Month: February 2018

This is a review of Rob’s Action Research Project.

Does the project focus on a real problem in practice?

• Yes, the issue Rob’s project addresses is the lack of physical activities in the afternoon for students which results in short attention span and disengaged students.

Does the researcher plan to study his or her own practices or plan to collaborate with community members?

• The researcher plans to use a mixed methods design in the context of his own practice where his students are interviewed and asked to complete a survey, and data is collected from other teachers.

Does the project include careful reflection about the problem?

• Yes, Rob carefully reflects upon the issue and the effects it has on his students’ learning.

Does the researcher plan to gather several sources of information (e.g., qualitative and quantitative procedures)?

• Rob’s mixed methods design involves qualitative data where students are interviewed about their opinions of the right type and amount of daily physical activity is provided, and quantitative data that collects schedules from other teachers to evaluate the amount of physical activity and breaks and types of activities they set for their students. Rob also plans to distribute a survey to students that questions the types of activities students partake in during their recess and lunch breaks.

Does the researcher develop a clear plan for addressing the problem?

• While there are great ideas on how to address the issue, I believe the reasoning of using both a survey and interviews is unclear. Choosing either the interview or survey as the process of collecting data from students is adequate. The data collection process proposed is too complicated.

Does the project include reflecting, thinking, looking, and gathering information and acting?

• The overall project includes reflecting and thinking about the issue, and gathering data. Rob also proposes possible a possible action plan that involves additional scheduled activity breaks in the afternoon.

Will the results of the project enhance the lives of those involved?

• The project is capable of enhancing students’ and teachers’ lives. Education is crucial on an individual and social levels, and providing the right environment where students are engaged and thriving enhance people individually and society as a whole.

I work in a non-profit organization with a team that serves Vancouver’s downtown east side community around the clock throughout the week. Considering the nature of the team, I identified three problems that could be addressed:

1. On-call workers staff care – Our on-call workers require great flexibility as they fill gaps due to predictable circumstances such as leave requests, and unpredictable circumstances such as illness on the team or emergencies with our clients. The flexibility required can mean sacrifice in sleep for overnight shifts, sudden shifts that interrupt their evening plans, working understaffed, or quick turnovers between shifts. I greatly appreciate our on-call team, but it can be difficult to thank them appropriately and meaningfully. Due to their erratic schedules, there are few opportunities to connect with each on-call worker. While pizza parties were held in the past to thank them, we question whether this is the best way to thank them. What is an adequate way of expressing gratitude to an on-call team that have no set schedule?
2. Meetings in a 24/7 team – Whether held in the morning, afternoon, evening, or midnight, any team meetings or activities our team plans will exclude someone. Because someone is always on site working, our team can never fully meet together. This can cause feelings of exclusion, a gap in communication for all team members, and a lack of unity amongst the entire team. Our day team may go weeks without seeing our overnight team. What are the best practices of planning team activities for a 24/7 team?
3. Unmotivated to learn – Some team members have worked in the downtown east side community for over 20 years and have lived in the community for even longer. While still fully capable of serving our guests with the skills they have, there is a lack of motivation to learn new skills to supplement their current ones. Due to their rich personal experience in their field, there is a lack of motivation and desire to acknowledge the training offered is useful. How can leaders motivate well seasoned staff members to take interest in new training?

Link to class questions

Melchar and Bosco’s (2010) study is evaluated through Plano-Clark and Creswell’s (2015) seven criteria for evaluating the use of mixed methods in a research report (p. 405).

