair
procedures and outcomes in the selection of
research subjects.
Justice is relevant to the selection of subjects of research at two
levels: the social and the individual.

32. Individual justice in the selection of subjects would require that
researchers exhibit fairness: thus, they
should not offer potentially beneficial research only to some
patients who are in their favor or select only
"undesirable" persons for risky research. Social justice requires
that distinction be drawn between classes
of subjects that ought, and ought not, to participate in any
particular kind of research, based on the ability
of members of that class to bear burdens and on the
appropriateness of placing further burdens on
already burdened persons. Thus, it can be considered a matter of
social justice that there is an order of
preference in the selection of classes of subjects (e.g., adults
before children) and that some classes of
potential subjects (e.g., the institutionalized mentally infirm or
prisoners) may be involved as research
subjects, if at all, only on certain conditions.
Injustice may appear in the selection of subjects, even if
individual subjects are selected fairly by
investigators and treated fairly in the course of research. Thus
injustice arises from social, racial, sexual
and cultural biases institutionalized in society. Thus, even if
individual researchers are treating their
research subjects fairly, and even if IRBs are taking care to

33. assure that subjects are selected fairly within
a particular institution, unjust social patterns may nevertheless
appear in the overall distribution of the
burdens and benefits of research. Although individual
institutions or investigators may not be able to
resolve a problem that is pervasive in their social setting, they
can consider distributive justice in selecting
research subjects.
Some populations, especially institutionalized ones, are already
burdened in many ways by their infirmities
and environments. When research is proposed that involves
risks and does not include a therapeutic
component, other less burdened classes of persons should be
called upon first to accept these risks of
research, except where the research is directly related to the
specific conditions of the class involved.
Also, even though public funds for research may often flow in
the same directions as public funds for
health care, it seems unfair that populations dependent on
public health care constitute a pool of preferred
research subjects if more advantaged populations are likely to
be the recipients of the benefits.

34. One special instance of injustice results from the involvement
of vulnerable subjects. Certain groups, such
as racial minorities, the economically disadvantaged, the very
sick, and the institutionalized may
continually be sought as research subjects, owing to their ready
availability in settings where research is
conducted. Given their dependent status and their frequently
compromised capacity for free consent, they
should be protected against the danger of being involved in
research solely for administrative
convenience, or because they are easy to manipulate as a result
of their illness or socioeconomic
condition.
[1] Since 1945, various codes for the proper and responsible
conduct of human experimentation in
medical research have been adopted by different organizations.
The best known of these codes are the
Nuremberg Code of 1947, the Helsinki Declaration of 1964
(revised in 1975), and the 1971 Guidelines
(codified into Federal Regulations in 1974) issued by the U.S.
Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare Codes for the conduct of social and behavioral research
have also been adopted, the best known
being that of the American Psychological Association,

35. published in 1973.
[2] Although practice usually involves interventions designed
solely to enhance the well-being of a
particular individual, interventions are sometimes applied to
one individual for the enhancement of the
well-being of another (e.g., blood donation, skin grafts, organ
transplants) or an intervention may have the
dual purpose of enhancing the well-being of a particular
individual, and, at the same time, providing some
benefit to others (e.g., vaccination, which protects both the
person who is vaccinated and society
generally). The fact that some forms of practice have elements
other than immediate benefit to the
individual receiving an intervention, however, should not
confuse the general distinction between research
and practice. Even when a procedure applied in practice may
benefit some other person, it remains an
intervention designed to enhance the well-being of a particular
individual or groups of individuals; thus, it
is practice and need not be reviewed as research.
[3] Because the problems related to social experimentation may
differ substantially from those of
biomedical and behavioral research, the Commission
specifically declines to make any policy

36. determination regarding such research at this time. Rather, the
Commission believes that the problem
ought to be addressed by one of its successor bodies.
Content created by Office for Human Research Protections
Content last reviewed on March 15, 2016
1497
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
Rev Esc Enferm USP
2011; 45(6):1497-1503
www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
Systematic review of theories:
a tool to evaluate and analyze
selected studies
R
E
P
O
R

37. T
S O
N E
X
P
E
R
IE
N
C
E
REVISÃO SISTEMÁTICA DE TEORIAS: UMA
FERRAMENTA PARA AVALIAÇÃO E
ANÁLISE DE TRABALHOS SELECIONADOS
REVISIÓN SISTEMÁTICA DE TEORÍAS: UNA
HERRAMIENTA PARA EVALUACIÓN Y
ANÁLISIS DE TRABAJOS SELECCIONADOS
1 Nurse. Associate Professor of the Collective Nursing
Department, School of Nursing, University of São Paulo. São
Paulo, SP, Brazil. [email protected]
2 Nurse. Student of the Masters in Nursing Program, School of
Nursing, University of São Paulo. Fellow of the State of São
Paulo research Foundation. São
Paulo, SP, Brazil. [email protected]
Received: 06/23/2010
Approved: 04/11/2011
Português / Inglês

38. www.scielo.br/reeusp
RESUMO
O objeti vo deste estudo é relatar a expe-
riência de construção e uti lização de um
instrumento de captação e análise dos re-
ferenciais teórico-metodológicos de estu-
dos, em revisões sistemáti cas da literatura.
O que se pretende é que investi gadores
disponham de um instrumento adequado
para avaliar os estudos que expõem seus
fundamentos teóricos, e que os profi ssio-
nais de saúde tenham acesso a explicações
teóricas para os resultados de estudos e
suas aplicações nas práti cas em saúde.
Desarti culação entre teoria e práti ca pode
levar à falta de moti vação no local de tra-
balho e a práti cas de reprodução de pro-
cedimentos sem consciência dos conceitos
subjacentes que embasam a interpretação
de um fenômeno saúde-doença. Chama-se
a atenção dos pesquisadores no senti do
de realizar análises sobre os fundamentos
teóricos dos fenômenos saúde-doença em
estudo e propõe-se questões relacionadas
aos critérios de inclusão, apreciação críti ca
e extração de dados a serem abordadas em
instrumentos.
DESCRITORES
Revisão
Medidas, métodos e teorias
Avaliação de Programas e Instrumentos de
Pesquisa
Estudos de validação

39. ABSTRACT
The objecti ve of this study is to report on
the experience of constructi ng and using
an instrument to collect and analyze theo-
reti cal-methodological references of stud-
ies, in systemati c literature reviews. The
goal is for researchers to have available an
instrument that is appropriate for evaluat-
ing the studies that present their theoreti -
cal foundati ons, and for health profession-
als to have access to the theoreti cal expla-
nati ons for study results and their applica-
ti ons in the practi ce of health care. The dis-
sociati on of theory from practi ce may lead
to a lack of moti vati on at the work site and
practi ces of repeati ng procedures without
any awareness of the underlying concepts
that base the interpretati on of a health-
disease phenomenon. Therefore we call
on researchers to conduct reviews on the
theoreti cal foundati ons of certain health-
disease phenomena and we propose ques-
ti ons related to the inclusion criteria, criti -
cal appreciati on and data extracti on to be
addressed in instruments.
DESCRIPTORS
Review
Measurements, methods and theories
Evaluati on of Research Programs and Tools
Validati on studies
RESUMEN
Este trabajo apunta a relatar la experiencia
de construcción y uti lización de un instru-
mento de captación y análisis de referen-

40. ciales teórico-metodológicos de estudios,
en revisiones sistemáti cas de literatura. Se
pretende que los investi gadores dispongan
de un instrumento adecuado para evaluar
los estudios que exponen sus fundamentos
teóricos y que los profesionales de salud
tengan acceso a aplicaciones teóricas para
los resultados de estudios y sus aplicacio-
nes en prácti cas de salud. La desarti cula-
ción entre teoría y prácti ca puede llevar a
falta de moti vación en el lugar de trabajo,
para prácti cas de reproducción de procedi-
mientos sin conciencia del concepto subya-
cente que da base a la interpretación del
fenómeno salud-enfermedad. Se llama la
atención de los investi gadores en senti do
de realizar análisis de fundamentos teóri-
cos del fenómeno salud-enfermedad en
estudio y se proponen cuesti ones relacio-
nadas al criterio de inclusión, apreciación
críti ca y extracción de datos a ser aborda-
dos en instrumentos.
DESCRIPTORES
Revisión
Mediciones, métodos y teorías
Evaluación de Programas e Instrumentos
de Investi gación
Estúdios de validación
Cassia Baldini Soares1, Tatiana Yonekura2
1498
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41. 2011; 45(6):1497-1503
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Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
INTRODUCTION
Numerous studies in the healthcare fi eld, parti cularly
those from the countries in the center of capitalism, face
strong obstacles in reaching healthcare providers in other
countries in order for these studies to be immediately
used. Access to knowledge follows the same standards of
unequal access to tangible and intangible assets produced
by human society.
Such acknowledgement, even if with diff erent the-
oreti cal-practi cal nuances, is generalized. Internati onal
authoriti es in charge of the world’s social progress worry
about this issue because, aft er all, it is related to the very
development of mankind(1).
MEDLINE aptly illustrates this point. Produced by the
U.S. Nati onal Library of Medicine, it is one of the main on-
line internati onal databases accessible in Lati n American
and the Caribbean and available through the Lati n-Amer-
ican and the Caribbean Center of Informati on in Health
Sciences, also known by its original name
- Biblioteca Regional de Medicina (BIREME)
– a specialized center of the OPAS/OMS ori-
ented towards technical cooperati on in sci-
enti fi c health informati on.
Consider the fact that the 4800 maga-

42. zines indexed in the MEDLINE database are
mainly publicati ons from countries located
in the northern hemisphere and from Aus-
tralia, 3200 of which are published in Eng-
lish-speaking countries. Of those, 90% are
published in North America or Western Eu-
rope (44% from the USA). The magazines of
the so-called developing countries account
for just 9% of the ti tles indexed(2).
In the past several years it has been ob-
served that there has been an increase in
the scienti fi c producti on of countries outside the United
States/European community/Japan circuit, which seems
to signal more investi gati ve availability. However, this has
not happened without a price(3).
Although a signifi cant part of the scienti fi c producti on
takes the format of academic merchandise(3), here we are
assuming that a part of the so-called scienti fi c communi-
ty(4) creates literature reviews for the purpose of improv-
ing access to scienti fi c producti on.
In the area of health they have become more and
more frequent, consti tuti ng a potent tool to gather and
analyze comprehensively and methodically the results of
research studies coming from several conti nents. The pur-
pose of a summary with the best fi ndings is to establish
recommendati ons to enable healthcare providers and the
populati on in general to have access to knowledge that
can be quickly and soundly used in and/or requested from
healthcare services.
Comprehensive and ti me-unlimited literature reviews
are currently called systemati c reviews and are not exclusive
to the health fi eld. They are able to gather the best outcomes

43. from the research available regarding a parti cular subject or
topic. Usually the objecti ve of a systemati c review is to an-
swer a questi on, and to do that it uses objecti ve, clear and
transparent methodological procedures to fi nd, evaluate and
summarize those research fi ndings, using a pre-designed in-
strument to handle each one of those phases.
Thus, a number of research centers have been formed
dedicated to sti mulati ng and monitoring systemati c litera-
ture reviews. Among the main centers, the following de-
serve menti on: The Cochrane Collaborati on, The Joanna
Briggs Insti tute, The Campbell Collaborati on, Centre for
Reviews and Disseminati on, EPPI Centre, NICE - Nati onal
Insti tute for Health and Clinical Excellence, SCIE - Social
Care Insti tute for Excellence, Criti cal Appraisal Skills Pro-
gramme (CASP) and many others.
By no means are we suggesti ng taking systemati c reviews
and evidence-based medicine and/or practi ce
– one of the more contemporarily stressed
uses – as a practi ce deserving merit per se.
Health is an att ribute of life in society and
does not equate with evidence; in additi on,
systemati c reviews, even those conducted in
centers whose strictness is acknowledged, can
fail depending on the methodology used (5):
The instruments usually indicated for
review-dedicated centers and used in the
analyses of systemati c reviews conducted by
scienti sts in the health arena have proven to
be adequate in capturing the results of qual-
itati ve and quanti tati ve research projects in
order to submit them to meta-analyses and/
or meta-syntheses. The general objecti ve of
that type of work is to produce guidelines

