Triangulation in Organizational Research

Author(s):  
Ben Tran

The use of qualitative and quantitative methods in studying the same phenomenon has received attention among the scholars and researchers. As a result, it has become an accepted practice to use some form of triangulation in social research. In the social sciences, the use of triangulation can be traced back to Campbell and Fiskel. This was later developed by Webb and elaborated by Denzin beyond its conventional association with research methods and designs in science. The objective of science is to discover, describe, and explain the fact, whereas in the case of social science it is to observe, verify, and conclude. This chapter also covers the positivist view and the postmodernism and post-positivism paradigms of triangulation as well as the types of knowledge derived from the usage of triangulation in organizational research. This chapter concludes with how triangulation validates knowledge in human competence within an organizational setting.

2015 ◽  
pp. 1343-1367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Tran

The use of qualitative and quantitative methods in studying the same phenomenon has received attention among the scholars and researchers. As a result, it has become an accepted practice to use some form of triangulation in social research. In the social sciences, the use of triangulation can be traced back to Campbell and Fiskel. This was later developed by Webb and elaborated by Denzin beyond its conventional association with research methods and designs in science. The objective of science is to discover, describe, and explain the fact, whereas in the case of social science it is to observe, verify, and conclude. This chapter also covers the positivist view and the postmodernism and post-positivism paradigms of triangulation as well as the types of knowledge derived from the usage of triangulation in organizational research. This chapter concludes with how triangulation validates knowledge in human competence within an organizational setting.


2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaan Valsiner

The opposition between “quantitative” and “qualitative” perspectives in contemporary social science is an organizational limitation that directs discussions of the topic away from the main issue - the adequacy of any kind of data in respect to the phenomena they represent. This is particularly complicated if the phenomena are known to include inherent dynamics, are modifiable by the research encounter, or develop towards new states of existence. It is often assumed that qualitative and quantitative methods are mutually exclusive alternatives within a methodological process that is itself unified. The article shows that quantitative methods are derivates of a qualitative process of investigation, which itself can lead to the construction of inadequate data. The issue of the representativeness of the data - qualitative or quantitative - remains the central unresolved question for the methodology of the social sciences. Errors in representation can be diminished by correction of methods through direct (experiential) access to the phenomena, guided by the researcher's educated intuition.


Numeracy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Brookfield ◽  
Malcolm Williams ◽  
Luke Sloan ◽  
Emily Maule

In 2012, in a bid to improve the quantitative methods training of social science students in the UK, the £19.5 million Q-Step project was launched. This investment demonstrated a significant commitment to changing how we train social science students in quantitative research methods in the UK. The project has involved eighteen higher education institutions exploring and trialling potential ways of engaging social science students with quantitative approaches. This paper reflects on the activities of one Q-Step centre based in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. As well as describing some of the pedagogic changes that have been implemented, the paper draws on data to begin to evaluate the success of new approaches. Specifically, data showing the proportion of students undertaking a quantitative final-year dissertation project is used to measure the impact of these activities. The data presented in this paper suggest that resistance to learning quantitative research methods and engaging with such techniques has decreased. The data also indicates that students see this learning as beneficial for their own employability. Despite this, closer analysis reveals that several students change their mind about employing quantitative methods in their own research part way through their dissertation journey. We argue that while social science students are comfortable learning about quantitative approaches, they are less confident at applying these techniques. Thus, the paper argues that there is a wider challenge of demonstrating the relevance and appropriateness of such approaches to understanding the social world.


1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1496-1516
Author(s):  
Tisha Joseph Holmes ◽  
John Mathias ◽  
Tyler McCreary ◽  
James Brian Elsner

On March 3, 2019, an EF4 tornado devastated the rural Alabama communities of Beauregard and Smith Station, killing 23 people and causing direct injuries to another 97. This storm was unusually devastating, with twice the predicted casualty rate based on the tornado’s power, the impacted population, and impacted housing stock. In this paper, we apply qualitative methods from anthropology, geography, and planning to better understand the social context of this unusually devastating tornado. Recognizing that there are multiple formulations of the problem of disasters, we aim to highlight how interdisciplinary qualitative research can deepen our understanding of tornado disasters. Combining policy analysis, political economic critique, and ethnographic description, we seek to showcase how qualitative research enables us to interrogate and reimagine the problem of disasters. Rather than simply juxtaposing qualitative and quantitative methods, we emphasize how the heterogeneity of qualitative research methods can strengthen interdisciplinary research projects by generating dialogue about the multiple contexts relevant to understanding a social problem. While problem definition remains a central challenge to establishing a dialogue between anthropology and social work, here, we intend to extend this discussion to larger interdisciplinary collaborations. Situating the issue of problem formation within a broader ecology of qualitative inquiry, we highlight how dialogue about problem definition can, itself, produce meaningful insights into how we understand disasters.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Mohd Anuar Ramli ◽  
Ahmad Badri Abdullah ◽  
Muhammad Ikhlas Rosele

