But there is also a strong ethical objection to case studies for that same reason: the lack of objectivity in accumulating facts may actually allow for greater bias on the part of the researcher. Since the researcher has a higher level of participation amongst his or her study subjects than an individual merely accumulating data, he or she might favor certain personal points-of-view, based upon favoritism of some community members. The intensely subjective nature of research might also yield more of a portrait of the researcher's perceptions, rather than of the population itself. Advocates of a more experimental approach to research would likely point out that case studies are not inherently 'better' than quantitative data in filtering bias. After all, Margaret Mead's famous anthropological study Coming of Age in Samoa has been widely critiqued because of the anthropologist's relatively filtered contact with the Samoan people. Furthermore,...
experimental study approach may be not to frame the supposed conflict as a debate at all, but to use both methods to paint a full portrait of human experience. After all, while statistical data is vital to track the effectiveness of a new retroviral drug for AIDS, a case study approach might be necessary to fully understand why some individuals are not compliant with treatment, and what cultural and social barriers might exist in enabling individuals to understand why taking the drug is so vital for their health.
Statistics and Their Importance to Research Investigation. Although all research activities do not require the use of statistical data analysis when an investigator wants to report upon the differences, effects and/or relationships between and amongst groups or phenomena (i.e. variables) there must a concerted effort to measure the phenomenon with as much precision and accuracy as possible (Mendenhall & Ramey, 1973). This is, of course, accomplished through the use of
Statistics and Juries In the video "How Statistics Fool Juries," Oxford mathematician Peter Donnelly attempts to demonstrate through a number of examples how statistics, when viewed in a common manner, can be misunderstood and how this can have legal repercussions. Through a number of thought experiments, Donnelly provides the audience with examples of how seemingly simple statistics can be misinterpreted and how many more variables must be taken into account when
One of the most common fallacies is to confuse correlation with causation, but the two are actually distinct. My demonstrating that construction of snowmen and outbreak of acne occur simultaneously does not mean that snowmen produce acne. It may imply an underlying matter, such as the snow itself may contain some component that may instigate the outbreak, or the children who build the snowmen may be particularly vulnerable to
This type of measurement is best used when the data has also been captured at the ordinal or ratio level as the orthogonality of the data set is reliable (Marshall, Ruiz, Bredillet, 2008). Extrapolating statistics to a broader population is also dependent on the approach of randomization used. When a solid methodology, sampling frame and approach to randomization have all been defined, inferential data is often used in organizations
As explained earlier, statisticians in the academe and in specialist industries apply principles and techniques of statistics in different ways. Statisticians in the academe apply their knowledge of statistics in more scientific approaches: multivariate analyses, for example, are reported in a scientific manner, usually communicated in a scholarly approach through journal articles and published or unpublished research reports. Industry specialists, meanwhile, implement statistical principles and techniques more creatively, for their
Statistics are the tools to describe the systematic body of information that assist policy makers or managers to make decision about important issues. Statistics provide the accurate methodology to draw the accurate inference from the sample of data to the full population. Despite the benefits derived from applied statistics, there are challenges that policy makers face in measuring social issues. Answer to Question A In public sector, statistical approach is used to
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