44. for acti ons in healthcare services.
The term meta-analysis expresses the analyti cal syn-
thesis of research studies that use quanti tati ve methods
to capture the reality exactly because its objecti ve is to
combine stati sti cally the gathered studies’ results regard-
ing a phenomenon of interest(6).
The term meta-synthesis refers to the analyti cal analysis
of a study’s results using qualitati ve methods to capture the
empirical objecti ve. Its origin is in the educati on fi eld, which
seems to have initi ally used meta-ethnographic techniques
to summarize huge sets of data in educati onal reports. It was
followed by the sociology fi eld, which diversifi ed even more
the objecti ves of the synthesizing process, including meta-
theory and meta-method, among others. In the healthcare
area, nursing is the profession that, drinking from that pri-
mary source, more oft en uses meta-synthesis(7).
We have to highlight that integrati ve reviews, which
have been part of the body of nursing investi gati ons,
consti tute a method of systemati c review among the tra-
Comprehensive
and time-unlimited
literature reviews
are currently called
systematic reviews and
are not exclusive to
the health fi eld. They
are able to gather the
best outcomes from
the research available

45. regarding a particular
subject or topic.
1499
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
Rev Esc Enferm USP
2011; 45(6):1497-1503
www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
diti onal narrati ve reviews. Thus, they have the quality of
being quite comprehensive because they can encompass
quanti tati ve and qualitati ve studies, analysis of theories
and methods and even empirical research results, and
so allow a more thorough approach to the phenomenon
of interest. Their objecti ve is to provide completeness to
the theme because it is interesti ng to encompass virtually
everything that has been studied about a subject. Once
they enable reaching more complex objecti ves, with more
amplitude, the synthesis obtained is able to contribute to
overcoming problems related to healthcare(8).
It is publicly known, at least by investi gators, that much
earlier and beyond this concern, historically there have
been other interests when a literature review is conduct-
ed, the most common and the oldest being, in any area of
science , the goal of learning state-of-the-art facts about a
certain subject. It is the state-of-the-art fact about the phe-
nomenon of interest that shapes the research’s questi on
and, in turn, defi nes more precisely the objecti ves of the

46. studies(9). Thus, it is an essenti al phase of every research
study either to learn the results of previously conducted
studies on the subject under considerati on or to learn the
theoreti cal references used when the subject studied is
based on one or more approaches(10). Similarly, a review of-
fers the possibility of advancing the elaborati on of theories
and also guiding politi cal and programmati c decisions(11).
Traditi onally, scienti sts conduct what has become
known as a narrati ve review of the literature. Although
there are criti cisms regarding the subjecti ve nature of this
type of review, investi gators in the area of human behav-
ior, for instance, draw att enti on to the importance of nar-
rati ve reviews; they have a diff erent nature from that of
a systemati c review and one has to decide on one or the
other by judging the potenti al of each one to meet the
objecti ves proposed by the research(11).
According to our experience, narrati ve reviews have
allowed advancements in theorizing on several health-
care practi ces, such as educati onal practi ces related to
drugs and damage control and educati onal practi ces in
healthcare provided by nurses. However, this type of re-
view does not meet the excellence criteria determined by
review centers. Therefore, it is important to add to the
scope of systemati c reviews, in the form of practi cal in-
struments, the capacity of discussing on the theoreti cal
aspects that ground research, which are best presented
by narrati ve reviews.
The objecti ves of this study are to discuss the impor-
tance of including theories and theoreti cal models in the
scope of systemati c reviews and to propose instruments
able to capture theoreti cal and methodological references
of studies when a researcher is performing a systemati c
review of a subject.

47. The purpose of this study is that investi gators have an ad-
equate instrument to collect and evaluate studies proposing
theoreti cal foundati ons in a systemati c review and, fi nally,
that healthcare providers have access to theoreti cal explana-
ti ons for studies’ results when preparing manuals, protocols
and other methods of guidance in healthcare services.
INCLUSION OF THEORIES AND
THEORETICAL MODELS IN
SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS:
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
The epistemological debate on scienti fi c investi ga-
ti on has ethical-politi cal and theoreti cal-methodological
dimensions. At the ethical-politi cal level we can say that
there is a certain perversion in the university’s role as a
privileged center of research. It is more and more leaving
behind the role of being a center of criti cism and creati vity
targeted towards the general common good to becoming
an insti tuti on that meets private interests.
The university — and the research done therein — has
moved towards meeting the market’s needs, leaving aside
its role of a social institution at the service of the public in-
terests that fi nance it, stimulating an individualistic stance
as to research and academic career, dissociating them
progressively from an humanizing project purposed to ar-
ticulate science with a social transformation project(9).
According to the dicti onary of philosophy, the scien-
ti fi c defi niti on of theory is as follows:
3rd: By opposition to vulgar knowledge: what constitutes
the object of a methodical conception, systematically orga-

48. nized and dependent, consequently, as to its format, from
certain scientifi c decisions and conventions that do not be-
long to common sense(12).
This third entry can be complemented with the fi ft h,
which expresses a more general sense of theory:
5th: By opposition to science’s detail: a broad synthesis that
proposes to explain a large number of facts considered, as
hypothesis, probable by most scientists at a certain time:
the atomic theory; the cellular theory. The time of personal
doctrines and systems has passed and, little by little, they
have been replaced by theories that represent the current
status of the science, and they give to this point of view the
result of everyone’s efforts. Cl. Bernard, Introd, à l’et. De la
méd. exp, III pare, cap.IV, §4(12).
It is also worthy for us to understand the meaning of
the theory within the ambit of scienti fi c knowledge as de-
noted by the following the entries:
A theory is a hypothesis verifi ed after being submitted to
the control of the mind and experimental criticism... But for
a theory to remain valid it should always modify itself ac-
cording to scientifi c progresses and be constantly submit-
ted to verifi cation and criticism according to the new facts
coming up. If we considered a theory perfect and refrained
from verifying it through scientifi c experience, it would be-
come a doctrine (Cl. Bernard, ibid., p. 325)(12).
1500
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2011; 45(6):1497-1503

49. www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
The scienti fi c community and, in a way, the whole so-
ciety in general acknowledge that the support of theories
used in scienti fi c investi gati ons is infl uenced by values of
a non-epistemic nature. From the philosophy fi eld come
concerns regarding how those values can alter the types
of data scienti sts collect from a certain area of knowledge,
someti mes transforming apparently irrelevant results into
crucial evidence. Consequently, non-epistemic values as-
sociated with a scienti fi c fi nding may infl uence the evalu-
ati on of theories, which att ributes to scienti sts the task
of refl ecti ng on how to deal with those values. Large fi -
nances for investi gati ons come from private organizati ons
interested in a research’s results. Pharmaceuti cal compa-
nies, for instance, in 2002 pledged to research more than
the enti re budget of the Nati onal Insti tute of Health (NIH),
i.e., US $24 billion in just that year. Thus, increasing eff orts
are required to refl ect on both ethical aspects and epis-
temic unraveling arising from fi nances, which are more
and more privati zed, for scienti fi c investi gati ons(13).
As can be observed, the ethical-politi cal dimension is
irrefutably interwoven with the theoreti cal-practi cal as-
pect. Thus, a researcher should, based on his ethical-polit-
ical commitment to constructi ng knowledge, structure his
research strictly upon theoreti cal-methodological bases
on which science has been historically established. This
requires deep knowledge of the theories composing the
hard core of his area of study and relates it to the catego-
ries, concepts and parti cular noti ons of the object being
explored in the study (9).

50. A systemati c review of how oft en theories are used in
the design of guidance manuals for clinical practi ces and
in the defi niti on of strategies to implement interventi ons
showed that it is necessary that papers bett er clarify the
use of the theory founding the interventi on practi ces be-
ing implemented, and that researchers develop more
clearly the logic of how the theory proposed operates in
the study at hand. Texts regarding studies based on theo-
ries should express those theories clearly, including quot-
ing the original literature of the theory being used. Ad-
diti onally, there should be clarity regarding why and how
a theory is adequate to explain the practi ce being imple-
mented, thus justi fying the interventi on proposed(14).
A nursing research study att empted to identi fy the
theories, theoreti cal tables and conceptual models used
in studies pertaining to stopping smoking. The authors
emphasized the importance of stati ng the theory to in-
form how and why things work and how a variable can be
related to another. We would like to stress that research
results that are clearly based on a theory can produce im-
possible soluti ons when fi ndings are disconnected from
the theories formalized by science. The authors indicate
that subsequent research on that subject should be bett er
arti culated with the theories. This is a fundamental con-
diti on for implementi ng policies in that area because for-
mulators of policies need to access consistent syntheses
in order to have healthcare practi ces implemented. The
theories arti culated with the fi ndings tend to speak on be-
half of fi ndings consistent with the phenomenon studied
and, in this way, can be understood and interpreted by
the managers of the healthcare policies (15).
A review on the use of theories in an important Lati n

51. American public health magazine revealed that references
to theories are infrequent in publicati ons; just a few pa-
pers menti on a theory or a theoreti cal model on which
authors base their research to explain the phenomenon
under investi gati on(16).
IMPLICATIONS IN HEALTHCARE
PRACTICES
Many observati ons have been made about the in-
creasing disarti culati on between theory and practi ce in
the qualifi cati on of healthcare providers and in healthcare
services. Studies we have conducted evidenced that at
least in the qualifi cati on of nurses, said disarti culati on can
be found when healthcare(17) and collecti ve healthcare(18)
educati on is provided where, similar to what happens in
other areas, the teaching of procedures takes precedence
over explaining the theory embedded in those procedures
and the theory, oft en enough, simply disappears.
The unilateral approach present in concepti ons that
excessively emphasize practi ce and leave aside the theory
is stressed here (19):
…human practice, included here the production of knowl-
edge, always encompasses a relationship between the
unique and private and the universal, which is a histori-
cal phenomenon once the subjective and objective human
properties involved therein result from broad and complex
relations between man and nature. When man transforms
nature, he is transformed and develops skills, creates
needs, which makes signifi cantly complex his vital activity,
i.e., he constitutes himself as a praxical being. It is in the
articulating unit between idea and action, or between theo-
ry and practice that human historicity takes place, concret-
ized in the movement of constitution of the social reality (19).

52. The authors endorse that for praxis to have mean-
ing and be creati ve instead of just repeti ti ve, theory and
practi ce have to be arti culated.
Using as image the plunging required in practice, we be-
lieve that an individual immersed in the immediate reality,
without the support of concepts summarizing the historical
experience of the human beings, is at risk of drowning in a
multitude of chaotic information or, in the best scenario, to
make slow and insignifi cant advances produced by unpro-
ductive splashing, like the one who has not learned how to
swim and has been thrown into the water(19).
Disarti culati on between theory and practi ce may lead
to lack of moti vati on in the work place, to the reproduc-
ti on of procedures with a lack of awareness of the under-
lying concepts founding the interpretati on of a health-
disease phenomenon, and consequently to frustrati on
1501
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
Rev Esc Enferm USP
2011; 45(6):1497-1503
www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
because no soluti ons are produced with those practi ces,
which would only be possible through idea-acti on and
acti on-idea refl ecti ons.

53. The process of producti on in healthcare is part of the
service area, the third sector in capitalist producti on. Like
the other producti on processes, it uses Fordist/Taylorist,
and more recently, Toyoti st methods to organize work,
which restates the theoreti cal-practi cal disarti culati on
and increasingly establishes the reiterati ve praxis. A re-
cent study with nurses who work in primary healthcare
units promotes the assistance model where the axle guid-
ing the work is the planning of results, oriented towards
rati onalizati on instead of towards refl ecti ng on the work-
ing process, which signifi cantly wears out workers and
produces endless repeti ti ons of acti viti es without allowing
ti me and space to enable problem solving and advance-
ments in the working processes(20).
That fi nding, among other classic ones arising from the
analysis of the irremediable work division in the process of
healthcare producti on(21), also hegemonic in the public ar-
ea(22), leads to huge dissati sfacti on in the healthcare work in
nursing. Thus, here we advocate that it is possible to over-
come this alienati on by qualifying and improving subjects
so that they dominate the object, purpose and instruments
in their work and by having them organize the work in ways
that share the knowledge required for a creati ve praxis.
For Gramsci, we cannot prepare individuals for the more
and more complex modern activities – with which science
is so intimately interwoven – without holding as basis a
general formative theoretical-practical and political culture.
This preparation can qualify professionals able to reach
the understanding about their insertion and their work with-
in the society, able to work with technical knowledge, to
incorporate the social issues and assume ethical stances
capable to meet the specifi c needs of the social reality
where they will perform(22).

