My experience of applying the required readings is that doing so provides better understanding and memory of the covered course material while it is worked through to select our design.
Tips for combining or contrasting methodologies are to narrow down the choices based on one’s research needs. The textbook can be used to select from available research methods. For our research project, it was more important to obtain depth over breadth of information, so we chose a qualitative rather than quantitative research design. We then chose from qualitative approaches. We seek to describe the essence of the phenomenon of moral disengagement by understanding the participants’ lived experiences. The semi-structured open interview provides focus on the topic while being open to the variety of participants’ responses. As a result, we can determine the impact of moral disengagement on adolescents’ emotional behavior, relationships, and academic performance. Coding of the interviews by multiple independent researchers proves the reliability of the results.
I narrow down the research methods literature into a single integrated approach by giving priority to those studies performed with the research method I chose. In other words, I want to perform a qualitative phenomenological study. Therefore, I search for qualitative studies. While large-scale quantitative studies might inform my work, they do not provide the depth of information sought, so I instead prioritize qualitative studies. I focus on Latinas because according to census data, they are a rapidly growing part of the local population.
I would handle surprising findings in my research by incorporating important themes into the final results. Working hypotheses are open to revision. For example, if I found that the relationships between teens and their mothers were always good, I could narrow or shift the focus to other areas of concern, such as academic performance. If there were individual anomalies that were not consistent themes, these would probably be ignored because they were not shared phenomena.
