Write a response paper Responding to at least two of your colleagues’ posts with an additional advantage and an additional disadvantage to quantitative or qualitative research.
Note: Be sure to support your postings and responses with specific references to the Learning Resources. Use proper APA format and citations. Be kind in your responses to your classmates and use their name in the response one reference per student.
Elyssa
Week 9: Discussion 2
It is important that quantitative and qualitative research be as reliable and limited in bias as scientifically possible. However, when conducting cross-cultural psychology research, the importance is emphasized that much more for several reasons. Research results will likely have a significant impact on public policies. It can also be very expensive, time-consuming, and complex. Therefore, the research is difficult to duplicate. Furthermore, conducting the research includes unique ethical and cultural concerns (Matsumoto & van de Vijver, 2012).
Quantitative research has been used for at least 50 years more than qualitative research (Leech & Onwuegbuzie, 2009). The advantage to this is that it has been used many times and in many fields of study. Therefore, instrumental and procedural issues have likely been identified and resolved. Also, several statistical programs and models are available to test collected data for relevance, accuracy, and bias (Gelfand et al., 2015). Quantitative research has also been the precursor to additional quantitative and qualitative research (van de Vijver, 2009). A disadvantage of quantitative research in cross-cultural studies is that, with such an emphasis on data, results may be biased. “Bias is not an inherent characteristic of an instrument but arises in the application of an instrument in at least two cultural groups” (Matsumoto & van de Vijver, 2012, p. 87). Questionnaires are commonly used in quantitative research to collect information, especially in large sample populations. If the questionnaires do not measure behaviors appropriately across cultures, then construct bias may occur (Matsumoto & van de Vijver, 2012).
An advantage of qualitative research is that it adds cultural context to empirical data. Qualitative research also helps to understand the reasons for bias in quantitative research. Some suggested ways of dealing with construct bias, which was developed from qualitative research, are to develop the same testing instrument simultaneously in each culture to be tested, administer the test through cultural representatives who are familiar with the language and customs, and conduct smaller pilot studies prior to the larger-scale research (Gelfand et al., 2015). A disadvantage of qualitative research in cross-cultural research is that it is time-consuming. Qualitative research is often exploratory in nature and data is, therefore, collected through techniques such as semi-structured interviews. Data from the interviews have to be categorized, coded, and quantified once it is collected.
An example of combining quantitative and qualitative research for cross-cultural psychology into mixed-methods research is described by van de Vijver (2009). In a study to test the theory on emotion, questionnaires specific to each sample culture may be constructed and administered in structure-oriented psychological differences studies to collect quantitative data (van de Vijver, 2009). To understand the differences in data between studies, particularly between Western countries and generalized to other countries, level-oriented generalizability studies can be used to collect qualitative data (van de Vijver, 2009).
Reference
Gelfand, M. J., Chiu, C., & Hong, Y. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of advances in culture and psychology, volume 5. Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
Leech, N. L., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2009). A typology of mixed methods research designs. Quality and Quantity, 43(2), 265-275. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11135-007-9105-3
Matsumoto, D., & van de Vijver, F. J. R. (2012). Cross-cultural research methods. In H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, & K. J. Sher (Eds.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol 1: Foundations, planning, measures, and psychometrics. (pp. 85–100). American Psychological Association. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1037/13619-006
van de Vijver, F. J. (2009). Types of Comparative Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1017
Natalia
Discussion 2 – Week 9
Although both qualitative and quantitative research have been used in the context of cross-cultural psychology, qualitative research has often been overlooked. However, both qualitative and quantitative research studies and methods can have both their advantages and disadvantages. An advantage of qualitative research can be that it is, at least in part, descriptive. According to Karasz and Singelis (2009), in an instance where there is not much information about a certain phenomenon, practice, or situation, description, through qualitative research, can be highly beneficial. In the context of cross-cultural research, this may benefit researchers who are studying a culture and their practices that they may not be familiar with. A disadvantage of qualitative research, which may also be seen as an advantage, is that it is highly centered around subjectivity. Qualitative research often incorporates self-report measures as a test (Karasz & Singleis, 2009). While this may be beneficial in providing specific details and insights to individual thoughts and behaviors, the disadvantage lies in the fact that these self-reports may not be entirely honest and, therefore, accurate. If an individual wants to seem as though they fit in with the culture, they may alter their responses.
Quantitative research methods can be more prominent in cross-cultural psychology, as well as in the field of psychology overall. An advantage of quantitative psychology is that it is data-driven and provides information that can often be easily tested with forming a hypothesis (Doucerain et al., 2016). Quantitative research can provide researchers with hard numbers to see if there is any significance in what they are studying. However, a disadvantage of quantitative research, in the scope of cross-cultural psychology, can be that the results found from quanitative studies may not necessarily apply to other cultures or groups of people. Doucerain et al. (2016) note that unlike qualitative research, quantitative research does not always provide generalizable results that may be applied in other situations. For instance, even if children in different cultures were taught the same subjects and material, they may not score similarly on tests, and putting children from different cultures in similar programs may not show the same results across cultures.
References
Doucerain, M., Vargas, S., & Ryder, A. G. (2016). Mixed-methods research: Integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches to the psychological study of culture. In N. Zane, G. Bernal, & F. T. L. Leong (Eds.), Evidence-based psychological practice with ethnic minorities: Culturally informed research and clinical strategies. (pp. 147–167). American Psychological Association. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1037/14940-008
Karasz, A., & Singelis, T. M. (2009). Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research in Cross-Cultural Psychology. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40(6), 909–916. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022109349172