54. This is not possible without theoretical-practical
articulation!
INSTRUMENTS PROPOSED
Due to the proposal discussed above, which draws the
att enti on of researchers in the sense of conducti ng analy-
ses on the theoreti cal foundati ons of the health-disease
phenomenon being studied, we propose that reviews be
conducted which will be able to evidence the theories
used in investi gati ons, showing their arti culati on with the
methodology and operati onal aspects. That assessment
will certainly enable the feedback required so that values
related to the necessary theoreti cal-practi cal arti culati on
concreti ze new ways of producti on and/or divulging of
knowledge, clearly stati ng their theoreti cal contents and
their appropriateness to the characterizati on of the object
being studied.
Therefore, and considering as a starti ng point the sys-
temati c review instruments made available by the JBI, we
propose the following instruments related to initi al assess-
ment of the inclusion criteria targeti ng selecti ng studies
within the ambit of review which describe the theory or
theoreti cal model (Figure 1), criti cal assessment to evalu-
ate the study and check methodological criteria (Figure 2),
and data extracti on aiming at describing the study’s char-
acteristi cs to ease data analysis (Figure 3).
Figure 1 – Instrument for initial assessment of the inclusion
crite-
ria. Adapted from the Joanna Briggs Institute – São Paulo –
2010
Figure 2 – Instrument for critical assessment. Adapted from the
Joanna Briggs Institute – São Paulo – 2010

55. 1502
Rev Esc Enferm USP
2011; 45(6):1497-1503
www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
Figure 3 – Instrument to extract data. Adapted from the Joanna
Briggs Institute – São Paulo – 2010
Based on the initial assessment instrument (Figure
1), which checks if the study meets the inclusion cri-
teria or not, it is possible to verify if a theory or theo-
retical model was described in the study. According to
our experience so far, we attempted to certify that the
research would at least refer to the theoretical frame-
works already used. As for the instrument that performs
a critical analysis of the selected studies (Figure 2), it
has helped us to assess the components (categories,
concepts and notions) of the theories used to sound
the studies, as well as to analyze the extent to which
the addressed theory is critically evaluated in terms of
the possible empirical outcomes of the studies. There-
fore, the strengths and weaknesses of the theories are
observed in order to explain the results. The data col-
lection instrument (Figure 3) aims to extract from the
text any evidence of the analysis we performed on the
theoretical components of the reviewed studies.

56. CONCLUSION
A work instrument should not be so fundamental that
it could ease closed processes where the intenti onality of
a creati ve work disappeared and prevented more produc-
ti ve results from being achieved based on an organiza-
ti on of the work as a serial producti on line, as seems to
happen with academic papers – where expressions such
as high producti vity and/or consumpti on of arti cles wit-
ness this trend. The academic work, as much as any other
social praxis, should not and cannot allow this degree of
alienati on if it makes worker scienti sts mere reproducers
of investi gati ve procedures.
An investi gator is an acti ve worker, politi cally placed
related to the object being studied, able to make choices
related to theoreti cal references and methodological pro-
cedures capable of expressing the object bett er.
However, access to the technologies available in the
society used in the proper place, i.e. as a means to reach
purposes previously intended by the worker, is an impor-
tant element in the constructi on of knowledge.
Therefore, we believe that in a systemati c review the
instruments should easily identi fy, analyze, describe and
systemati ze data and, to a certain point, indicate a trend
of what is being valued by the scienti fi c community. If the
instruments available included a proper epistemological
dimension of the academic work, investi gators would be
helped in their work of constructi ng knowledge.
Our experience using the instruments proposed here-
in has shown several potenti aliti es: by verifying, analyz-
ing, and collecti ng the theoreti cal elements of the stud-
ies, it was possible to present to researchers and general

57. health care workers, in a clear and systemati c manner, the
advancements and limitati ons of health care studies and
practi ces that use the reviewed theories. This process pro-
motes de full development of undergraduate and gradu-
ate students.
Scienti sts have to demand more and more from the in-
sti tuti ons that conduct or register systemati c reviews, the
inclusion of theoreti cal reviews or reviews concerned with
the theoreti cal dimension of the empirical work, either
with a qualitati ve or quanti tati ve nature, or both.
Hardly ever have we found instruments available for
this type of review, prepared to handle designs of empiri-
cal research. Here we propose to conti nue and improve a
trend set in this sense, already used in the JBI, which also
shelters opinion studies and makes available instruments
to perform them.
1503
Systematic review of theories: a tool to evaluate and
analyze selected studies
Soares CB, Yonekura T
Rev Esc Enferm USP
2011; 45(6):1497-1503
www.ee.usp.br/reeusp/
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Correspondence addressed to: Cássia Soares Baldini
Av. Dr. Enéas de Carvalho Aguiar, 419 – Cerqueira César
CEP 05403-000 – São Paulo, SP, Brazil
12
Ethnographic Methods:
Applications From Developmental
Cultural Psychology
Peggy J. Miller, Julie A. Hengst, and Su-hua Wang
Ethnographic modes of inquiry have had a long and
distinguished history in the
social sciences, especially in anthropology and sociology. Like
all interpretive
methods, ethnographic approaches are oriented to the study of
meaning, but,
in the case of ethnographic methods, meaning is understood to
be structured
by culture—that is, by collectively shared and transmitted
symbols, under-
standings, and ways of being. The word ethnography dates from
the emergence
of anthropology as a discipline in the late-19th century.
Anthropologists coined

62. the term to describe monograph-length descriptions of people
who were ethnoi
or “other” (Erickson, 1986). Intrigued by distant cultures, many
of which were
European colonies, they traveled to far-off outposts to see them
first-hand.
Ethnographic methods evolved out of these cross-cultural
encounters. The goal
was to understand a particular culture on its own terms, to
represent the
meaning of actions and institutions from “the native’s point of
view” (Malinow-
ski, 1922). In his ground-breaking study of the Trobriand
Islanders, Malinowski
combined long-term participant-observation with in-depth
interviewing, the
two hallmarks of modern ethnography (Erickson, 1986).
Ethnographic methods
remain the privileged mode of inquiry in cultural anthropology
and have become
increasingly important in the fields of education and
communication.
In psychology, where the prevailing orientation has been
positivist, propos-
als for a “second” or “cultural” psychology were part of the
intellectual landscape
from its inception as a discipline (Cahan & White, 1992;
Jahoda, 1989). Wilhelm
Wundt wrote extensively on cultural psychology and was
“captivated by the
ethnographic material he pursued so tirelessly” (Jahoda, 1993,
p. 181). Despite
this early history, modern psychology has excluded
ethnographic approaches
from its methodological repertoire. Even community

63. psychology, with its com-
mitments to contextual understandings and to collaborative
models of research,
has marginalized ethnographic methods (Stewart, 2000).
However, the recent renewal of interest in cultural psychology
makes it
timely to consider the nature of ethnographic methods, given
the affinity of
ethnography for problems in cultural psychology. Although
psychologists from
219
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10595-012
Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in
Methodology and
Design, edited by P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes, and L. Yardley
Copyright © 2003 American Psychological Association. All
rights reserved.
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65. 220 MILLER ET AL.
many corners of the discipline have contributed to recreating a
cultural psychol-
ogy (e.g., Bruner, 1990; Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz,
1996; Gergen,
1985; Markus & Kitayama, 1991), scholars of child
development have played
a particularly important role, and some have written extensively
about ethno-
graphic methods. In addition, there are several traditions of
interdisciplinary
study of child development in which ethnographic methods have
been privi-
leged. For these reasons, this chapter will draw heavily on
developmental
questions to illustrate the assumptions and aims of ethnographic
methods.
But before we turn to specific instantiations, it is necessary to
provide
additional background about the nature of ethnographic
methods. First, it is
important to stress that ethnographic modes of inquiry do not
constitute a
single, unified perspective or set of methods. Rather, here, as in
qualitative
inquiry in general, diversity reigns. This is amply illustrated in
Denzin and
Lincoln’s (1994) Handbook of Qualitative Research. Denzin and
Lincoln’s intro-
duction to their volume provides an excellent survey of the
diversity of interpre-
tive paradigms. They see this diversity as anchored in
positivism, on the one
extreme, and postmodernism, on the other. The naive realist

66. position—there
is a reality out there that can be studied objectively and
understood—is coun-
tered by the postmodern, poststructuralist position of radical
doubt. Articulat-
ing the latter position, Denzin (1996) wrote, “There can never
be a final, accu-
rate representation of what was meant or said, only different
textual
representations of different experiences” (p. 132).
Between these two extremes are the middle-ground positions of
postpositiv-
ism and constructivism. According to Denzin and Lincoln
(1994), postpositivism
rests on the assumption that reality can never be fully
apprehended, only
approximated. Postpositivists use multiple methods to capture
as much of
reality as possible; emphasize the discovery and verification of
theories; and
apply traditional evaluative criteria, such as validity. Denzin
and Lincoln
(1994) defined constructivism as involving “a relativist
ontology (there are
multiple realities), a subjectivist epistemology (knower and
subject create un-
derstandings), and a naturalistic (in the natural world) set of
methodological
procedures” (p. 13). Evaluative criteria include trustworthiness,
credibility,
and confirmability.
Some Examples of Problems for Study
Denzin and Lincoln emphasized that these various positions are

67. realized within
particular disciplinary traditions that inflect them in distinctive
ways and that
each researcher enters the research process from the vantage
point of his or
her particular interpretive community, with its unique history of
research
practices. The interpretive community to which we belong is an
interdisciplin-
ary community that has tried to bring together culture and
children into a
culture-sensitive understanding of child development. For the
most part, this
community has drawn on the middle-ground positions of
postpositivism and
constructivism (e.g., Gaskins, 1994; Goncu, 1999; Grau &
Walsh, 1998; Jessor,
Colby, & Shweder, 1996; Rizzo, Corsaro, & Bates, 1992;
Shweder et al., 1998).
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py
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 221

69. Consider, for example, Gaskins, Miller, and Corsaro’s (1992)
framing of a
set of papers pertaining to children’s socialization, one of the
fundamental
problems in developmental cultural psychology. Gaskins et al.
advocated an
interpretive approach that views reality as socially constructed;
recognizes
that the complex relationship between the researcher and the
participants is
part of the research question; and defines knowledge as
understanding that
makes sense to the actors themselves in terms of collectively
shared interpretive
frameworks, a criterion that privileges the actor’s point of view.
This approach
makes sense given the kinds of problems that this community of
scholars has
identified as central to their interests, problems that rest on the
premise that
all children grow up to be cultural beings. This characteristic is
unique to our
species and is perhaps the most important reason why human
beings experience
a prolonged period of immaturity (Bruner, 1972). The process
of human develop-
ment is thus inextricably bound to the process of enculturation,
of orienting
oneself within systems of meaning.
But, as Gaskins et al. (1992) pointed out, no child orients him-
or herself
within culture in general. Rather, each child navigates a specific
culture, with
a specific set of beliefs, practices, and interpretive frameworks.

70. The process of
becoming a participant in a culture is therefore enabling and
limiting at the
same time. Socialization, the universal process of becoming a
participant in a
culture, cannot be understood except by studying enculturation,
the process of
meaning creation in particular cultures (Mead, 1963).
Thus, the fundamental developmental question from this
perspective is
how do children come to invest cultural resources with
meaning? Born into a
world of already existing traditions and semiotic systems,
children use their
growing interpretive abilities to participate in cultural practices.
This process
is constructive and it is necessarily individual and collective. It
is individual
in that each child creates personal meaning out of the particular,
necessarily
limited set of resources to which he or she is exposed. It is
collective in that
these resources were created by previous generations and are
made available
to the child by other people. By participating with caregivers
and peers in day-
by-day encounters with cultural resources, children shape their
own develop-
mental experiences while at the same time contributing to the
production of
social order (Cook-Gumperz & Corsaro, 1986).
No one has probed a child’s meaning-making process more
profoundly than
Jean Briggs in her book, Inuit Morality Play (1998). Offspring

71. of Never in Anger
(J. Briggs, 1970), a classic of psychological anthropology, and
informed by three
decades of work with the Inuit, this study focuses on a single
three-year-old
child, Chubby Maata, as she engages a distinctive kind of
emotional drama
that is common to many Inuit families. J. Briggs sees culture as
a “ ‘bag of
ingredients’ actively used by individuals in creating and
maintaining their
social-cognitive worlds” (p. 14). This view allows her to realize
that she cannot
provide a full interpretation of the meanings that Chubby Maata
is making
because every fragment of data “explodes with potential
meanings” (p. 20). But
it is not only the witnessing ethnographer but the child herself
who has to live
with this ambiguity. Chubby Maata is making educated guesses,
based on her
past and present apprehension of the patterns in her own and
other people’s
words and actions. The ethnographer’s task is to follow the
child. She is making
Co
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73. on
.
222 MILLER ET AL.
educated guesses about Chubby Maata’s educated guesses. The
resulting eth-
nography is “a cloth full of holes, the very sort of cloth that
Chubby Maata
herself was weaving” (p. 20).
The metaphor of a cloth full of holes is compatible with Howard
Becker’s
(1996) understanding of a key interpretive challenge. Operating
out of the
Chicago school of sociology, Becker focuses not on
geographically distant cul-
tures but on poor urban neighborhoods, medical schools, the art
world, and
other contexts that are nearer at hand. He says that people—he
is speaking
of adults, not children—are “not sure what things do mean: they
make vague
and woolly interpretations of events and people” (p. 60). The
implication for
ethnographers is that we should respect people’s confusion and
indecision and
not represent their meanings as more coherent or stable than
they are.
The general problem of how children make meaning out of
cultural resources
implies several questions: What exactly is happening here? That
is, what kinds

74. of activities are these children and their companions engaging
in? What are the
folk theories—informal, local belief systems about children,
child-rearing, and
development—that inform and rationalize their activities? What
are the larger
contexts and activities in which these activities are embedded?
To some social
scientists, these will seem like uninteresting questions, inviting
“mere” descrip-
tion. But as Becker (1996) stressed, it is all too easy to think we
know what people
are up to. He cautioned, “Don’t make up what you could find
out” (p. 59).
Play provides an excellent example of how these general
questions have
been applied in a specific research arena. In the past decade,
play has inspired
several substantial ethnographic studies in different parts of the
world. Schol-
ars have asked questions about the types of play that occur
under everyday
conditions (e.g., pretend play, exploratory play, teasing), about
the folk theories
that parents hold about the nature of children, of development,
and of play
itself (e.g., play develops naturally to children vs. play must be
taught), and
about the larger contexts and activities in which play is
embedded (e.g., do
children contribute to the family’s livelihood, and if so, how
and from what
age, and how much time does this leave for play? Gaskins,
1996; Goldman,
1998; Goncu, 1999; Lancy, 1996; Taylor & Carlson, 2000).

