An analytical memo is a tool for reflecting on ongoing research, often recommended in grounded theory studies.
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Main glossary
grounded theory
a methodology for understanding complex research contexts
See Grounded theory
systematic review
a type of literature review with a pre-determined set of crtieria for which studies are included in the review
meta-analysis
an approach to summarising a set of studies published separately but addressing the same research question. This is generally a statistical analysis where the meta-analysis combines quantitative results from across a range of of comparable studies identified by a systematic review to suggest an overall finding
erklären
a German term relating to causal explanation, and often contrasted to verstehen which refers to interpretive understanding, which is sometimes used to describe a research tradition or stance
verstehen
a German term relating to interpretive understanding, and often contrasted to erklären which refers to causal explanation, which is sometimes used to describe a research tradition or stance
observation
Observation is a research technique (actually a class of related techniques) designed to collect data without intervening in (i.e., changing) the research context
experiment
An experiment is a type of research methodology designed to test a hypothesis by setting up a controlled intervention
clinical interviews
The clinical interview is one type of research interview (popularised by Jean Piaget) used to test aspects of a person's thinking.
interpretive research
studies that involve the researcher making sense of research participants' responses in relation to the research purposes
of course all research involves interpretation, but the term usually means a researcher is working with open-ended data without pre-conceived categories and criteria for coding it
This is a paradigmatic stance, often contrasted with positivist research
interventional research
research where the research deliberately changes the situation being studied to find the effect of those changes (i.e., experiments)
interventionalist research may be contrasted with naturist research
naturalistic research
Research intended to find out how things are, rather than to see the effect of changes
Naturalistic research may be contrasted with interventionist research (though in practice any research is to some degree an intervention even when it is not intended to change things).