Module 2 Assignment

Faye Huie

Module 2 Assignment

I have always been interested in the psychology of learning and research methodology; however, very recently have I been interested in social justice issues. The problem that I encountered with merging these two fields is that one generally uses quantitative methods while the other field uses qualitative methods of inquiry to explore research questions. Being a very quantitative person, I encountered very difficult problems during the design and planning phase of my study that I conducted last summer. Specifically, I was trying to quantify the idea of stereotypes, learning, and motivation with a questionnaire. Therefore, since my constructs are intrinsically qualitative, and because I have very little qualitative data, my results do not make sense.

Before describing my study and how I conceptualized it, I think it is important for me to reflect on my experiences as an early researcher and the constant cognitive dissonance that I am experiencing. Although I feel that I have successfully carried out and designed a qualitative study last semester, I am still struggling with ideas that are so arcane to me (who knew statistical significance testing is crap and causal relationships can be confirmed qualitatively?). I think that I really began to grow as a researcher and expanding my horizons last semester in the qualitative course. My way of knowing was on a completely different dimension that I am still trying to change.

Keeping this in mind, I had developed my study prior to taking qualitative methods. My way of knowing was so quantified that I was blind to the fact that my study would not only have been more interesting if I had examined stereotypes qualitatively, but it was an intrinsically qualitative study. Although I regret not adopting a qualitative component, I feel optimistic and up to the challenge to incorporate a qualitative component to my paper. Since I am doing this post-hoc, I feel very limited in my ability to explore my constructs. To describe my data very briefly, I collected data regarding students self-regulation (e.g., effort regulation, help-seeking, and metacogntive self-regulation: all quantitative), motivation (e.g., self-efficacy, goal orientation, and task value: all quantitative), stigma consciousness (a quantitative measure), self-beliefs (e.g., beliefs about intelligence: quantitative) and attributions for success (self-reported, written qualitative measure) as well as some demographic information, final grades reported by professors, and student self-reported grades on a math exam. My original hypotheses were that stigma consciousness, defined as the degree to which students are aware of and feel personally impacted by stereotypes against their ethnic group, would moderate the differences in achievement through their self-regulation, motivation, and attributions. Additionally, instead of examining attributions quantitatively, I was originally planning on quantifying the measure. However, initial analyses suggested that negative motivational constructs such as performance-approach goal orientation was positively associated with achievement and other self-regulatory constructs that have been widely accepted as a negative relation. Therefore, my results had very much gone against decades of research that confirm the positive/negative relationship between certain constructs. Specifically, my finding was that students who reported high levels of stigma consciousness (less adaptive) had showed a stronger relationship between both attainment task value and mastery goal orientation with performance than students with lower levels of stigma consciousness. Upon realizing that I had a real problem on my hands without any reasonable way of reconciling the differences, I was forced to drop an important piece of my research: goal orientation and task value. Therefore, with my research today, I am going to attempt to integrate attributions qualitatively to see if there is some logical explanation as to why my results are so contradicting.

In my matrix, I have 7 different columns: research question, goals, data collection methods, analysis strategies, rationale at the time of conception, what I would have changed today, and validity threats. There are two columns in which I think are important to both my research as well as my growth as a researcher: rationale at time of conception and what I would have changed today. Specifically, since I am creating my research questions after I have collected my data, I think that it is especially important that I synthesize both what I knew about research before with what I know about research now. Therefore, I think a good way of capturing the balance between quantitative and qualitative research is to reflect on how my original quantitative way of knowing can be adapted into a mixed methods type of thinking.

In terms how I would design my study differently today, I think I would have definitely added a qualitative component. Although my most important goal in my research was to explore the relationship between stigma consciousness and motivation/self-regulation, it was informed by prior research and personal interest. Therefore, a qualitative component would have allowed for other constructs other than motivation/self-regulation to emerge. Additionally, it would have provided supporting evidence for the relationships which would allow for triangulation for the results as well as decrease validity threats. However, in order to examine this relationship, stigma consciousness needs to be separated into students with high and low stigma consciousness groups. In order to accurately capture this relationship through interviews, I may need to first administer a questionnaire of stigma consciousness and split the sample into high and low perceptions and compare the interview responses between the two groups.

In terms of my sampling method, I chose to sample from a group of college students. It was not only convenient, but I think that it served my purpose very well. I needed to sample students and I needed specific information about study habits and their beliefs about stereotypes. Additionally, the context was appropriate given the diversity present at GMU. Therefore, college students seemed like the best option. However, it may be important to note that since these students were already in college, they may already feel as though they have overcome a sense of adversity—more so than high school students. Therefore, my results may have been more interesting if I sampled students in high school, where students who were both planning on going to college and those who were not would be included in my analyses.

I think that this assignment has very explicitly demonstrated the knowledge that qualitative and quantitative research contributes to understanding. For example, I do not think that qualitative research can accurately separate high perceptions of stigma consciousness from low levels of stigma consciousness and quantitative research cannot allow for unexpected outcomes/perspectives to emerge. However, by integrating these two approaches, a balance is achieved. Specifically, I feel as though qualitative and quantitative research can be described as different levels or units of measurement of one construct (e.g., stigma consciousness). By looking at stigma consciousness through different units of measurements, we can more thoroughly understand this phenomenon.