75. These studies have produced findings that challenge
fundamental assump-
tions about the nature of play (Miller, 2001). They show that
play is constituted
differently within and across cultures: communities vary in the
types of play;
the time, space, and personnel available for play; whether play
is valued by
adults; what role, if any, play is seen to have in children’s
development; and
the kinds of imaginative resources that are drawn on for play.
These findings
challenge developmentalists to revise our assumption that
pretend play belongs
to a single ontological category. When viewed from the
perspective of this or
that local meaning system, pretend play emerges as a blessed
spiritual encoun-
ter, demon possession, deceit, or self-indulgent idleness.
Ethnographic Methods: An Overview
Ethnographic research involves taking up a rigorous program of
scientific in-
quiry marked by repeated and varied observations and data
collection; detailed
Co
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77. ti
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 223
recordings of, and reactions to, such observations; a skeptical
stance by the
researcher that forces as many questions from the continuous
interpretation
of the data as it provides answers; and the presentation of
ongoing interpreta-
tions to the larger scientific community. Despite the diversity,
common issues
and practices cut across ethnographic research, whether
conducted in the origi-
nating discipline of anthropology for the purposes of
documenting whole cul-
tures or conducted by researchers addressing a diversity of
questions across
multiple disciplines. In this section we first address
characteristics common
to ethnographic methods, then briefly outline four key phases in
ethnographic
research. For more detailed discussions of how to conduct
ethnographic re-
search see Agar (1980), Erickson (1986), Hymes (1982), and
Wolcott (1995).
Characteristics of Ethnographic Inquiry
One important characteristic of ethnographic methods is the
sustained and

78. engaged nature of data collection. “Classic” ethnographic
studies within anthro-
pology focus on cultures “foreign” to the researcher and, as a
consequence,
fieldwork necessarily includes time for the researcher to
become familiar with,
and learn to navigate within, unfamiliar physical, social, and
communicative
environments (e.g., Basso, 1996; C. L. Briggs, 1986; J. Briggs,
1970; Schieffelin,
1990). As ethnographic methods have been taken up by
researchers in other
disciplines, such as education and psychology, and applied to
problems closer
to “home,” the researcher often enters a research site where he
or she has
already spent time and is acquainted with “local” linguistic,
social, or institu-
tional histories and practices (e.g., Baym, 2000; Denzin, 1993;
Giorgio, 1999;
Heath, 1983; Prior, 1998; Wolf & Heath, 1992). In such cases,
time “in the
field” may be shorter as the researcher is able to draw more
heavily on personal
experiences and communicative practices in customizing data
collection. In
either case, to penetrate participants’ meaning systems,
ethnographers must
familiarize themselves with the participants’ community—the
physical and
institutional settings in which they live, the daily routines that
they and their
companions follow, the beliefs that guide their actions, and the
linguistic and
other semiotic systems that mediate all of these contexts and
activities.

79. Through such sustained community contact, researchers
necessarily be-
come deeply engaged in the lives, practices, celebrations, and
problems of their
participants. In remote and isolated sites, the very survival of
the researcher
may depend on the strengths of the relationships the researcher
has been able
to forge and the goodwill of the community members under
study (e.g., J.
Briggs, 1970; Gottlieb & Graham, 1993). Even when life and
limb are not at
stake, the research itself is shaped and strengthened by the
willingness of
individuals to participate in the researcher’s project. Much has
been written
about the complexities of researcher–participant relationships in
the interpre-
tive process (see Behar, 1993; Scheper-Hughes, 1992; Wolcott,
1995; Wolf,
1992). In fact, Engstrom (1996) argued that one way to measure
the validity
and generalizability of research findings is to look for
successful collaborations
between the researchers and the participants. In ethnographic
work, research-
ers often find that because of their relationships with
participants and their
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224 MILLER ET AL.
developing emic understandings, they are in a unique position
to help speak
across cultures on behalf of the group being studied (e.g.,
Basso, 1996; Philips,
1983) and to help identify avenues of change that support
community goals
(e.g., Engstrom, 1996). These opportunities for personal, social,
and political
intervention make ethnographic research an attractive choice for
action re-
search traditions in education (e.g., Cochran-Smith & Lytle,
1993) and commu-
nity psychology (e.g., Stewart, 2000).
Ethnographic methods also carry with them an implicit
multicultural per-
spective, a perspective that is often made explicit within
particular research
programs (e.g., Miller, Fung, & Mintz, 1996; Rogoff, Mistry,
Goncu, & Mosier,
1993). In attempting to apprehend local meanings,
ethnographers try not to
mistake their own deeply taken-for-granted, culturally saturated
understand-
ings for those of the study participants—a challenge that is

82. never fully met.
To anticipate an example that will come later in the chapter, if
the goal is to
appreciate the interpretive frameworks of parents from a
particular American
community, and the ethnographer is Taiwanese, then the process
of bringing
these parents’ (American) frameworks into focus will also
expose the ethnogra-
pher’s own (Taiwanese) frameworks. Thus, even when
ethnographers study a
single cultural case, they aim for double vision at least. In fact,
American
parents and Taiwanese ethnographers belong to multiple
communities and are
likely to live and breathe meanings that flow within and across
multiple cul-
tures. This does not mean that cultural boundaries have no
reality, but it does
make a mockery of the idea that cultural boundaries can be
neatly drawn in
this increasingly globalized world.
Another characteristic of ethnographic inquiry is that data
collection and
analyses are both microscopic and holistic (Gaskins et al.,
1992). Focusing
on the details of particular participants and practices,
ethnographic methods
capture unanticipated nuances and variations of human
interaction. However,
Geertz (1973) argued that detailed description of behavior
alone, what he calls
“thin description,” is not sufficient to recoup meaning. Instead,
ethnographers
engage in what Geertz (1973) termed “thick description.” To

83. ensure that their
understandings are culturally valid, ethnographers ground their
interpreta-
tions of cultural events in an accumulation of specific details
from the events
of everyday life and from the participants’ reflections on those
events. It is in
this way that ethnographers approach broad interpretations
“from the direction
of exceedingly extended acquaintances with extremely small
matters” (Geertz,
1973, p. 21). By way of illustrating the distinction between
“thin” and “thick”
description, Geertz (1973) borrowed Ryle’s example of two
boys who are “rapidly
contracting the eyelids of their right eyes” (p. 6). Are they
blinking, winking,
parodying a wink, faking a wink, practicing a wink? It is
impossible to say
without understanding the multiple embedded contexts in which
these actions
took place and the socially established communicative code that
renders them
intelligible. Thus, it is necessary not only to examine actions
microscopically
but also to contextualize them in a more holistic sense to
successfully describe
an event as it was understood by the actors themselves.
Finally, ethnographic inquiry is a dynamic process marked by
generative
and self-corrective methodologies (Gaskins et al., 1992).
Successful researchers
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 225
need to be flexible from the beginning, prepared to revise or
discard initial
research questions and adjust data collection procedures as they
position them-
selves physically and socially in the research site. J. Briggs
(1970), for example,
set out to study shamans among the Inuit, only to discover that
shamans no
longer existed in the community she had entered. When Miller,
Sandel, Liang,
and Fung (2001) formulated their research questions about the
role of personal
storytelling in Longwood, hell-raising stories were not on their
list; the parents
in this community brought such stories to their attention. In
addition, research-
ers must be open to learning locally appropriate ways to ask
questions and
hold interviews (C. L. Briggs, 1986); they must develop
effective ways to present
their research project and their role as researcher to the

86. participants, a problem
that is especially complex when the participants are children
(Corsaro, 1985,
1988); and they must learn to situate themselves physically and
socially in
ways that allow them to observe the phenomena of interest
(Ochs, 1988). Often,
such negotiations include a willingness on the part of the
researcher to accept
the interactions that are offered and to look for new ways to
augment data
collection (Prior, 1998).
The generative and self-correcting nature of ethnographic
inquiry is also
evident during data analysis and writing. The interpretive
process, guided by
the notion of cultural validity, is theory-generating. The goal is
to provide a
deeper understanding of the multiple perspectives that are
operating in all
human interactions. Therefore, categories used in analysis are
not predeter-
mined but are developed through a continual process of iterative
division,
classification, and evaluation (Bloom, 1974; Strauss, 1987). The
researcher
begins with a tentative descriptive framework—what Pike
(1967) called an
etic classification—often gleaned from other data sets or
theoretical positions,
and proceeds to test that framework through successive passes
through the
data. The outcome of this self-corrective process of constant
comparison is an
emic classification (Pike, 1967) that captures the patterns in the

87. participants’
meanings. In addition, deepening interpretations of the data
emerge when
researchers revisit earlier work. For example, accounts written
early in a
research program are necessarily expanded in later accounts as
researchers
combine existing data with new data. (This process will be
described more in
the latter half of this chapter.) In other cases, researchers apply
their evolving
perspectives to a reinterpretation of earlier work. When Wolf
(1992) reexamined
her 30-year-old field notes concerning the case of a young
Taiwanese mother
who suddenly began behaving in a decidedly aberrant manner,
she was dissati-
sfied with her earlier account. In an effort to better display the
multiple perspec-
tives of participants and researcher, she ended up producing
three separate
accounts of the same incident. (See J. Briggs, 1998, for an
excellent example
in the same vein.)
Phases of Ethnographic Research
Despite the flexibility inherent in ethnographic research
practices, the research
process generally unfolds in a series of phases.
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226 MILLER ET AL.
DEVELOPING QUESTIONS AND GAINING ACCESS. The
ethnographer begins the
research process by formulating a problem for study, drawing
on previous
scholarship, and learning as much as possible about the
particular community
or institution in which the study will be conducted. Any
previous ethnographic
work and other formal or informal sources of information about
the same
community are invaluable in allowing the researcher to hone the
initial re-
search questions, anticipate field conditions, and design an
approach that will
best address the research questions. It is in this phase that the
researcher
makes initial decisions about what in psychology is referred to
as subject
sampling. Ethnographers, however, are less concerned about
random sampling
than they are about specifying the social positioning of the
participants who
agree to work with them, thereby delimiting their
interpretations. The re-

90. searcher must make preliminary contacts to obtain initial
institutional permis-
sion to conduct research and work to establish relationships
with possible
participants. In the classic case, the ethnographer enters the
research site as
an outsider, and the task of gaining access to particular groups
or institutions
may take a great deal of patience and interpersonal skill. In our
own work,
which spans several working-class and middle-class
communities in the United
States and Taiwan, we have found that doors open much more
rapidly if the
ethnographer has a trusted associate in the community.
The importance of the process of negotiating access to a
research site
cannot be overstated. The physical and social positioning the
researcher is able
to establish and maintain within the community of study
critically shapes the
entire research enterprise. Nor is this a task that applies only to
the initial
phase of fieldwork. Ethnographer–participant relationships must
be renegoti-
ated throughout the course of study, and this requires ongoing
documentation
and reflection. In other words, this relationship becomes an
object of study in
its own right, adding to the broader research questions. The
epistemological
assumptions outlined earlier for constructivist ethnographies
imply that the
knowledge that is gained through ethnographic inquiry will be
conditioned by

