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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2857 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 14, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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No no, if there was confusion it was probably mine.

There is the idea here that there is one "true" reason why the person joined the profession that a discrete-item questionnaire could unravel. In a qualitative approach the interviews would be long, in-depth, and multiple, preferably over time, and whatever multiple reasons the women had could be explored at greater depth and, I would suggest, in much more satisfying detail. Along with a whole lot of other things.

My main issue with questionnaires as opposed to interviews is exactly this. As you say, people lie. Or questionnaire questions don't take contexts into consideration sufficiently to produce answers that are, in the end, meaningful in any way. Piloting questionnaires to get them to have any sort of validity (to say nothing of reliability) is a fine art, and even if you have a good questionnaire tailored to your subjects, when they answer it, how much time they take thinking about it, to what degree they rush through it or take it seriously, all of these influence the outcome. Personality tests in my experience are troublesome in this way, particularly the abbreviated ones. I'm not a grand proponent of them, despite insistence of their validity. Psychometrics as a field, particularly statistical, really interests me, but seems to have a lot of blind spots. Which is not to say qualitative inquiry produces completely satisfactory data, but done right I find it richer and certainly more interesting to read.

I'm not out to convince anyone, this is just my view and, were I ever to mount such a study, this is how I would do it. I do not intend any pun using the word "mount," I promise.

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