1. The rationale for needing mixed methods research is appropriate and justified (0/3) – Melchar & Bosco (2010) do not explicitly articulate why a mixed method was chosen instead of a quantitative or qualitative study alone. The study states “qualitative interviews were conducted a priori in order to determine whether there were main themes that reflected the senior leader’s “servant leader” orientation” (Melchar & Bosco, 2010, p. 80), but no justification for the quantitative surveys were given.
2. The choice of the mixed methods design is appropriate and justified (1/3) – The sequential exploratory mixed methods design was chosen for this study. As mentioned, Melchar & Bosco (2010) collected qualitative data from the senior leaders first to analyze whether the leaders reflected the servant leader (SL) qualities (p. 80). To understand the influence of senior leaders’ use of SL, it was crucial to interview the senior leaders. The timing of the study and the unequal priority of the quantitative study is justified, but once again, there is no explicit reasoning from the researchers of their specific design. Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) state, “At a minimum, all mixed methods studies should “mix” the quantitative and qualitative components in the final conclusion section” (p. 389); the study fails to do this.
3. The quantitative methods are of good quality based on the standards of quantitative research (1/3) – The study only received 59 respondents to their survey that consisted of 91% male sample group, when 350+ individuals are expected for a survey (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 238). Melchar & Bosco (2010) provided  coefficient alphas (p. 79) and an ANOVA (p. 80) to enhance the reliability, but this does not justify the small sample. No example of the survey or its questions were included.
4. The qualitative methods are of good quality based on the standards of qualitative research (2/3) – The qualitative methods incorporated three interviews that provided purposeful information to identify main themes, and a few examples of the open-ended questions were provided. More information on the qualitative process is needed.
5. The quantitative and qualitative components of the study are meaningfully mixed (1/3) – While the need to interview the senior leaders is explained, the study does not further interpret or mix the interview results with the quantitative survey aspect in the discussion or results. The interview is treated like a test of whether the leader practices SL, and is then discarded for the overall results.
6. The study used a rigorous application of mixed methods research to address the purpose (1/3) – Addressing the question of whether the incorporation of servant leadership at the senior levels influences a culture of servant leadership at lower levels of management (Melchar & Bosco, 2010, p. 77), the use of interviews and surveys is logical, but the lack of analysis and mixing of the two elements make it seem unnecessary. Either incorporating the interview process or solely relying on surveys would have worked.
7. The use of mixed methods produced a good understanding of the research purpose (1/3) – I am not convinced the use of mixed methods produced more complete, valid, or in-depth answers to the study’s research questions. The quantitative and qualitative aspects did not enhance one another.

References

Melchar, D. E., & Bosco, S. M. (2010). Achieving High Organization Performance through Servant Leadership. Journal Of Business Inquiry: Research, Education & Application, 9(1), 74-88.

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

The heart of the quantitative-qualitative debate is whether the mixed-methods research approach should be used due to the differences inherent to the quantitative and qualitative approaches. As Plano-Clark and Creswell (2015) state, “[There are] important differences between quantitative and qualitative research [that] range from they types of research problems to the types of purposes, to the forms of gathered data, and even to the role of the researcher” (p. 385). The argument against using the mixed-methods approach is: “How can the result be similar if the two paradigms are supposedly looking at different phenomena? Achieving similar results may be merely a matter of perception” (Sale, Lohfeld, and Brazil, 2002, p. 47).  Conversely, Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) provides several rationals for using mixed methods: 1) to combine quantitative and qualitative data strengths, 2) to build from one type of data to the other, and 3) to answer two questions (pp. 385-386).

Agreeing with the reasoning for mixed methods, Stentz, Clark, and Matkin (2012) state, “Researches can maximize the strengths of each approach while making up for the weaknesses of the approaches, develop more complete and complementary understanding, increase validity of results, use one form to build on the results of the other, and/or examine contextualized understanding, multi-level perspectives, and cultural influences” (p. 1174) in studying leadership. Quantitative studies have limitations such as limited understanding of the participants’ context and being researcher driven, while qualitative studies are limited by the small sample and being highly interpretive (Creswell, 2013, What is Mixed Methods Research), but applying both methods into leadership research can “promote the development of new understanding about existing theories while advancing our theoretical thinking in ways that both deeper and broader” (Stentz et al., 2012, p. 1173).