91. the ethnographer’s positioning in the local scene and by the
nature of the
relationships that he or she is able to create with participants.
For example,
a female ethnographer will have access to certain kinds of
contexts and infor-
mants, a male ethnographer to others. An ethnographer who has
connections
to cultural elites will have access to different perspectives than
an ethnographer
who has connections to the poor. Each ethnographer will come
to an understand-
ing that is inevitably partial. The rigor of this approach lies
partly in delineat-
ing that partiality, which itself contains clues as to how local
meanings are
constructed.
COLLECTING AND MANAGING DATA. Ethnographic
research is known for pro-
ducing copious amounts of data. Learning to direct data
collection and organize
data for ongoing interpretation are daunting tasks for novice
ethnographers.
The bulk of the data collection occurs during fieldwork as the
researcher care-
fully compiles detailed records of research-related activities and
his or her
initial reactions and interpretations (Wolcott, 1995). Such
documentation takes
many forms, including field notes, interviews, indirect
observations, and
artifacts.
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 227
Field notes (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995) are written
descriptions and
reflections about the participant–observation. Most researchers
make notes in
their logs as frequently as possible, jotting down short notes
“on the fly” and
more detailed notes later. Field notes may contain physical
descriptions of the
site (augmented by photographs, maps, sketches, etc.),
descriptions of daily
routines of the participants (augmented by work schedules,
seasonal activities,
etc.), and detailed descriptions of observed interactions and
participant inter-
views. To facilitate such detailed record keeping, researchers
routinely make
use of any technologies appropriate to the site (e.g.,
audiorecording, video-
recording, etc.).
Interviews may be conducted with individuals or groups, and

94. the general
organization of the interview is usually planned in advance.
However, specific
interview techniques depend on the nature of the community
and research
questions (see C. L. Briggs, 1986; Mishler, 1986), as will be
illustrated in the
final section of this chapter. Whenever possible, interviews are
audiorecorded
and transcribed for analysis. In addition to more formal
interviews, ethnogra-
phers find opportunities to insert their questions into casual
conversation.
The researcher may also collect indirect observations by
working with
participant–collaborators, especially in cases where the
phenomenon of interest
occurs infrequently or only with limited audiences. In such
cases, research
assistants are taught to take notes or make recordings, ask
questions, and
make specific observations to address the research questions.
Finally, collecting artifacts about the community, the
participants, the
physical setting, the institution, and the practices may also be a
critical form
of data collection. Which artifacts are appropriate to collect will
depend on
the goals of the research project but may include maps,
newspapers, legal
documents, popular texts, diaries, letters, tools, and so forth. In
addition, the
researcher will need to make notes about the circumstances and
reasons for

95. obtaining each artifact.
INTERPRETING AND ANALYZING DATA. Data analysis
begins early in the re-
search process and continues throughout what is often a long
program of
ethnographic inquiry, with new research projects building on
previous ones.
In fact, effective fieldwork requires the direction such ongoing
interpretation
provides (e.g., who to interview next, what questions to ask,
what activities to
observe, etc.). Fitting with ethnography’s general goal of
developing under-
standings consistent with the meaning-making practices of the
community
being studied, the interpretive process is primarily inductive in
nature, and
coding systems and categories evolve from a continual
comparison of the grow-
ing data set (see Strauss, 1987; Wolcott, 1994). Novice
ethnographers who are
familiar with preset coding systems applied intact to complete
data sets often
find the evolving and inductive coding practices of
ethnographic work difficult
to manage.
The specific nature of the coding systems and types of analyses
vary widely,
depending on the goals of the specific research project and the
disciplinary
training and theoretical inclinations of the specific researchers.
Early analysis
is often focused on developing categories that account for the
diversity and

96. breadth of the data being collected. As the analysis progresses,
categories are
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228 MILLER ET AL.
filled in with more depth, and interconnections within and
across categories
are analyzed. Particular examples may be extracted for in-depth
analysis, as
we illustrate in the next section of this chapter.
The credibility of the findings is in part a result of a well-
documented
and systematic analysis of the data. Although not focused on
reliability in a
traditional sense, ethnographic researchers are very concerned
about present-
ing “accurate” or “valid” representations of the phenomena in
question from
the participants’ perspective—that is, getting the “story” right.
One way trust-

98. worthiness of interpretations is achieved is through comparing
and integrating
data from different sources, a process often referred to as
triangulation (Denzin,
1978; Marshall & Rossman, 1995; Rizzo et al., 1992). In
addition, researchers
will discuss their interpretations with participant–collaborators,
seeking both
contesting and supportive responses, which will allow them to
thicken their
analysis or reinterpret their data.
Though uncommon, it is possible for ethnographic studies to
blend quanti-
tative coding systems with qualitative coding strategies
(Gaskins, 1994; Rizzo
et al., 1992). For example, qualitative analysis of interview data
can be used
to illuminate the meaning of survey data obtained via
conventional quantitative
methods. As well, emic descriptions derived from fieldwork can
be used to
construct interview protocols or questionnaires that yield
quantifiable results.
However, it is important to dispel the myth that qualitative
analyses are
valuable only insofar as they can be converted into quantitative
analyses
(Hymes, 1982).
WRITING. One way of stating a guiding principle for
ethnographic writing
is “write early, write often.” This process begins with the
researcher’s log
and field notes and continues through the construction of
published accounts.

99. However, it is in the culmination of writing up and
disseminating ethnographic
accounts that the fieldwork of specific research projects is
connected with
broader programs of scientific inquiry. Like all research
projects, “Fieldwork
is validated only through the requisite reporting that results
from it” (Wolcott,
1995, p. 66). Written accounts of ethnographic work take many
forms, but
typically the ongoing analyses of the data obtained during an
ethnographic
research project yield multiple publications.
In recent decades, the textual practices of ethnographers, as
well as the
appropriateness of various types of ethnographic accounts, have
been at the
center of intense debates (see Behar & Gordon, 1995; Clifford
& Marcus, 1986;
Geertz, 1988; Richardson, 1997; Van Maanan, 1988; Wolf,
1992). As ethnogra-
phers have grappled with poststructuralist views of culture,
issues of represen-
tation have become a critical consideration. These issues
include how to repre-
sent “others” or let “others” represent themselves; how to
represent the
researcher’s roles, limitations, and biases within the research
site; how to
appropriately blend multiple, often contesting, perspectives; and
how to respect
the diversity and complexity of cultural practices. This has led
to a diversifica-
tion in published research accounts as ethnographers have
experimented with

100. issues of representation in ethnographic writing (see Behar,
1993; Sereme-
takis, 1991).
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 229
The Nonnarration of Children’s Transgressions:
An Interpretive Puzzle
In this section we address an interpretive puzzle from our own
work by way
of illustrating how ethnographers proceed in analyzing and
interpreting data.
The puzzle arose from a program of ethnographic research that
is comparative
in design, involving middle-class Taiwanese families in Taipei,
Taiwan, and
middle-class European American families in Longwood (a
pseudonym), a neigh-
borhood in Chicago (Fung, 1999; Miller, Hengst, Alexander, &
Sperry, 2000;

102. Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997; Miller et al., 2001).
How the Puzzle Arose
To set the stage for this puzzle, it is necessary to present some
background
about earlier phases of this research. The initial goal of the
project was to
investigate how personal storytelling is used to socialize young
children within
the family context. Do these families engage in personal
storytelling—telling
oral stories about one’s past experiences—in ways that involve
young children?
If so, how is personal storytelling defined and practiced with
young children?
We were particularly interested in the modes of participation
and interpretive
strategies that families used in narrating young children’s past
experiences.
Note that all of these questions are versions of the “What
exactly is happening
here?” question.
Through participant–observation and video recording of
ordinary family
interaction, we discovered that stories involving the focal child
(2 years, 6
months, of age) as protagonist occurred at remarkably similar
rates (about
four per hour on average) in the Taipei and Longwood families.
In addition,
in both cases, stories were conarrated with young children, and
stories were
told about the child in the child’s presence.

103. These similarities coexisted with a striking difference in the
content and
manner of narration. The Taipei mothers were much more likely
than their
Longwood counterparts to treat children’s past transgressions as
a didactic
resource, as opportunities to teach young children the difference
between right
and wrong. Transgressions were talked of openly in front of
siblings, research-
ers, and guests; explicitly, often in strong language; and at
length. Rarely was
the language mitigated, although subtle nonverbal cues were
used to signal
humor. The ethnographer was treated as a judging witness to the
child’s mis-
deeds. By contrast, the Longwood families operated with a
distinct self-favor-
ability bias in narrating young children’s experiences. They
rarely told stories
about the child’s past transgressions. When they did so, they
managed to
portray the child in a positive light despite his or her misdeed,
casting the
researcher as an appreciative audience to the child’s exploits.
Defining the Puzzle
The puzzle, then, is this: How can we make sense of the
Longwood practice of
not narrating children’s transgressions? (The complementary
puzzle from the
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230 MILLER ET AL.
Taipei data is: How can we make sense of the narrative practice
of foreground-
ing children’s past transgressions? See Fung, 1999; Miller et
al., 1996; for
discussions of this puzzle.) From a Taiwanese perspective, this
is baffling. This
looks irresponsible. What are these Americans up to when they
downplay
or mitigate young children’s transgressions or strike them
entirely from the
narrative record?
Notice that this puzzle has been defined, in part, by the
Taiwanese compari-
son, which casts the American practices in relief. Although
many ethnographic
studies focus on a single cultural case, there is usually an
implicit comparative
perspective that informs what the ethnographer is able to
identify as interesting
problems. The inclination to emphasize children’s strengths is
so common

106. among middle-class Americans that it is next to invisible. We
might have
overlooked this puzzle were it not for the contrast with the
Taiwanese findings.
In other words, having a comparative vantage point on one’s
own cultural ways
is often crucial in rendering the familiar strange (Erickson,
1986; Ochs &
Schieffelin, 1984).
Notice too that this puzzle arose out of careful documentation
of a pattern
that occurred in everyday family interaction, a pattern that
emerged in re-
sponse to our initial questions. In observation after observation
we witnessed
and participated in a baseline of personal storytelling activity in
which chil-
dren’s transgressions were rarely narrated. It is important to
emphasize that
to document that baseline we followed a complex set of
analytical coding steps
that, for lack of space, can only be briefly mentioned: We
devised a descriptive
code for defining personal storytelling in the two cultural cases,
applied the
code to the video-recorded observations for each family,
transcribed the full
set of personal storytelling events that were identified for each
family, and
devised and applied additional codes for describing the content
and manner of
narration (see Miller et al., 1997). Some ethnographers might
have described
the resulting baseline pattern as “routine,” without attaching
any numbers;

107. our preference was to count the stories that occurred and to
calculate the
proportion that involved child transgressions. In both cases,
whether or not
numbers are attached, there is a recognition that specific
examples of interac-
tion are interpretable only against a documented baseline of
ordinary activity.
Microanalysis of a Strategically Chosen Example
Ethnographers often use the interpretive strategy of lifting out
an example for
microlevel analysis as a way of deepening their understanding
of the phenome-
non in question. This strategy illustrates the “microscopic and
holistic” feature
of ethnographic research that we discussed earlier in which an
event is de-
scribed in minute detail as a way of illuminating the meaning of
some larger
pattern. In the following analysis we illustrate this strategy,
borrowing from
an analysis presented more fully in Miller et al. (1996).
Although ethnographers
often choose “typical” examples to work with, Miller et al.
chose a story that was
exceptional within the baseline distribution. They focused on a
rare instance in
which a Longwood family not only told a story about the focal
child’s transgres-
sion but structured the story so as to establish the child’s
transgression as the
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 231
point of the story, thereby mimicking the Taiwanese practice.
This exceptional
story was important analytically because it allowed us to
disentangle two
possible interpretations. Perhaps Longwood families narrated
child transgres-
sions in the same didactic manner as their Taipei counterparts
but did so far
less frequently. Or perhaps they narrated child transgressions in
a qualitatively
different manner on those rare occasions when they narrated
them at all.
The story in question actually involved two transgressions. As
narrated
by the mother—in collaboration with Mollie (2 years, 6
months), the researcher,
and Mollie’s older sister—Mollie first wrote on the wall and
then tried to evade
responsibility for her misdeed by falsely accusing her sister.

