IndexSection one: Overview of the research article.Section two: Philosophical approach of this research article.Section three: Qualitative methodologyData collection.Section four: Ethics Considerations .Section Five: Conclusion.References:I am a master's student in Political Psychology of International Relations interested in voting behavior and the psychology behind why people vote a certain way. Research on “why” is very scarce in international relations, especially from the perspective of voting behavior, with only a very select handful of academic researchers delving into research such as (Bartle, 2003; Campbell & Winters, 2008; White et al., 1999; Winters & Campbell, 2007) who researched qualitative publications on British electoral behaviour. Attention was concentrated in the theoretical sphere such as research on realism, liberalism, Marxism, constructivism, feminism, to name a few. There are some anomalies in the field of International Relations that cannot be predicted nor fully explained by structured theories and as such have created the need for more explanatory variables that give an explanation to the voting phenomenon, research data in International Relations tends to concentrate on political elites while political psychology as a discipline focuses on analyzing the operational code (Holsti, 1970) to support their belief systems. this essay is structured in 5 parts. The first section will provide an overview of the research article “The 2015 Qualitative Election Study of Britain”, the second section will discuss the philosophical approach used in the study and why it is best suited for the purposes of this research study, the Third section will address the topic of qualitative methodology used in the research article and whether the methods used to collect data and where the methods used were appropriate to answer the questions posed, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology used. Section four will discuss all the ethical issues present in the research conducted and finally section five concludes the discussion and presents the conclusion by analyzing the four main sections. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Section One: Overview of the Research Paper. The research study by Winters, Carvalho and Oliver, (2017) “The 2015 Qualitative Election Study” of Britain” has been cited twice according to Google Scholar and, despite being a very conservative number, is the only qualitative longitudinal study with a dataset analyzing political attitudes and voting behavior across multiple elections and referendums in the UK. The study examines information and datasets obtained from previous studies in the Qualitative Election Study of Britain 2005, 2010 and 2015 respectively. The research study aims to investigate voters' political attitudes and voting behavior across multiple elections and referendums in the UK. Hoping to "identify, isolate, and measure causal processes in political behavior, making it ideal for investigating people's understanding or perception of meaning, relationships, moods, and social processes" (Winters, Carvalho and Oliver, 2017) The authors were able to track participants' succession thought processes over time as this research paper follows on from the 2010 UK General Election research study conducted by Rosie Campbell and Kristi Winters as well as the Scottish referendum of 2014, is the third wave of focus groups conducted before andafter the UK elections. the research paper is not a normal foundational document, but it serves its purposes of this essay as it is the first and only qualitative longitudinal data set of its kind. This is an important research study because for a long time “historical and social inquiry has been inclined to ignore the personal and the individual. In their emphasis on the bigger picture” (McCulloch, 2004 p.7) there it is the need to understand the relationship between an individual and structure as “the sociological imagination allows us to grasp history and biology and the relationships between the two within society” (mills, 1959 p 5 as cited by McCulloch, 2004 p.7) Section two: The philosophical approach of this research article.a The philosophical approach is the “system of beliefs and hypotheses about the development of knowledge” (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). they use a pragmatic approach (experientialism), it is not explicitly stated in the article that this is the philosophical approach they use, it can be inferred that this is so because the very nature of the research study is based on the reality that the participants have experienced and/or observed are real, the very fact that the authors create focus groups before and after an election will demonstrate that the answers will depend on what the election results will be and where and that reality is constantly changing, as can be seen if we look at the longitudinal study of the 2010 UK general election and the 2015 Scottish referendum. an educational philosophy, pragmatism originated from the teachings of mathematician Charles Sanders Pierce “who believed that thought should produce action, rather than linger in the mind and lead to indecision” (oregonstate.edu). this philosophy works very well in terms of robustness as it is exploratory rather than explanatory and focuses on the thoughts of the participants rather than the outcome. In the study participants' political opinions can be tracked across multiple elections, pragmatism also works very well as a philosophical approach in this study because each participant has a different perspective view of reality (Bailey, 1997). Although idealism might work for this research study as it focuses on conscious reasoning in the mind, participants vote or think a certain way because they have an ideal reality that they would like to see realized through voting and then pursue that ideal when the times come elections, the philosophical approach is not fully