Operationalising Research

  • Central concern is the comparability of the groups in Warschauer's study

  • Also concern with the representativeness of the groups in relation to the wider population

  • Issues
    1. Research question 2 explicitly anticipates variation based on individual characteristics (gender, nationality, ...)

    2. The researcher ignores other possibly important variables (for example, group dynamics based on individual personalities etc)

  • Solutions

    • Suppose that only 'nationality' was considered to be important. There are at least two possible strategies:
      1. matched groups: distribute each nationality equally

      2. random allocation: presumes that the mose likely outcome is that each group will be made up in the same proportion as the population

  • But, in Warschauer's case, there are only 16 participants, to be grouped 4 per group, and 4 nationalities:

    • 5 Filipinas, 5 Japanese, 4 Chinese, 2 Vietnamese

  • So, there is no possibility of constituting equivalent groups and, for example, a group of 4 Filipinas is likely to have very different characteristics from a group with 1 of each nationality, etc

from: Warschauer 2