110. Mother: [To child] Did you tell Judy [the researcher] what you
wrote on
the dining room wall with?
Child: Ah . . . key.
Researcher: [To child] You wrote on the dining room wall?
Mother: With a key, not even a pencil.
Researcher: [To mother] You must have loved that.
Mother: A key, the front end of that key.
Sister: And behind a living room chair.
Mother: I was sort of napping in there and I saw this and I
thought it was
a pencil. And I woke up and said [whispering], “Mol, you didn’t
write on
Mommy’s wall with a pencil, did you?” Oh, she was so relieved,
she said,
“No! Me no use pencil, me use key!” and I was like, “OH GOD!
Not a key!”
And she said, “No, no, ME no use key, Mom. Kara [her sister]
use key,” and
then I was even more upset.
Sister: I didn’t even see her do it!
Mother: But it’s so funny. You look at her and she’s like, “I
didn’t use pencil.”
Researcher: So, I’m in the clear.
Mother: Oh, yeah.
Sister: I didn’t even see her do it. I was at school.
In this excerpt, Mollie’s mother prompts her to confess her
wrongdoing to
the researcher. Mollie complies, and the researcher invites
additional response.
Several turns ensue in which the mother emphasizes that Mollie
used a key
to write on the wall, the researcher aligns herself with the
mother through an
ironic expression (“You must have loved that!”), and Mollie’s

111. older sister—
whom Mollie falsely blamed—contributes further information
about the inci-
dent, emphasizing that she was not even there when the incident
happened.
Having established Mollie’s wrongdoing by eliciting supporting
accounts from
the parties involved, the mother then explains more fully to the
researcher
what happened. That is, she tells a story about Mollie, referring
to her in the
third-person, in which she situates the wall-writing incident
within the events
that preceded and followed it. She explains that she was
napping when the
misdeed occurred. Her dawning realization that Mollie wrote on
the wall while
she napped is recreated through the mounting suspense of
parallel, but increas-
ingly damaging, admissions by the child. The mother represents
Mollie as
trying to mitigate her responsibility for wrongdoing, first by
explaining that
she used a key and not a pencil and second by falsely accusing
her sister.
The humor lies in the fact that the child’s inept and increasingly
transparent
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232 MILLER ET AL.
attempts to explain away her misdeeds have exactly the opposite
effect. Her
mother’s subsequent comment, “But it’s so funny,” explicitly
frames the narra-
tion as nonserious. Note also that although the mother says that
she was “even
more upset” by the child’s lie than by the misdeed that
occasioned it, there is
no further mention of the more serious transgression. Also, the
interaction
that preceded the story about the child, including the elicited
confession from
Mollie, includes no mention of her false accusation.
Miller et al. (1996) compared this story with a Taiwanese story
that is
strikingly similar in content and structure: Angu, like Mollie,
wrote on the
wall and then tried to shift blame to someone else. Although it
is beyond the
scope of this chapter to present the parallel microanalysis of
Angu’s story, it
is important to summarize some of the key differences in how
Angu’s misdeeds
were narrated: Angu’s caregiver developed the story at far
greater length;
foregrounded the more serious transgression of falsely accusing

114. another person;
shamed the child for her misdeeds; and framed the story as
serious. What,
then, do these twin microanalyses tell us? Even in the rare
instance in which
an American family constructed a story around the child’s
transgression, creat-
ing a story that resembled a Taiwanese story in content and
structure, close
analysis revealed that it conveyed a qualitatively different
interpretation of
the child and of her experience. Instead of creating an
opportunity for moral
education and remediation, Mollie’s mother developed the
amusing dimensions
of the incident. She created a charming and naive mischief
maker, not a trans-
gressor.
The Puzzle Partially Unraveled
To summarize, we made several analytical moves in attempting
to understand
this interpretive puzzle. First, we established, through
participant–observation
and transcription of video-recorded home observations, that
personal storytell-
ing occurred routinely in Longwood and Taipei families.
Second, we documented
a contrasting pattern in the content and structure of personal
storytelling such
that Longwood families, compared with Taipei families, were
far less likely to
narrate young children’s transgressions. In other words, the
initial analytical
moves involved documenting an observed pattern in ordinary

115. family interac-
tion, drawing on comparative observations to aid in the
identification of that
pattern. The third analytical move involved microanalysis of a
particular story
that was strategically chosen because of its outlier status in the
baseline distri-
bution of storytelling. This microanalysis deepened our
understanding of the
meaning of the baseline pattern by zeroing in on a violation of
that baseline.
Although the story, in this exceptional instance, was “about”
Mollie’s misdeeds,
it was also “about” how funny those misdeeds were. This series
of analyses,
thus, supports the following rendering of Longwood parents’
perspective on
young children’s misdeeds: best to leave them un-narrated; if
one happens to
slip through, background it, mitigate it, laugh about it, or in
some way undercut
its importance. These analyses suggest that young children’s
wrongdoing has
a qualitatively different meaning for Longwood parents,
compared with Taipei
parents. Apparently, young children’s wrongdoing is a
somewhat delicate mat-
ter for Longwood parents.
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117. bu
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 233
Although this series of analyses allowed us to deepen our
understanding
of the nonnarration of children’s transgressions, it is important
to emphasize
that no analysis is the final analysis. In the constructivist
ethnographic ap-
proach that we advocate, each analysis leads seamlessly to a
more pointed set
of questions; thus, the boundary between one research report
and the next is
somewhat arbitrary. In the case at hand, our interpretations were
based en-
tirely on observations of the families’ enactments of personal
storytelling, not
on their expressed ideas about storytelling. To understand these
practices more
fully, we needed to examine parents’ reflections on child-
rearing. What was at
stake for Longwood parents when they engaged in these
narrative practices?
What kinds of ideas were informing their child-rearing?
Sequel: Toward Additional Unraveling
To pursue these questions, Mintz (1999) inquired into parents’
belief systems

118. about child-rearing, drawing on interviews, the other stock-in-
trade ethno-
graphic tool. In-depth interviews with the Longwood mothers
revealed that
promoting their young children’s self-esteem was a matter of
the first impor-
tance to them. They believed that self-esteem provides the
foundation for happi-
ness, inner strength, and moral autonomy. They spoke of the
devastating
consequences of low self-esteem on children’s psychological
functioning and
success in the world. They tried to support children’s self-
esteem by praising
them, emphasizing their strengths, and avoiding invidious
comparisons. When
discussing discipline, they made a distinction between “being
bad” and “doing
bad things,” contrasting their child-rearing practices with those
of their own
parents. They believed that discipline had to be handled with
care, lest it
undermine children’s self-esteem. Like the mothers in Harwood,
Miller, and
Irizarry (1995), they sought a balance between cultivating self-
esteem and
respect for others.
These findings shed further light on the Longwood practice of
downplaying,
laughing about, or simply not narrating young children’s
transgressions by
suggesting that a collective commitment to the goal of
supporting children’s
self-esteem may underlie this practice. Longwood families’
reluctance to dwell

119. on young children’s past misdeeds is intelligible within a folk
theory that
valorizes self-esteem, linking it to a host of psychological
goods, just as Taipei
families’ routine narration of child’s transgressions is
intelligible within a folk
theory that is distinctly Confucian, valorizing moral instruction
and “opportu-
nity education” (Fung, 1999; Miller et al., 1996; Miller et al.,
1997).
Self-Esteem As Folk Theory
In this final section of the chapter, we present a research case
by way of
illustrating the process of conducting ethnographic research (see
Miller, Wang,
Sandel, & Cho, 2002, for a detailed report of the methods and
results of this
study). This case emerged directly out of the line of inquiry
described in the
preceding section. Our findings from Longwood led us to be
interested in Ameri-
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er
ic

120. an
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121. 234 MILLER ET AL.
can folk theories of self-esteem. By parental folk theories we
mean parents’
informal, culturally organized understandings about children,
child-rearing,
and development. These understandings vary within and across
cultures, in-
forming and rationalizing child-rearing practices (Bruner, 1990;
Goodnow &
Collins, 1990; Harkness & Super, 1996).
The Research Problem
The idea that the Longwood mothers articulated—that
children’s self-esteem
should be fostered because it lays the groundwork for a host of
psychological
strengths—is shared by many American parents, teachers, and
psychologists.
The ubiquity of reference to self-esteem in both scientific
arenas and popular
culture naturalizes self-esteem, promoting a kind of
invisibleness. This invisi-
bleness is supported, as well, by two striking omissions from
the discourse of
self-esteem. Rarely is self-esteem and its associated folk theory
recognized to
be a culture-specific, historically situated discourse. And rarely
is the debate
about self-esteem informed by the voices of parents as they
reflect on these ideas
in raising their children. Our study was intended to address

122. these omissions. Its
purpose was to examine the meanings and practices associated
with self-esteem
and the larger folk theory in which it is embedded.
Design and Research Sites
Because other cultures do not necessarily share Americans’
preoccupation with
self-esteem (see Harwood et al., 1995; Heine, Lehman, Markus,
& Kitaymama,
1999; Stevenson et al., 1990) and because perspectives from
other cultures can
help to expose the cultural specificity of self-esteem, we chose
to study this
problem comparatively, building on our earlier work with
American and Tai-
wanese families. We wanted to identify the variety of meanings
American and
Taiwanese caregivers associate with the idea of self-esteem and
to delineate
the local folk theories that contextualize this idea or that offer
alternative
understandings of child-rearing. Although we approached this
question
through participant–observation and interviewing, this question
lent itself
particularly well to interviewing, and thus we focus on
interviewing in this
brief sketch.
In choosing research sites, we considered two factors. In
recognition of
intracultural variability, we wanted to move beyond large urban
areas. And
because personal contacts facilitate fieldwork, we chose

123. research sites where
our research team had preexisting personal networks. We briefly
describe some
key features of the two research sites.
Chhan-chng (a pseudonym) is a small Taiwanese farming
community that
embodies a complex mix of old and new cultural practices. The
residents speak
Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese and observe traditional
religious practices,
worshipping their ancestors before the family’s ancestral tablets
and going to
the local temples to ask for peace and prosperity. The
grandparents’ generation
continues to work in the fields, growing rice, sugar cane, fruits,
and vegetables.
Most families own a motor scooter or automobile and have
access to American
Co
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 235

125. and Japanese programming on cable television. Although many
young families
are choosing to have fewer children and some of the mothers
work outside the
home or even in a nearby city, the traditional three-generation
household is
still the norm. Like previous generations, children are not
segregated from
adult activity. They live in a community where homes, farms,
shops, and
businesses are often joined; children witness and participate in
economic activ-
ity and they are accustomed to seeing people come and go on a
daily basis.
Centerville (a pseudonym) is a small city located in the rural
midwest.
Although soybeans and corn remain an important part of the
county’s economic
base, Centerville is best known as the home of a major
university, which
attracts a culturally diverse group of students. Centerville
supports a remark-
able number of places of worship, including two synagogues,
two Buddhist
sanghas, a mosque, and more than 100 Christian churches.
Because Centerville
is much more diverse than Chhan-chng, it is not possible to
describe family
life in the same sweeping terms. In some families both parents
work and young
children go to daycare; in others mothers are full-time
housewives. Despite
these differences, two-generation households are the norm.
Contact with grand-

126. parents varies widely. Some grandparents provide daily
childcare; others live
far away and keep in touch through telephone calls and
occasional visits. Unlike
their counterparts in Chhan-chng, young Centerville children do
not have much
access to parents’ work lives.
The Researchers and Field Entry
In contrast to many classic ethnographic studies, our research
team included
individuals with varying life experiences in the two cultures.
All of us had
lived in Centerville for extended periods of time (one to eight
years). Miller
has been studying American and Taiwanese families with
Taiwanese collabora-
tors for many years. Sandel, who speaks Mandarin and some
Taiwanese, was
born and raised in the United States, but his wife grew up in
Chhan-chng and
her parents and other relatives still reside there and treat Sandel
as kin.
Although Chhan-chng was unfamiliar to Wang, she was born
and raised in
Taiwan and is a native speaker of Taiwanese and Mandarin.
Both Wang and
Sandel had lived in Centerville for at least a year before we
embarked on
this study. Sandel has young children, which put him in contact
with schools
and churches.
These various personal contacts were crucial in allowing the
researchers

127. to recruit participants for the study and in easing relationships
between re-
searchers and participants. For example, Sandel’s mother- and
father-in-law
helped to explain the study to local families. Beyond the initial
phase of field
entry, the cultural variability within the research team enabled
us to draw on
multiple insider–outsider perspectives in conducting the study
and interpre-
ting the findings.
The Participants
At each site 16 families participated in the study. The families
were chosen to
be homogeneous on several demographic variables. Each family
had a three-
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236 MILLER ET AL.

