TOTAL DE LOGRO DEL

334

 Indepth interviewing (usual conversational rather than structured)

 Participant observation (to perceive at firsthand what participants in the setting experience)

 Films photographs and videotape (to capture the life of the group under study)

 Projective techniques and psychological testing (such as a thematic apperception test, projective measures, games and role- playing).

 Case study (for an indepth contextual analysis of a few events or conditions)

 Street ethnography (to discover how a cultural sub-group describes and structures its world at street level)

 Elite or expert (key informant) interviewing (for information from influential or well informed people in an organisation or community)

 Document analysis (to evaluate historical or contemporary confidential or public records, reports, government documents and options)

 Proxemics and kinesics (to study the use of space and body- motion communication respectively).

When these approaches are combined, four exploratory techniques emerge with wide applicability for the political researcher:

(1) Secondary data Analysis

(2) Experience surveys – (Key informant or Elite or indepth interviewing)

(3) Focus Groups

(4) Two-stage designs (Blumberg, et al., 2005:132).

Secondary Data Analysis

The first step in an exploratory study is a search of the secondary literature. Studies made by others for their own purposes represent secondary data. It helps to discover a new information through collection of primary data or original research what has already been done and reported at a level sufficient to solve the research question.

Within secondary data exploration, a researcher should start with an organisations own data archives. Reports of prior research studies often reveal an extensive amount of historical data or decision-making patterns. By reviewing prior studies, the researcher can identify methodologies that proved successful and unsuccessful. A search or secondary source will supply excellent background information as well as many good leads (Blumberg, et al, 2005:133). Another source of secondary data is published documents prepared by authors, newsletter,

magazines, industry journal help us decide what needs to be done and can be a rich source of hypotheses.

EXPERIENCE SURVEYS OR INTERVIEWING (KEY INFORMANT, ELITE

AND IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWING)

Information from persons, who have experience in the area of study, would enable the researcher tap their collective experiences.

When we interview persons in an experience interview, we should seek their ideas about important issues or aspects of the subject, and discover what is important across the subject’s range of knowledge. The investigative (interview) schedule we use should be enough to allow us to explore various interview. The product of such questioning may be a new hypothesis, the discarding of an old one or information about the practicality of doing the study. Probing may show whether certain facilities are available, what factors need to be controlled and how and who will cooperate in the study (Blumberg, et al, 2005).

Furthermore, discovering is more easily carried out if the researcher can analysis cases that provide special insight. In typical exploratory study, we are less interested in getting a representative cross-section than in getting information from sources that might be insightful.

Focus Groups

A focus group study is a carefully planned series of discussion designed to obtain perceptions on a defined area of interest in a permissive, non- threatening environment. Each group is conducted with six to eight people by a trained interviewer acting as a moderator (Krueger and Casey, 2000). Focus Group Discussion should not be too small or too large as it would results in less effective participation. The meeting should last between 90 minutes to two hours. Members of focus group discussion should be homogenous. To facilitate such homogeneity, the sourcing of respondents is usually done through informal networks of colleagues, community agencies and the target group. There are different types of focus groups, they include: telephone focus group; on- line focus groups, video-conferencing focus groups etc. It is often preferable, depending on the topic to run separate focus groups for different sub-sets of the population. Following a topical guide, the moderator introduces the topic and encourages the group members to discuss it among themselves. The functions of focus group discussion are (Stewart and Shamdasani, 1990):

 Learning how respondents talk about the topic of interest and especially the strength of their feelings and priorities

336

 Generating new research hypotheses that can be submitted to further research and testing

 Stimulating new ideas

 Diagnosing the potential for problems with a new service or programme, or policy initiative

 Obtaining background information about a topic of interest and

 Interpreting previously obtained quantitative data.

In exploratory research, the qualitative data that focus groups produce may be used for enriching all levels of research questions and hypotheses and for comparing the effectiveness of design options. A prior focus group discussion of the research design and the instruments used in the research can improve the research considerably, as sources of error and misunderstanding are handled before the study is conducted.

Using a focus group to assess the research design and instruments before they are put into a pilot test is advantageous because pilot groups usually only contain people who could be respondents.

Focus groups are also a useful approach in the research process regarding pre-testing questionnaire, experiment, etc.

Two –Stage Design

A useful way to design a research study is as a two –stage design. With this design, exploration becomes a separate first stage with limited objectives:

(i) Clearly defining the research question and hypothesis (ii) developing the research design.

For this two-stage approach, we should recognise that much of the problem is not known, but should be known before effort and resources are committed to the study. A limited exploration of such study enhances modest costs and carries little risk.

In a two –stage research procedure, the first stage is exploratory, aimed at formulating hypotheses, and developing the specific research design.

The general research process contains three major stages (i) exploration of the situation, (ii) collection of data and (iii) analysis and interpretation of results.

In exploratory study, the following determines its conclusion:

 Once the major dimensions of the research task has been established

 A set of subsidiary investigative questions that can be used as guides to a detailed research design has been defined

 Several hypotheses about possible causes of the research problem have been developed

 Convinced that certain other hypotheses are such remote possibilities that they can be safety ignored in any subsequent study and

 Concluded that additional research is not needed or is not feasible.

The justifications cited for a mixed approach include: synergy, corroboration of sources and data triangulation (Pierce, 2009:48). Both methods can be combined, so long as one method is made to dominate, while the other is used in a secondary, supportive way.