Writing assignments: Below are six prompts based on the ideas presented in the Klandermans and Staggenborg text and in earlier readings in Creswell. Select three of the six prompts. Write a minimum 500-word response for each of your selections.
1. What is survey method? What kinds of survey methods are used in social movements research? Discuss their benefits and limitations. In the realm of social science there are a variety of measurement tools that academics use to perform social research. One of the most important tools is survey research, a ?measurement procedure that involves asking questions of respondents.? 1 The importance of survey research cannot be understated, as it is estimated that in the 1980s and 1990s one out of every
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John W. Creswell recommends, in his book, Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Traditions, that there be a single central question and several subquestions.5 Therefore, one of the challenges in survey research is ensuring that questionnaires and interviews yield results that somehow assist in answering the central question or related subquestions pertaining to the study. A variety of survey-related studies are provided by Klandermans and Smith that normally focus on comparison of movements, events, other social movement features, or a variety of integrated comparisons.6 Additionally, they acknowledge one of the major challenges in comparative research studies:
Unless we obtain measurements that both precede and follow participation or exposure to movement activities, we will not be able to determine the extent to which individuals participate because of their beliefs and the extent to which their beliefs are shaped by their participation.7
Furthermore, social movement participation may affect later action, participation is conceived as four distinct steps representing a participants? decisions as they ?move toward or away from participation.? 8 An assortment of challenges must be considered prior to development of a research survey beyond consideration of a participants? step within the social movement?s evolutionary process. Considerations include selecting the appropriate
Social movements are one of the primary means through which the public is able to collectively express their concerns about the rights and wellbeing of themselves and others. Under the proper conditions, social movements not only shed light on issues and open large scale public discourse, but they can also serve as a means of eliciting expedited societal change and progress. Due to their potential impact, studying the characteristics of both failed and successful social movements is important in order to ensure that issues between the public and the government are resolved to limit injustices and maintain societal progress.
4. What are the limitations of the survey method, and how would you overcome the limitations of this research method, or any research approach?
Several of the key findings from the research survey can be summarized into the following points;
“Problems researched with the use of appropriate methods greatly enhance the value of the research.” (Sekaran, 2003) Data can be collected through interviews, questionnaires, observations, and through other techniques, like projective tests. In even more detail, interviews can be conducted in a variety of different ways such as over the phone, through the computer, interviews through the electronic media, and face-to-face. Questionnaires can be conducted personally or administered electronically. “Interviewing, administering questionnaires, and observing people and phenomena are the three main data collection methods in survey research.” (Sekaran, 2003) As stated before, data can be collected in many different ways; however the value of the research is only greatly enhanced when personal opinions and bias is left out of the collection of data.
172). The relationship between the research design and data collection is dynamic, and the surveys purpose could have some influence on the type of survey model used. If there are problems in the collection of information the design can be changed. That is when the type of survey can be considered to decide if they should use face-to-face, telephone, or mailed surveys. According to O’Sullivan, Rassel, and Berner (2008), “respondents may ignore questionnaires that seem biased,” and “respondents’ perception of a built-in bias may largely center on the appropriateness of the response categories” (p. 179).
The question will explain why the research is necessary and place the study in context, by drawing on the work already presented prior to research. When reporting how research is done describing it in detail is necessary to understand. Researchers should be able to describe the research tools used, if there is an existing tool used, by stating the psychometric components while providing references to the original development work. If a new tool was used, it should be included in the entire section describing the steps undertaken to develop and test the tool, including results of psychometric testing. Meanwhile, when reporting survey research there should be details describing how the sample are selected and how data is collected to include; how potential subjects were identified? Who approached the potential subjects? Where were potential subjects approached? How was informed consent obtained? How many participants agreed to participate? How did the participants who agreed to differ from those who did not agree? What were the response
The survey is the most familiar and ever-present method used to collect demographic information, feelings, and opinions, and to learn about a defined population (Graziano & Raulin, 2010). Also, use of a web-based survey will allow for immediate distribution of data (Greenlaw & Brown-Welty, 2009). In addition, to get a feel for the type of question to best use on the questionnaire, a focus group will also be used. Questions will on the survey will be related to the following information needed, i.e., 1)
The survey method is commonly used in correlation and descriptive studies. A survey is less in depth than the case study. Surveys ask people to tell about their own opinions or behavior. When asking questions one must be careful of how the question is worded, this can be known as wording effects.
Survey research designs are procedures in quantitative research for administering a survey or questionnaire to a small group of people (called the sample) in order to identify trends in attitudes, opinions, behaviors, or characteristics of a large group of people (called the population) (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2010, p. 175). Researchers use a survey to describe trends, such as community interests in school bond issues or state or national trends about mandatory student uniform policies. To identify this design, look for the following key characteristics in the report: the researcher studies the attitudes, opinions, or behaviors of a large group, chooses a large number of participants using random selections, gathers information and describes trends in the data, and the researcher makes conclusions about the larger population.
Empirical puzzles abound when considering why certain social movement organizations were successful and others weren’t. What explains the differential success of social movements like Civil Rights in the US compared to Occupy? This leads to the immediate question of what constitutes success. Is it securing policy wins, like the legalization of gay marriage? Is it introducing certain ideas in mainstream consciousness, such as the existence of rampant income inequality and the underserved 99%? Is the dilution of a movement’s core ideological message a sign of maturity and persistent success, or on the contrary does it signal that the movement slipped into obscurity and obsolescence? If one defines social movements purely from a functionalist
Social movements are known as a way of organizing social change (Staggenborg, 3). It is important to distinguish the difference between a social movement and a social movement organization (SMO), where the social movement is a general group of people who are focused on the same general issues, whereas a SMO is a specific group of people who intend to address their grievance with a specific plan (Staggenborg, 7). It is important to understand the different between the two because as Staggenborg (7) explains, “social movements
The second methodology used in gaining qualitative and quantitative data is the survey method. The survey method is a method that polls or questions a large group of people on a particular subject. Researchers do have to trust
Question: All social research whether based on qualitative, quantitative, archival or other forms of data, need to follow the same basic principles of research design. Discuss by drawing on examples of social research that you have read for this module.
“It could be named as survey research; the research depends heavily on gathering data through people like questionnaires, interviews or observations” (Wallman, 2001). Research is divided into 2 ways, qualitative research and quantitative research Wyse (2011):
Survey will be used as a first and main part of the research, I wanted to reach high number of respondents which meant larger amount of data (Saunders et al, 2009). In most cases survey is using as a deductive approach (Saunders et al, 2009). Another reason why survey was se-lected as Muijs (2004) explained that it guarantees participants anonymity. Lastly survey was chosen as it doesn’t require long and deeply-thought answers, as otherwise it would be really hard to collect the required number of participants. Lastly decision to select surveys were also influenced by past academic researchers (Abdolvand, 2016; Quellet, 2007; Obermiller and Spangenberg, 1989; Curran and Zignago, 2012) which based their research methodology on surveys.