129. year-old child, who was the focus of the questions about child-
rearing. In addi-
tion, the families were two-parent families who represented the
more highly
educated segment of their respective communities. Most of the
Centerville
mothers had a college degree; most of the Chhan-chng mothers
had 14 years
of education. The average number of children per family was
two for Chhan-
chng and three for Centerville families. In both research sites,
mothers were
either the primary caregivers or shared childcare with a
grandmother or a
childcare provider.
Conducting/Adapting the Interviews
The researchers talked with the mothers in their homes, using
their native
language (either English or Mandarin or Taiwanese). The
interviews were
open-ended, and content areas included child-rearing goals and
values, disci-
pline, strategies for promoting development, sources of child-
rearing informa-
tion, shame and pride, and self-esteem. The protocol was
intended to provide
a rough guideline for conversation. However, the researchers
waited until late
in the interview to ask questions about self-esteem.
Instead of thinking of interviewing as simply a matter of asking
questions
and listening to responses, we treated interviewing as an
observable social

130. practice that may be more or less familiar to the participants,
more or less in
need of adaptation to local norms. This perspective owes a great
deal to Charles
Briggs’s book, Learning How to Ask (1986). Building on
insights from his
own extensive ethnographic work, C. Briggs argued that
interviews are not
transparent windows into informants’ beliefs but rather
communicative events,
analyzable in terms of the metacommunicative features of the
talk and nonver-
bal action that interviewer and interviewee construct together.
When these
features are addressed, along with other data from local
communicative rou-
tines, it becomes possible to offer a more precise and well-
grounded interpreta-
tion than could be achieved through conventional “content”
analyses. Like other
ethnographers who have written about interviewing (Mishler,
1986; Wolcott,
1995), C. Briggs attends not only to what people say but to
when and how they
say it, what they convey nonverbally, how silence is patterned.
As it applies
to comparative research, this approach implies that it will often
be necessary
to devise different “interview” events, reflecting the different
communicative
norms of the communities being compared, to yield equivalently
meaningful
discourse.
In fact, in our study the interview event unfolded in strikingly
different

131. ways in the two communities. The Centerville participants
seemed to share
an interview script that included a particular kind of staging.
The mother led
the researcher to a table, where she and the researcher sat facing
one another.
When children were present, mothers would ask them to play
with toys or
computer games and not interrupt the interview. Although the
ethnographers
did not request that any special arrangements be made, the
Centerville partici-
pants established a self-contained time and space for the
interview. In addition,
although we intended that the interview protocol would be
followed loosely,
allowing the interviewer to pursue the mother’s interests, the
researchers found
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 237

133. that little alteration was required. The interview script—the
researcher asks
a question, the interviewee responds—seemed to be taken for
granted by these
participants. Thus, in Centerville interviewing emerged as a
familiar practice
shared by both parties.
By contrast, few Chhan-chng participants set up a self-
contained time and
space for the interviews. Indeed, most interviews took place in
the presence
of more than one family member. Sometimes even a bypassing
neighbor would
join in the conversation. Moreover, the protocol had to be
altered, as the local
women were not in the habit of answering formal questions in
the course of
everyday life. The researchers tried to find more suitable initial
topics that
would put people at their ease, and they responded to the
participants’ curiosity
about their lives in the United States. Once the participants felt
more comfort-
able, the researchers retrieved other questions from memory and
inserted them
into the conversation in as natural a way as possible. They also
discovered
that talk flowed more freely when they participated in whatever
domestic task
was underway. In sum, the interview was not a familiar or
comfortable speech
event to the participants in Chhan-chng. To learn about
mothers’ child-rearing
beliefs, the interviewers had to adapt to local communicative
norms, all but

134. abandoning the interview format for a more conversational
approach in which
participants had significant control over the topics of talk,
multiple speakers
were accommodated, and everyone got on with the domestic
work at hand.
Data Analysis
Our objective in this study was to examine the variety of
meanings that Center-
ville and Chhan-chng caregivers associated with self-esteem and
to delineate
the local folk theories that contextualize this idea or that offer
alternative
understandings of child-rearing. It is beyond the scope of this
chapter to present
the full set of data analyses. Instead, we recap the analytical
moves involved
in addressing a single subsidiary question: Did self-esteem
figure importantly
in the mothers’ folk theories of child-rearing in the two research
sites?
It is necessary first to say a few words about terminology. In
the American
interviews, the researchers used the term “self-esteem,” but the
mothers some-
times used such terms as “self-confidence,” “self-respect,” and
“feeling good
about oneself,” and these were treated as synonyms for self-
esteem. There is
no term in Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese that translates
directly as “self-
esteem.” However, there are two terms that approximate some
of the meanings

135. associated with self-esteem. One is zi zun xin in Mandarin or
chu chun sim in
Taiwanese; the literal English translation is “self-respect-
heart/mind.” The
second term is zi xin xin in Mandarin or chu sin sim in
Taiwanese; the literal
translation is “self-confidence-heart/mind.”
In ascertaining whether self-esteem figured into the mothers’
understand-
ings of child-rearing, we first determined whether the mothers
spontaneously
mentioned self-esteem before the researcher introduced the
term, coding from
verbatim transcripts in the original language. We found that the
majority of
American mothers invoked these terms in response to a whole
range of ques-
tions. For example, some mothers mentioned self-esteem or
self-confidence in
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137. 238 MILLER ET AL.
response to the initial question, “What are your goals as a
parent? What do
you hope for your children?” When the self-esteem questions
were asked, most
of these mothers talked easily and fluently about self-esteem,
studding their
responses with real-life examples.
By contrast, only a few of the Taiwanese mothers brought up
self-respect-
heart/mind or self-confidence heart/mind before the researcher’s
explicit que-
ries, and no one invoked these terms repeatedly. When asked
directly about
these terms, some of the Chhan-chng women did not seem to
find these ques-
tions intelligible or meaningful, and no one elaborated on her
views in the detail
that characterized many of the American responses. However,
the Taiwanese
mothers did talk at length about other child-rearing issues.
After describing how key terms were used over the course of the
interview,
we examined all passages in each interview in which the
participant talked
about self-esteem or related terms. In keeping with the concept
of folk theory,
which implies that parents hold a set of ideas that are
conceptually related,
we coded these passages in terms of the ideas that the
participant linked to
self-esteem. For example, every Centerville mother said that
self-esteem was

138. important to children’s development and that she actively tries
to build, culti-
vate, or protect her child’s self-esteem. They said that self-
esteem provides an
essential foundation for a wide array of psychological strengths:
Children who
have high self-esteem are able to learn and grow with ease; they
are not afraid
to achieve; they interact well with others; and their mental
health is good.
The few Taiwanese mothers who spoke about self-respect-
heart/mind or
self-confidence-heart/mind linked these terms to strikingly
different ideas. For
example, one mother said that it is best for children to have
“normal” self-
respect-heart/mind because they will become less frustrated
than those whose
self-respect-heart/mind is strong. This idea contradicts the
American mothers’
belief that high self-esteem allows children to keep trying in the
face of failure.
In short, the mothers from Chhan-chng believed that high self-
respect-heart/
mind creates psychological vulnerabilities, whereas American
mothers believed
that high self-esteem creates psychological strengths.
This brief sketch of one set of data analyses reveal that self-
esteem loomed
large in the Centerville mothers’ folk theory of child-rearing but
not in the
Chhan-chng mothers’ folk theory. For the Centerville mothers,
self-esteem
served as a central organizing concept, an idea that came readily

139. to mind when
child-rearing was discussed, whether or not the researcher
mentioned the term.
The Taiwanese mothers’ folk theories were just as complex, but
they were
organized around the ideas that children grow up naturally and
that parents
are responsible for their moral education. The few Taiwanese
mothers who
talked about self-respect-heart/mind did so in ways that
contradicted the Amer-
ican mothers.
The ethnographic methods used in this research case strengthen
the credi-
bility of these findings. First, the intelligibility of the mothers’
responses was
enhanced by the care that was taken to familiarize the
participants with the
researcher and to create a communicative event that fit local
norms. If we had
imposed our conception of interviewing on the Taiwanese
women and they had
had little to say about self-esteem, we would not have been able
to interpret
their omission as revealing anything about self-esteem. Second,
in analyzing
Co
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Am

140. er
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og
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A
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141. ti
on
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ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS 239
the mothers’ talk we sought patterns not only in the content of
their talk but
in how they expressed themselves. Whether self-esteem was
introduced before
the researcher mentioned it, how often the term was used, and in
which con-
texts, where there were moments of confusion or
unintelligibility—these and
other metacommunicative patterns helped us to determine the
place of self-
esteem in the two folk theories.
In sum, this research case is offered not as a model or a recipe
but as one
example of how ethnographic work proceeds when addressing a
problem in
developmental cultural psychology. This case departs from
classic ethnographic
research in which the ethnographer begins as an outsider,
focuses on a single
culture, and operates out of an implicitly comparative
framework. By contrast,
our study was comparative in design and involved a research
team that occupied
complex insider–outsider positions from the outset. However,
like classic ethno-
graphic studies, this case exemplifies the systematic but flexible

142. deployment
of method that lies at the heart of ethnographic practice, a
flexibility that is
disciplined by the goal of understanding meaning from the
perspectives of
local participants. Sometimes social scientists who have grown
up in positivist
traditions believe that research cannot be empirical and
interpretive at the
same time. This case, like much contemporary ethnographic
research, demon-
strates that this is a misconception.
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Unit 3
[D]
INTRODUCTION
QUANTITATIVE TOOLS
Constructs
While substantial phenomena exist in the physical world and
can therefore be measured directly, insubstantial
phenomena exist in a symbolic or abstract form and cannot be
measured directly. Insubstantial phenomena are
frequently called constructs. You can think of a construct as a
scientific concept or an abstraction designed to
explain a natural phenomenon (Kerlinger, 1986). Constructs
allow us to talk about abstract ideas. The following
are examples of constructs:

159. • Intelligence.
• Self-esteem.
• Depression.
• Job satisfaction
• Anxiety.
Constructs are used to understand, organize, and study the
world we live in.
Operational Definitions
As abstractions, constructs are inherently difficult to measure.
Because we cannot touch them, we have to
develop alternative ways to gather information about them.
When we try to measure constructs, or what Leedy
and Ormrod (2013) call insubstantial measurements, we try to
bridge the gap between what we can observe
and the constructs, or abstraction, that a theory proposes.
This process of obtaining systematic data on abstract ideas is
called operationalizing the constructs, or creating
operational definitions for the constructs. Operational
definitions allow us to devise methods, procedures, and
instruments that enable the quantification of constructs.
For example, let us say we are
interested in studying the relationship
between intelligence and school
achievement. Both intelligence and
school achievement are constructs, or
scientific ideas we have created to help
us describe and explain natural
phenomena (in this case, behaviors).
Our theory suggests the existence of a
relationship between these two

160. constructs. In order to test our theory,
we must obtain measurable data or
information on intelligence and school
achievement.
The Tools of Research
Tools
The graphic depicts the relationship between intelligence and
school achievement. The left portion of the
graphic implies that intelligence is a theoretical construct that is
measured by the WISC intelligence test and
teacher assessments. The right portion of the graphic implies
that school achievement is a theoretical construct
that is measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and student
grade point averages, both of which are
observable phenomena.
How do we measure abstractions? We define observable
phenomena from which we can obtain data. In the
example, we might decide to measure intelligence using an
intelligence test. In selecting an operational
definition, we must recognize its limitations. We assume that
intelligence tests measure certain aspects of
intelligence, but clearly these tests do not tap the entirety of the
construct of intelligence. In fact, critics of
intelligence tests would argue that they measure very minor
aspects of intelligence. We can improve our
chances of tapping the intelligence construct by using more than
one operational definition. Can you think of
the reasons why?
The Importance of Selecting Good Operational Definitions

161. Selecting good operational definitions is critical to supporting
the construct validity of our research. Researchers
quite frequently use only one operational definition per
construct. The validity of this common practice rests on
the ability of the operational definition to capture the essence
(or at least the most relevant aspects) of the
construct. If that definition does not tap the construct we are
interested in (for example, using head
circumference to measure intelligence), our results will be
meaningless. Fortunately, such obviously poor
operational definitions are rare. Operational definitions that
generate some controversy (for example, using the
results of standardized achievement tests to measure school
performance) are far more common.
Variables
In the foregoing discussion, we identified how we can measure
constructs. Measuring constructs turns them into
variables in our research. A variable is something that can vary
or, in other words, take on at least two different
values. This idea is critical to understanding and identifying
variables. For example, gender cannot be a variable
in a study when all the participants are women.
We should note that not all variables are constructs. Leedy and
Ormrod's (2013) distinction between substantial
and insubstantial measurements highlights the point that some
variables used in research are not constructs.
Substantial measurements, such as the physical attributes of a
person, such as hair color, ring size, head
circumference, height, or thing, such as a car model, can be
used as variables, but they are not abstract
constructs. You will read more about variables in the chapters
on quantitative and qualitative research.