Islamic jurisprudence is a dynamic system. It is facilitated by some flexible methodologies. Nowadays, there are varieties of issues in Muslims’ societies that are results or implications of developments in science and technology, and also results of changes that happen in the structures of the societies. In order to face these realities, a contemporary integrative approach has to be applied in Islamic Law's research process. In accordance to this, this paper will elaborate the integrative approaches that try to unify and integrate theories in Islamic jurisprudence with social research methods. Basically, there are models that have been introduced by several Islamic thinkers that related to this integrative approach. For example the Islamization of sociology based on maslahah model, the Islamic Jurisprudence sociology model, the unified approach to textual and contextual analysis model. All of these models contain their own strength and weakness in their integrative approaches. This paper is trying to introduce an approach that integrates Islamic jurisprudence theories with the gender analysis method that is among social critics methods. This introduced method is to be used to analyze an issue in fiqh pertaining to polygamy that is always been debated nowadays and also to analyze the applicability of the practice in the social and contemporary conditions of our country. According to this research, social research methods are able to support Islamic jurisprudence in order to improve its research process and its results. Keywords: integrative approach, Islamic jurisprudence, social science, gender analysis, polygamy   Hukum Islam merupakan satu sistem dinamik yang dibangunkan berasaskan metodologi yang bersifat anjal. Pada hari ini, wujudnya pelbagai isu yang melanda masyarakat umat Islam kesan daripada perkembangan sains dan teknologi serta perubahan sosial yang berlaku dalam struktur masyarakat. Dalam usaha untuk berdepan dengan realiti ini, pendekatan integratif yang bersifat kontemporari perlu digunakan dalam proses penyelidikan hukum Islam. Justeru, artikel ini akan menjelaskan pendekatan integratif yang cuba menyatukan dan mengintegrasikan teori hukum Islam dengan kaedah penyelidikan sosial. Pada asasnya, terdapat model yang telah diperkenalkan oleh beberapa pemikir Islam berkaitan dengan pendekatan integratif ini. Sebagai contoh Islamisasi ilmu sosiologi berdasarkan model maslahah, model model sosiologi hukum Islam, model pendekatan bersepadu dalam analisis tekstual dan kontekstual. Semua model ini mengandungi kekuatan dan kelemahan dalam pendekatan integratif yang tersendiri. Lantaran itu, kajian ini cuba memperkenalkan satu pendekatan yang mengintegrasikan teori hukum Islam dengan kaedah analisis gender yang merupakan salah satu metodologi kritik sosial. Kaedah ini diperkenalkan untuk digunakan dalam menganalisis isu fiqh berkaitan poligami yang sentiasa menjadi perbahasan pada masa kini serta melihat kesesuaiannya dalam konteks sosial dan kemodenan negara ini. Kajian mendapati, kaedah penyelidikan sosial dapat menyokong kajian hukum Islam dalam usaha meningkatkan kualiti proses penyelidikan dan hasil dapatannya.   Kata kunci: Pendekatan integratif; hukum Islam; sains sosial; analisis gender; poligami


2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Goertz

This special issue of Political Analysis engages in a dialogue between qualitative and quantitative methods. It proposes that each has something to say to the other and more generally has a contribution to make to empirical social science.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Wilkie

Inventing the Social, edited by Noortje Marres, Michael Guggenheim and Alex Wilkie, showcases recent efforts to develop new ways of knowing society that combine social research with creative practice. With contributions from leading figures in sociology, architecture, geography, design, anthropology, and digital media, the book provides practical and conceptual pointers on how to move beyond the customary distinctions between knowledge and art, and on how to connect the doing, researching and making of social life in potentially new ways. Presenting concrete projects with a creative approach to researching social life as well as reflections on the wider contexts from which these projects emerge, this collection shows how collaboration across social science, digital media and the arts opens up timely alternatives to narrow, instrumentalist proposals that seek to engineer behaviour and to design community from scratch. To invent the social is to recognise that social life is always already creative in itself and to take this as a starting point for developing different ways of combining representation and intervention in social life.


Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that there is a universal and a priori scientific method, that a main function of philosophy is to analyse that method, that this basic scientific method is the same in both the natural and social sciences, that the various sciences should be reducible to physics, and that the theoretical parts of good science must be translatable into statements about observations. In the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, positivism has supported the emphasis on quantitative data and precisely formulated theories, the doctrines of behaviourism, operationalism and methodological individualism, the doubts among philosophers that meaning and interpretation can be scientifically adequate, and an approach to the philosophy of social science that focuses on conceptual analysis rather than on the actual practice of social research. Influential criticisms have denied that scientific method is a priori or universal, that theories can or must be translatable into observational terms, and that reduction to physics is the way to unify the sciences. These criticisms have undercut the motivations for behaviourism and methodological individualism in the social sciences. They have also led many to conclude, somewhat implausibly, that any standards of good social science are merely matters of rhetorical persuasion and social convention.


Author(s):  
John A. Hughes

Within social science the experiment has an ambiguous place. With the possible exception of social psychology, there are few examples of strictly experimental studies. The classic study still often cited is the Hawthorne experiments, which began in 1927, and is used mainly to illustrate what became known as the ‘Hawthorne Effect’, that is, the unintended influence of the research itself on the results of the study. Yet, experimental design is often taken within social research as the embodiment of the scientific method which, if the social sciences are to reach the maturity of the natural sciences, social research should seek to emulate. Meeting this challenge meant trying to devise ways of applying the logic of the experiment to ‘non-experimental’ situations where it was not possible directly to manipulate the experimental conditions. Criticisms have come from two main sources: first, from researchers who claim that the techniques used to control factors within non-experimental situations are unrealizable with current statistical methods and, second, those who reject the very idea of hypothesis-testing as an ambition for social research.


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