supported, leaning further towards pragmatism and moving away from idealism. Through the authors work realism is not a philosophical approach that can be applied here as it believes that reality exists independently of the mind (Pluto, as cited in oregonstate.edu) participants cannot achieve true objectivity before or after an election . Existentialism as a philosophical approach does not even apply as it requires participants to be subjective and since voting is an individual and personal experience one cannot remain objective nor subjective. Section Three: Qualitative Methodology Winters Carvalho and Oliver used the same participants used in the 2010 and 2014 dataset experiment, this was done specifically as it allowed this study to preserve the series in the Qualitative Election Study of Britain. This seems to be ideal as there was no need to try to find new participants, and they already knew that it suited their goals and objectives as they had been used previously. It is important to note that there may be a potential bias in selecting only participants who have done the study before, as it excludes new perspectives on why peoplethey vote a certain way and it eliminates any potential new data set. Using the same participants and datasets does not take systematic error into account. It is important to note that there is bias in the sampling data, as participants were selected based on their previous participation in the 2010 and 2014 research studies, these research authors had judgment (or purposive sampling). the advantage of this type of sampling was that it was cheap and time-efficient since they already had the participants to go back to, and due to the replication of the data, they could almost predict the outcome of the data. However, it does exclude any new participants as they had not been involved in the previous studies and any new datasets. The research study provides no justification for how the size of participation was selected, only how a pool of participants was gathered for sampling. which has been through social media, particularly but not exclusively, Twitter, local Dundee media, both radio and newspapers, and through email recruitment using the University of Dundee email lists, this has created a unique group of participants, as previously stated, thanks to 100% of participants from previous studies. Data collection. This research is based on the longitudinal case study method of the same participants, the research study does not provide an explicit sampling strategy as it requires that previous participants from 2005, 2010 and 2014 respectively are still willing to participate in the study and does reliance on its ability to examine deeper insights of a unique experience within a real-life context (Yin, 2004 as cited in 1732359, 2019) In-depth interviews used by the authors in the research paper which helps in providing optimal data on personal stories, about the experiences and perspectives of individuals. the focus groups were used to “investigate what Britons thought about the (2015) campaign and election results” (Winters, Carvalho, & Oliver, 2017) the questions used were the same as those used in the 2010 study questions in order to preserve series (Winters, 2010; winters & Campbell, 2008), as well as questions linking datasets from 2015, the 2010 Qualitative Election Study of Britain (QESB), and the 2014 Scottish referendum to maintain longitudinal series using questions open-ended to allow participants to take into account their attitudes, feelings and understanding of the topic and stimulates deeper understanding (Srivastava & Thomson, 2009 as cited in 1351912, 2019). There is an already established relationship between participants and Winters, creating a quick rapport that allows participants to be more open than if they didn't know the interviewers. The passing of information and data between participant and author is an important factor in longitudinal studies as it strengthens the ability to pass the study on to the next researcher, even if Winters is part of the previous studies, his co-authors are new so there is no it is still a sense of heavy responsibility towards successors, which makes the use of interviews more suitable for this case study and maintaining the longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies like this have their own limitations such as time consumption, potential exposure to participants from previously published datasets, as well as potential replication inaccuracies when adopting statistical techniques that do not take individualistic correlation of measures into account, as well as the possibility of greater temporal financial demands associated with studiesof longitudinal research. Longitudinal research also helps in producing rich and in-depth data on participants' lived experiences before and after an election and/or referendum. The questions asked were replicated from the Qualitative Election Study of Britain 2010 in order to preserve the series (Winters, 2010; Winters & Campbell, 2008) as well as taking some questions from the 2014 Scottish referendum to link the 2015 data to the datasets precedents and to aid in the maintenance of longitudinal series. With any interview question it is important to know that there are potential biases, such as that of the interviewer, since Winters had been involved in previous studies, there is a vested interest in the results. Another bias that can occur is recall bias (or response bias), since these are the same participants in the research studies, there has been exposure to the datasets, collections and exposure, asking questions on the quality of the data. The use of interviews is an advantage for this study as it allows researchers to analyze the different processes and factors since interviews are storytelling techniques (Seidman, 2015). While replicating these questions offers researchers the opportunity to conduct multi-level analyzes that help