162. Hypothesis Testing and Data Analysis
How are hypotheses tested? Traditional scientific hypothesis
testing is associated with quantitative research
designs. The essence of hypothesis testing is straightforward
and involves some variation of the following steps:
1. State the research hypothesis and the null hypothesis.
2. Select a significance level (for example, 0.01, or 0.5).
3. Select a test statistic. Based on the level of significance and
other information, such as degrees of
freedom and directional or nondirectional testing, determine the
critical value of the test statistic (for
example, F, r, t) and the corresponding decision rule.
4. Collect your data. Applying the statistical test to the data,
compute an observed value of your chosen
test statistic.
5. Compare the observed value of the test statistic (number 4)
with the preset critical value (number 3).
6. Make the appropriate decision, to either reject or fail to
reject the null hypothesis. Specifically, if the
obtained value is greater than the critical value, reject the null
hypothesis. If the obtained value is less
than the critical value of the test hypothesis, you would fail to
reject the null hypothesis.
In other words, researchers use statistics to compute an obtained
value of their test statistic, which they
compare with a previously established critical value. The

163. critical value is based on the alpha they selected before
they began their research. Some of the terms used in traditional
hypothesis testing may be unfamiliar to you, so
review the following definitions:
• Alpha: The risk you are willing to accept in the event your
statistical analysis indicates a statistically
significant finding, but that finding is not real—it occurred due
to chance or some other factor. In other
words, alpha is the probability of making a Type I error, which
is the same as the p level.
• p level: The likelihood that your obtained results were due to
chance if the null hypothesis is true.
• Statistical test: The method you use to statistically analyze
your data, such as a t-test or Pearson's
correlation.
• Test statistic: The ruler you use to test your hypothesis. It is
the obtained value from the result of your
statistical test, such as the obtained t value or r.
• Critical value: The value of your test statistic at which you
can reject the null hypothesis.
Types of Errors in Hypothesis Testing
Hypothesis testing is based on probability. Regardless of the
statistical test or test statistic used, the researcher
is testing the null hypothesis against the laws of probability.
Using probability, you will always have four possible
outcomes:
• Error 1: You were wrong. You rejected the null hypothesis
when the null was the correct alternative. You
concluded there was a relationship or difference when the

164. observed differences actually occurred purely
by chance. A Type I Error occurs when you incorrectly reject
the null hypothesis. Alpha (α) or your p value
is the probability of this happening to you.
• Error 2: You were wrong. You retained, or did not reject, the
null when it was actually false. You were not
able to find the relationship or difference that really exists. A
Type II Error occurs when you incorrectly
accept the null hypothesis. The probability of this happening to
you is known as beta (β).
• Correct Decision 1: You were right. You rejected the null
when it was indeed false. You successfully
found the difference or relationship that really exists. Power is
the probability of this happening.
• Correct Decision 2: You were right. You retained the null
when it was true. No difference or relationship
exists, and you found none.
Thus, we try to guard against two types of error when testing
hypotheses. A Type I Error is defined as a false
positive or rejecting the null hypothesis when it should have
been accepted. A Type II Error is defined as a false
negative or failing to reject the null hypothesis when it should
have been rejected (Williams, 1992). Statistical
power refers to the probability of finding relationships or
differences that indeed exist. Much research in the
social sciences is underpowered, meaning that the designs are
not sensitive enough to detect relationships that
may indeed exist (Cohen, 1988). See Lipsey's 1997 chapter,
"Design Sensitivity: Statistical Power for Applied
Experimental Research," in Handbook of Social Science
Research for recommendations on how to increase the
statistical power of research designs.

165. The following is a paraphrased excerpt from Percy and
Kostere's (2008) Qualitative Research Approaches in
Psychology .
QUALITATIVE TOOLS
Level of Analysis
Level of analysis specifies the type of phenomena being
investigated, according to the following hierarchy:
intra-psychic phenomena; individual whole-person phenomena;
inter-personal phenomena, family phenomena
(including couples or dyads in committed relationships); small-
group phenomena (work group, team);
organizational phenomena (large corporation, large church,
government agency); social-cultural phenomena
(society as a whole, a culture or subculture).
Key Phenomena
Key phenomena in a qualitative study correspond to the
variables in a quantitative study. They might be specific
phenomena, cases, factors, or simply focal elements that are the
focus of the study. They are the primary
constructs under investigation and they should be defined in a
similar way to the way that we define
quantitative constructs. These definitions should be consistent
with similar constructs used in previous research,
whether qualitative or quantitative, and consistent with the
meaning of the terms in the research question.
Types of Data

166. Qualitative data is not collected from tests and measures like
quantitative data, but consists of verbal and
behavioral output as recorded in interviews, documents,
videotapes or photographs, journals, notes of
observations, and so on. The most common type of qualitative
data is verbal data from interviews.
Role of the Researcher
In qualitative research, the researcher is a tool of the research.
The researcher has to use his or her own
knowledge, training, and experience to collect the data in an
efficient and sufficient manner, to bring the data
together, and to make it into something meaningful and useful.
Data Preparation
Qualitative data must be physically prepared. For example, if
in-depth interviews will generate audiotapes,
those must be transcribed. If videotapes are used, they too must
be transcribed, or perhaps behaviors must be
coded. Transcripts must be organized physically (electronic
copies, paper copies). In some approaches such as
grounded theory, this phase (preparing and organizing the data)
is already part of the data analysis procedures.
In other approaches, such as case study or survey, the various
kinds of data must first be organized and
prepared so that it is usable.
Data Analysis
Depending on the approach used, qualitative data will be
analyzed in different ways, Much like there are
different statistical tests used for different quantitative
approaches, the different qualitative approaches
demand different data analysis techniques. Some examples

167. include data coding, data reduction, and thematic
analysis.
References
Cohen, J. L. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the
behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Cozby, P. C. (1993). Methods in behavioral research (5th ed.).
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Kerlinger, F. N. (1986). Foundations of behavioral research (3rd
ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. E. (2013). Practical research:
Planning and design (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson.
Lipsey, J. W. (1997). Design sensitivity: Statistical power for
applied experimental research. In L. Bickman & D.
Rog, Handbook of social science research (pp. 39–68).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Percy, W. H., & Kostere, K. (2008). Qualitative research
approaches in psychology . Minneapolis, MN:
Williams, F. (1992). Reasoning with statistics: How to read
quantitative research (4th ed.). Orlando, FL: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
OBJECTIVES
To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be

168. expected to:
1. Identify variables in a research study.
2. Delineate quantitative instruments used to measure variables.
3. Explain the importance of operational definitions to scientific
merit.
4. Evaluate the data collection method or methods.
[u03s1] Unit 3 Study 1
STUDIES
Readings
Read the introduction to Unit 3, "The Tools of Research." This
will provide basic explanations and examples
of the key components of quantitative and qualitative research.
Use your Leedy and Ormrod text to complete the following:
• Read Chapter 1, "The Nature and Tools of Research,"
beginning with page 7 at the heading "Tools
for Research," through page 25. This reading covers some of the
tangible tools researchers use, such
as libraries and computers, as well as "cognitive tools," such as
critical thinking and logic.
• Read Chapter 8, "Analyzing Quantitative Data," pages 211–
250. This chapter reviews the types of
quantitative data, descriptive statistics, and inferential
statistics.

169. Use Trochim's Research Methods Knowledge Base Web site to
read the following pages. This information
contains more information on qualitative phenomena, data
collection, and analysis:
• Qualitative Measures.
• The Qualitative Debate.
• Qualitative Data.
• Qualitative Methods.
Also on the Research Methods Knowledge Base Web site, read
the following pages for further information
on quantitative variables, levels of measurement, hypotheses,
and hypothesis testing. Additionally, you will
learn about the relationship between qualitative and quantitative
data, and other cognitive tools.
• Variables.
• Levels of Measurement.
• Hypotheses.
• Types of Data.
• Deduction and Induction.
• Inferential Statistics. There are several links to specific kinds
of statistical tests on this page that you
might find useful for understanding the data analyses reported
in various quantitative research
articles.
PSY Learners Additional Required Reading
In addition to the other required study activities for this unit,
PSY learners are also required to compete the
following:

170. • Read Percy, Kostere, and Kostere's 2015 document,
Qualitative Research Approaches in Psychology.
This document provides an overview of qualitative methods and
the major qualitative approaches.
Data collection and data analyses are covered under each
approach. You may find it helpful to refer
to this document throughout this course.
Optional Program-Specific Content
Some programs have opted to provide program-specific content
designed to help you better understand
how the subject matter in this study is incorporated into your
particular field of study. Check below to see if
your program has any suggested readings for you.
SOBT Learners
• Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A-G., & Buchner, A. (2007).
G*power 3: A flexible statistical power
analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical
sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39
(2), 1175–191. This reading provides the foundation for using
G*Power to determine sample size for
quantitative studies.
• Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A-G. (2009).
Statistical power analyses using G*power 3.1:
Tests for correlation and regression analysis. Behavior Research
Methods, 41(4), 1149–1150. This
reading provides the foundation for using G*Power for
determining sample size for correlation and
regression analysis studies.
• Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). "Building theories from case study
research." Academy of Management

171. Review 14(4), 532–550. This article provides an overall process
and structure for case study research.
Probably the most cited case study methods paper in business
and management papers.
[u03s2] Unit 3 Study 2
PROJECT PREPARATION
Resources
Research Topic and Methodology Form.
Research Topic and Methodology Scoring Guide.
In preparation for the Unit 4 assignment due next week, make
sure during this unit that you have thoroughly
read and understand the approved research study you selected
for the Unit 2 assignment. Be prepared to
complete the Unit 4 assignment by identifying and
understanding the research topic, research problem,
research question, and basic methodology. You may also find it
beneficial to view the Research Topic and
Methodology Form that you will use to complete the Unit 4
assignment. Also, view the assignment
description and scoring guide to learn how you will be
evaluated.
QUANTITATIVE TOOLS
Resources

172. Discussion Participation Scoring Guide.
APA Style and Format.
Persistent Links and DOIs.
Make sure the quantitative article that you selected in Unit 1
will allow you to thoroughly address all of the
points required for this discussion. Using the information from
this week's readings, complete the following:
• Identify the instrument or instruments used to quantify the
data, the level of measurement for each
instrument, and the statistics used to analyze the data.
• Identify and describe the constructs, variables, and operational
definitions included in the research.
Do not just list terms. Include a description of how the
researcher defined these.
• Describe the cognitive tool used to interpret the data.
Possibilities include deductive logic, inductive
reasoning, scientific method, or critical thinking.
• Discuss the usefulness of the operational definitions for the
constructs in this study. How could they
have been defined differently? Were the operational definitions
sufficient to allow the researcher to
answer the research question? Make sure to justify your answer.
• Explain the importance of operational definitions to scientific
merit.
• List the persistent link for the article in your response. Refer
to the Persistent Links and DOIs guide,
linked in Resources, to learn how to locate this information in

173. the library databases.
• Cite all sources in APA style and provide an APA-formatted
reference list at the end of your post.
Response Guidelines
After reviewing the discussion postings, choose one peer to
respond to. For your response:
• Follow the persistent link to the article being discussed.
• Using the language of research, explain how you agree or
disagree with your peer's evaluation,
offering your own suggestions for improving the research
design.
QUALITATIVE TOOLS
Resources
Discussion Participation Scoring Guide.
APA Style and Format.
Persistent Links and DOIs.
Make sure the qualitative article that you selected in Unit 1 will
allow you to thoroughly address all of the
points required for this discussion. Using the information from
this week's readings, complete the following:
• Identify and describe key concept in the research.

174. • Describe and evaluate the data collection method or methods.
Was the data collection method
appropriate to allow the researcher to answer the research
question? Why or why not?
• Describe and evaluate the data analysis procedure or
procedures. Was the data analysis procedure
appropriate to allow the researcher to answer the research
question?
• Explain the importance of appropriate data collection and data
analyses procedures to scientific
merit.
• List the persistent link for the article in your response. Refer
to the Persistent Links and DOIs guide,
linked in Resources, to learn how to locate this information in
the library database.
• Cite all sources in APA style and provide an APA-formatted
reference list at the end of your post.
Response Guidelines
After reviewing the discussion postings, choose one peer to
respond to. For your response:
• Follow the persistent link to the article being discussed.
• Using the language of research, explain how you agree or
disagree with your peer's evaluation,
offering your own suggestions for improving the research
design.