Considering the pros and cons of the mixed-methods approach, I agree mixed methods is a powerful way to collect and analyze data. Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) offer a list of design intents (p. 391) and I believe if used correctly, mixed methods can provide valid and insightful information that connects the personal stories and numbers together to provide a well-rounded research. I take most interest in how mixed methods can enhance a qualitative or quantitative study and also how it can “examine multiple levels” (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 391). While I enjoy seeing the connections between different levels a study asks for, my concern returns to the concern raised above: “Achieving similar results may be merely a matter of perception” (Sale et al., 2002, p. 47).

Question: How do you identify and evaluate the validity of a study’s use of multiple levels knowing the threat of forced perception in analyzing the different levels? Do you think there is a definite boundary in between a valid use of multiple levels and a forced compilation of different levels to create a single finding?

References

Creswell, J. (2017, June 1). What is mixed methods research? [Video file]. Available from http://johnwcreswell.com/videos/

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Sale, J.E.M., Lohfeld, L.H., Brazil, K. (2002). Revisiting the quantitative-qualitative debate: Implications for mixed-methods research. Quality & Quantity, 36(1), 43-53.

Stentz, J. E., Plano Clark, V. L., & Matkin, G. S. (2016). Applying mixed methods to leadership research: A review of current practices: Corrigendum. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(4), 711. doi:10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.12.006

Link to blog question

l will evaluate E. Russell, Maxfield, and J. Russell’s (2017) study based on Plano-Clark & Creswell’s (2015) seven criteria for evaluating the research design of a qualitative research report (p.  301).

1. A research design guides the conduct of the qualitative study (3/3) –  Russell et al. (2017) use the qualitative grounded theory “to discover how senior level leaders perceive personal benefits derived from serving the needs of their followers” (p. 75); this study researched the action of perceiving personal benefits through online questionnaires that questioned 14 senior level leaders. As the grounded theory approach seeks to explain “a process, action, or interaction [….] built from the experiences and perspectives of participants,” Russell et al. (2017) seems knowledgeable about the design and use accurate terms to describe the grounded theory process.
2. The choice of the research design is appropriate  and justified (3/3) – Russell et al. (2017) justify their choice of using the qualitative grounded theory by stating: “The design allows for an analysis of data using a constant comparative method” (p. 84). Beyond this reasoning, the nature of the study that considers the experience of its participants’ interpretation of their personal benefits derived from serving followers requires personal assessments of leaders “who have experienced the process” (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 298) that the grounded theory offers.
3. Good qualitative data collection procedures are used (2/3) – Plano-Clark & Creswell (2015) state, “You often find that the grounded theory researcher interviewed people” (p. 298). While Russell et al. (2017) do not interview their participants directly, they choose to collect their participants’ experience and perspectives through online questionnaires to protect their anonymity which equally serves the study’s purpose. The researchers ran a pilot study to refine the questions, and “established a secure database for data collection and storage to ensure data reliability” (p. 85).
4. Good qualitative analysis procedures are used (3/3) – A good grounded research analyses “data using multiple stages of coding” (Plano-Clark & Creswell, 2015, p. 298). Russell et al. (2017) adhere to this characteristic by using “a tiered process for the sorting and analysis of the data” (p. 86) which included open codes and axial codes.
5. Good qualitative results and interpretations are reported (3/3) – The results are organized well into two categories (or attributes) and a sample of the questionnaire answers are presented to support the two attributes. Overall, the conclusion and discussion of the data interpret the generated theory that leaders benefits from serving followers.
6. The study used a rigorous research design (3/3) – The study’s process and analysis fit together logically and coherently. The article begins with a clear framework of the characteristics of servant leadership, and explore its research question thoroughly.
7. The use of the qualitative research design addressed the study’s purpose (3/3) – The research design fits the study’s intent and answers the study’s intent of understanding how senior leadership perceives personal benefits of serving their followers; “leaders realize personal benefits from serving the needs of followers” (Russel et al., 2015, p. 92).

References

Plano-Clark, V., & Creswell, J. (2015). Understanding research: A consumer’s guide (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.