HI All,
I am new to research and am struggling to find a label for my research design and methodology.
Basically, what I would like to do is compare objective outcomes to subjective perceptions of career intervention with adolescent clients.
To do this, I would like to administer a pre intervention questionnaire which will include a validated objective assessment of career certainty as well as some subjective questions regarding anticipation and expectations. After intervention, the subjects would be asked to complete another questionnaire that contains the decidedness assessment (objective- same as pre consultation one) and some subjective questions regarding the effectiveness of the consultation.
I want to compare the difference in the objective measures pre and post to the subjective evaluation.
Does anyone know of any research designs and methodologies that use this type of model?
Thanks in advance and I apologise if this is a basic question :)
There are books online on the topics:
1, Research Design and Methodology: Qualitative;
2, Research Dedesign: Quantitive
Observational design with before-after methodology.
Hope this helps
Matt
Seems like you will give the intervention to all of your participants? You COULD randomize a group to get the intervention and others to be controls.
Otherwise, Matthew Kerry 's suggestion is fine. You should control for 'social desirability' though (the respondents score better at the follow up because they want to please you). Check out relevant questionnaires and take measures to reduce the social desirability factor (e.g., independent research assistants to do the follow-up interview).
A comprehensive book about designs is:
https://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Designs-2nd-second/dp/B008UTGYGW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?keywords=shadish+Experimental+and+Quasi-Experimental+Designs+for+Field+Research&qid=1552385540&s=books&sr=1-1-fkmr0
Shadish et al. call this design a One-Group pretest-posttest design, or as Matthew name it: Observational design with pre- and posttest.
Best
John-Kåre
You may want consider a complex mixed methods design with convergent as a core design. I say this because that way I understood, you are collecting both qualitative and quantitative responses before your intervention as well as after intervention. If you would collect these measures only before (exploratory) or only after (explanatory) design sounds right. However, your intention is also to compare both pre-post responses and you intend to collect data at parallel. You may refer to the following text for detailed explanation.
Creswell, J. W., & Clark, V. L. P. (2018). Designing and conducting mixed methods research. Sage publications.
I agree with Ahtisham Younas that what you are describing is frequently known as a convergence design in mixed methods research. The goal is to compare the quantitative and qualitative results to see how similar they are, but note that this is much easier said than done. For example, how are you going to compare the results from the interviews with the quantitative data? The kind of subjective interpretation that goes with qualitative analysis is very different from the kind of object analysis in quantitative research.
What is known as an Explanatory Sequential design takes a different approach, by first determining the quantitative results and then collecting qualitative data that are designed to help explain the quantitative results. In this case, you use the quantitative results to determine the kinds of participants you interview and the kinds of questions you ask them. For mixed methods, I recommend Creamer, An Introduction to Fully Integrated Mixed Methods Research as good first book, and Creswell and Plano-Clark as a more advanced text.
FYI, doing a pre-test and post-test comparison to assess a program is frequently known as a "summative evaluation" -- and there is a whole field of evaluation research that you might look into. Most of it is quantitative, but Patton's book on Qualitative Evaluation is excellent.
Thanks to all that have contributed. There are some really good points here. I also want to know if there is a particular naming convention one follows when identifying their methodology.
Ie, do you identify the Ontological approach--> epistemological approach--> design--> data collection methods etc?
Where would the ethnographic element of my methodology fit in? I am using terms such as paradigms, philosophy, perspective, approach and design but does one particular term match up with another.
Ie "A mixed method convergent design within a Relativism philosophy?"
Or am I just getting really confused. Any sources would be greatly appreciated!
I'm not sure why you need to refer to a philosophy. Generally speaking, meaningful research question and an appropriate way to address would be sufficient.
In any event relativism would not be compatible with any quantitative method.
Are both the pre measures and the post measures quantitative? If so a CORRELATIONAL design could tell you if the same people who had high pre scores were also the ones with high post scores. If either of the two measures is qualitative (e.g., narrative level data) then the design is really qualitative unless you can convert the narrative into numbers.
You can only do a REPEATED MEASURES design if you have the same scaling for both variables (pre & post).
For more information, you can use my free textbook.
https://works.bepress.com/tlbrink
You can check the Strobe statement on how to report observational studies here:
https://www.strobe-statement.org/index.php?id=available-checklists
Best
Jk
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