CAT Questions ~ CSO 302: Qualitative Research Methods, May-August 2016 Semester

UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

CSO 302: QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

May-August 2016 SEMESTER [Module II]

CAT QUESTIONS [Released: 12:12 a.m., 21^st July 2016]

INSTRUCTION: ANSWER A TOTAL OF TWO QUESTIONS, ONE FROM SECTION I AND ONE FROM SECTION II.

SECTION I:

1.     Discuss the procedures of naturalistic observation in qualitative data collection.

2.     What is thick description, and how does it work as a technique of data analysis? 

SECTION II:

3. Give an historical account of qualitative research and explain the major
   epistemological and ontological beliefs about social reality that underpin it. Use clear examples to illustrate your answer. 

4. (a)  Discuss the major ethical principles in social research.
   (b) What are the major ethical dilemmas that confront qualitative researchers,
   and how can these be resolved? Use empirical examples to explain your answer.

 DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION:  

Saturday: August 13^th August 2016, strictly by 11.00 a.m. [Submit your CAT paper IN CLASS through the Class Representative, and enter your name in the submissions register. Late submissions can be pushed under or over the door of office number GW 407E. They will be safe there. Late students should therefore not waste more time waiting to submit their CATs in person to the lecturers]

NOTE:

1.      Submit only word-processed papers. CAT paper should be: 6 to 10 typed, double-spaced, A4-size pages only.

2.      Answers which display originality of thought and critical thinking will be rewarded.

3.      There will be severe penalty for plagiarism (‘Xeroxing’ of published or other works). A mark of 0% will be given for plagiarism.

4.      Your answer should clearly demonstrate, through citations, that you have engaged in noteworthy library and/or online research for this CAT.

5.      Late submissions will attract a penalty of 5 marks per week after the deadline.

CSO 302 Qualitative Research Methods, Final Examination Papers, 21 December 2004 to 11 January 2014

To skip the text below and go straight to the examination papers, click here 

As is to be expected, the past papers included in the set I am providing in this blog post reflect the subject-matter of qualitative research methods taught under course code CSO 302 -- a third-year course at the University of Nairobi. The course underscores the contribution of qualitative methods to knowledge-generation, and to the deeper understanding of the social forces operating in 21st century society. 

We can trace the origins of qualitative methods back to the deep, millennia-long, past of human existence -- the ontological/ existential/proto-naturalistic past -- which preceded even the first stage in Auguste Comte's Law of Three Stages; that is, the "theological stage." Similarly, of course, we can trace the very roots of the natural (and social) sciences as we have come to know them back to that same past.

There is clearly a determination in the course to distinguish between methods of data collection and methods of data analysis, and to go for detail. And even though (a) similar methods often appear under a variety names; and, (b) similar names are or seem to be used, on occasion, interchangeably for both data collection and data analysis, you are challenged to spot the random disguises (under a), and to both extricate 'analysis' from 'collection' and articulate the paired differences (under b). 

All this puts a high premium on conceptual clarity and empirical example. Designing an efficient taxonomy of methods, which should proceed from such clarity and example(s), remains an ever-present challenge, which you are challenged to overcome any imaginative way you can, without 'brutally' violating Bateson's (1987: 284-287) classification principles embodied in his theory of logical types. 


Read More >>> Past Papers

Reminder: To access the CSO 302 examination papers, click here 

Thick Description ~ CSO 302

"... : if you want to understand what a science is, you should look in the first instance not at its theories or its findings, and certainly not at what its apologists say about it; you should look at what the practitioners of it do.

In anthropology, or anyway social anthropology, what the practioners (sic) do is ethnography. And it is in understanding what ethnography is, or more exactly what doing ethnography is, that a start can be made toward grasping what anthropological analysis amounts to as a form of knowledge. This, it must immediately be said, is not a matter of methods. From one point of view, that of the textbook, doing ethnography is establishing rapport, selecting informants, transcribing texts, taking genealogies, mapping fields, keeping a diary, and so on. But it is not these things, techniques and received procedures, that define the enterprise.

What defines it is the kind of intellectual effort it is: an elaborate venture in, to borrow a notion from Gilbert Ryle, "thick description." ~ Clifford Geertz (1973: 5-6) [Quote from his book, The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books]

Gilbert Ryle's concept of thick description, as popularized in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology by Clifford Geertz (see, also, this article), refers to the successive addition of layer upon layer of detail to a phenomenon or process or event being described -- building up from 'literal' (or simple or lay) to 'thin' (or journalistic) to thick (or 'deep' or scholarly) description -- such that, true to the second law of dialectics, the quantum (quantity) of descriptions progressively transforms into a qualitative synthesis of the 'totality' of aspects of the phenomenon in question. It is like adding pixels and mega-pixels, one measured 'spread' after another, to a picture until one achieves the highest possible level of clarity, or picture quality.

Thick description is widely accepted as a major qualitative data analysis method or technique. However, I have preferred to use the concept synthesis in the above definition, as it more satisfactorily captures what for me is the core purpose of thick description. There is debate, however, concerning the relative merits of analysis and synthesis in pushing the boundaries of knowledge.

Analysis, an anchor concept in both quantitative and qualitative research, which is used routinely and unquestioningly by nearly all scientists (natural and social), does not seem to be quite apt here. B.N Ghosh (1985: 23), for example, has suggested that “analysis plays a more important role than synthesis” during “the initial stages of a science”; but “as the science becomes more and more progressive, synthesis plays a more and more important role. But in every science both the methods are used simultaneously.” He (1985: 24) adds that:

“A science aims at not only arriving at the truth but also at expounding the truth. A synthetic method is necessarily expository because it puts together the elements of a phenomenon in a systematic manner. In synthesis, exposition is possible because the entire elements are completely known and, as such, they can easily be arranged in an orderly way. The discovery of truth, however, is made possible by the method of analysis.”

I think that the aim and effect of thick description is to expound in 'full' the details, the 'totality', of the object of description. However, the end-product of thick description cannot be touted as a "complete" exposition of that which is (to be or has been) described; and I suspect that thick description was never intended for such a purpose.

NOTE: For more on thick description read:
1.This article by Joseph Ponterotto
2. Fei-Wen Liu's article

PS: Quote at the top added on September 11, 2015