I guess I am posting this because I need other people's opinion about my thesis idea. Maybe a validation perhaps?
I will get straight to the point. Below are my Research questions and purpose.
My RQ is: “How Do High and Low Agreeable Individuals Deal with Anger?”
(I want to explore and compare the experiences of Anger from the stand point of highly Agreeable and Disagreeable individuals themselves.)
Sub-Questions:
a. What triggers high and low A individuals to be angry? (what provokes-triggers)
b. How do high and low A individuals react to angry situations?
c. How does Anger impact their lives?
*Agreeableness (A) is part of a personality trait that measure friendliness, cooperation, harmony, sympathy, tender-heartedness (opposite pole of A are people who are usually being blunt, cynic, etc.) --> assuming that those high A people do not express Anger, I want to know the how's and why's in the process of 'feeling anger' to 'dealing with it' to 'the impact it has on their lives'.
Why the comparison with low A? For richer comprehension on Agreeableness.
Why qualitative? Not only that people focused more on the quantitative methods to understand traits and Anger, I feel like we can understand more 'Emotions' with a qualitative one. And this study is not meant to generalize but to focus on those who are highly agreeable (what goes through their heads, how are they feeling, the reasons for such reactions to anger, etc.) Things that might not be too obvious to 'others', I'd like to reach in (I'll be using a phenomenological design by the way).
Purpose: There really is no particular 'problem' that I am addressing (e.g. lived experiences of transgenders-to spread awareness or how children cope with child labor..etc.) but more like an approach to understand more that we weren't able to tackle in the field.
This research may not have direct applications to the real world but can be very informative in developing Anger management intervention approaches perhaps. My purpose here is really to know/understand/explore beyond what we currently know about "Anger and Agreeableness", I don't have any practical problems to solve.
Aside from my main question, please feel free to comment on the things I wrote (if there are any).
Thank you!
Hi
Well there is valid questionnaires you can use in addition to your interview, in example (NEO-PI, MMPI) that can strengthen the result. I would have done this to ensure that I knew that I would be getting both low and high A people and then used the qualitative research to investigate your very interesting questions. Than you have a pre selection of low and high A scoring individuals to do your qualitative research on, and that can strengthen the results you find. Good luck!
Hello,
While there's nothing wrong with exploratory research, I recommend making at least a couple a priori hypotheses for a couple reasons. First, it's a thesis. One purpose of completing a thesis or dissertation is to demonstrate that you know how to carry out a research project, and part of this process is generating a priori hypotheses from the available evidence in the literature and from your own reasoning. It's okay if the data don't match your hypotheses, if so just fess up to that and run some reasonable exploratory analyses (note that exploratory analyses, though not a priori hypotheses, can still be specific analyses that you plan to conduct beforehand).
Second, purely exploratory papers without hypotheses are usually for newer areas where not much work has been done yet. In your case, with anger and openness, these are well-researched constructs, so you should be able to find empirical and theoretical papers that deal with these topics that you can then use to generate some hypotheses.
Also side note, though you're not solving some practical problem directly with your study, this topic certainly has important real world implications. Like you said, clinically when working with angry people. We have a cumulative science, and your study will add to the body of knowledge that people will use, including people who translate findings into practical applications. It's a great topic and a cool approach, so feel good about it! Good luck.
this study is not meant to generalize but to focus on those who are highly agreeable (what goes through their heads
Well there is valid questionnaires you can use in addition to your interview, in example (NEO-PI, MMPI) that can strengthen the result. I would have done this to ensure that I knew that I would be getting both low and high A people and then used the qualitative research to investigate your very interesting questions. Than you have a pre selection of low and high A scoring individuals to do your qualitative research on, and that can strengthen the results you find. Good luck!
Do you think it is appropriate/worthy to do qualitative research (Master's thesis) just for exploring (main purpose is merely knowledge contribution)? - ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_it_is_appropriate_worthy_to_do_qualitative_research_Masters_thesis_just_for_exploring_main_purpose_is_merely_knowledge_contribution [accessed Mar 23, 2017].
How people deal with anger is, in my opinion, an important component of interpersonal competence, a trait central to supervisory/managerial jobs.
Apparently, there are instruments to explore "agreeableness". Very likely, highly agreeable people manage anger in healthier, more successful ways and this competence is an ingredient of their agreeableness. If this were the case, agreeableness would be a predictor of "successful" anger management, in turn, a predictor of good supervisory/ managerial performance in the area of interpersonal competence.
Seen in this light, your thesis is relevant to job selection and placement.
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