maintain and analyze the responsiveness of the data collected in correlation to events taking place before and after an election and/or referendum. The research study replicated qualitative research, The interview schedule replicated the 2005 focus groups, the focus groups were recorded using audio and digital equipment and then transcribed by an external source who was a professional transcriber who converted the audible words in text. This allows for maximum precision in what was asked and in the responses only the sex of the participant was recorded by the transcriber, not identifying the participants, there are no transcriptions of the non-verbal communication. Special focus groups took place in Cardiff, Colchester and Dundee. There was also a pre-debate focus group session which was held for one hour, this is in line with Krueger & Casey, 2015 who suggested that focus groups take place over 1-2 hours. Participants watched the debate live. For the pre-debate focus group participants were recorded in real time in order to capture their verbal and non-verbal reactions. Section Four: Ethical Considerations. Winters Carvalho and Oliver have obtained ethical approval from their host university, the University of Dundee, UK, and from the appropriate departments. They included plans for participant anonymity, data management, data protection and confidentiality. They provided participants with information leaflets and consent forms. It is important to note that a good qualitative research study goes beyond obtaining permission from institutional ethics review boards (Creswell, 2007). Researchers must apply rigorous ethics when evaluating method design and the protection of human subjects…rigor is grounded in a deep respect for human beings and their experiences. (Munhall, 1988) Informed consent for one study does not implicitly give permission for another study: there must be explicit consent for personal data to be used, even if previous consent has been given for their use. This was avoided as participants were informed that they would be part of a longitudinal research study on the 2010 UK general election, the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2015 general election. In other cases their participation was voluntary and has become (almost) mandatory for the purposes of this study. In this research paper it is believed that informed consent is a static concept, alpast (Munhall, 1988). This is an ongoing, dynamic and ever-changing process, and for unpredictable events and consequences, relying on past consensus is insufficient and inappropriate. In this particular research paper, she facilitates the consent process, not only verbally but through consent forms deposited with the data as it reflects the ongoing dynamic nature of qualitative research. Overall, when it comes to ethics, the first and foremost question must be asked: “Toward what goal and for what end?” (Munhall, 1988), because people's behaviors change based on experience, data sets can change and authors must be aware of such possibilities for change and not interfere with the results. When collecting data, ethics play an essential role in research projects and authors should record “ethically and precisely with minimal bias and distortion” (Biernacki and Waldoorf, 1981. The validity of big data replication represents a challenge in terms ethical, it would be difficult if not impossible to verify and validate previous data, in order to replicate the data consent forms will have to be resigned as someone may have changed their mind about participating from previous data, people can withdraw their participation in the research and how such modifying the recorded data. The use of the terminology of the word “replication” is contested in the field of social sciences as replication in the research study conducted raises ethical issues as it does not take into account the “context, reflexivity and biases of the researcher”. (inter Alia, Hernson, 1995, Lucas et all., 2013 as cited in E. Carvalho, T. Oliver and K. Winters, (2017) Please note: this is just one example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Section Five: Conclusion. The authors of the 2015 Qualitative Election Study of Britain are approaching their study on the basis of a longitudinal continuation of the study begun in the 2010 British general election, carried forward into the 2014 Scottish referendum. The previous sections of this essay have evaluated the design of Qualitative research from Winters, Carvalho and Oliver's (2017) research paper, which aimed to develop the longitudinal study investigating voters' political attitudes and voting behavior over the course of multiple elections and referendums in the UK. Winters, Carvalho and Oliver framed their work from an experimentalist and semi-pragmatic perspective, using focus groups, interviews and questionnaires to collect data allowing participants to expand on their responses and establish a deeper understanding of their views when it came to electoral leaders. . They used digital and audio recordings, which were then transcribed by a professional subscriber. The analysis of the methodology used is clear in the research paper and allows the reader to easily understand and follow how they collected the data, how it was replicated and conceptualized in the current research. Winters, Carvalho and Oliver adhere to ethical guidelines, maintaining the anonymity of participants, while maintaining good data protection, data management and confidentiality, collecting new consent forms and not falling back on those provided for valuable studies, and Although there are some ethical concerns to consider, they do not arise from the research study itself. There is transparency in the data set and previous studies are easily obtainable to view the results of those studies and how this research study ties together in the longitudinal study. This research study does not wish to provide a".. 15.