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Although there is general agreement that the purpose of research is the
display of those structures of reality by which we can "explain" previously
uncomprehended phenomena, one point of disagreement is whether this is
a "causal" understanding or something else.
Two baic approaches:
ANALYTIC INDUCTION, the latter NOMOLOGICAL (or) HYPOTHETICAL DEDUCTIVE.
General characteristics of each approach:
DEDUCTIVE:
1) If all of the premises are true, the conclusion must be true
2) All of the information or factual content in the conclusion was already contained, at least implicitly, in the premises.
INDUCTIVE.
1) If all the premises are true, the conclusion is PROBABLY, but NOT
NECESSARILY true.
2) The conclusions contains information not present, even implicitly, in
the premises.
These characteristics obviously overlap in some statistical and some
qualitative research.
That is why statistical techniques are sometimes called "statistical
induction," while others have argued that there is in reality no such thing
as "inductive" analysis in research
VALIDITY
Validity refers to the "truth quotient" of our findings.
CONSTRUCT VALIDITY is occasionally used to refer to the power of our findings
to establish higher-order statements about the conditions in which our
observations occur or upon which they are contingent. Some might call this
the power of theory or model building.
In quantitative techniques, construct validity refers to the "cause-effect"
a law-like relationships we can establish.
In qualitative research, this also refers to the degree to which we can
develop "law-like" statements, even though we are not concerned with
"causation" or measures of association.
Explain that qualitative res can also look for "measures of assoc," but not
customarily done--not inherently "impossible"
INTERNAL VALIDITY /and/ EXTERNAL VALIDITY.
INTERNAL VALIDITY refers to the internal logic of our research.
In statistical analysis, this tends to be the degree to which accurate
statements can be made about our numerical measures of association.
In qualitative research, internal validity tends to refer to the logical
power of our arguments.
EXTERNAL VALIDITY, by contrast, refers to the degree to which generalizable
statements may be drawn from our findings and applied to other populations.
Theory Construction.
Theory, /both for quantitative and qualitative sciences may be broadly
defined as a systematically related set of statements, including some
generalizable propositions, that are empirically verifiable (or falsifiable).
More simply, a THEORY may be seen as a "myth," or a "story," by which we
attempt to account for events we observe in either the social or natural world.
How we construct theories is open to debate, and we will examine how
theorists have done this for the rest of the term.
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