Table of contentsSection one: Overview of the research article.Section two: The philosophical approach to this research article.Section three: Qualitative methodologyCollection of data. Section Four: Ethical Considerations. Section Five: Conclusion. References: I am a master's student in political psychology of international relations who is interested in voting behavior and the psychology behind why people vote the way they do . “Why” research is very rare in the field of international relations, particularly regarding voting behavior, with only a very small handful of academic researchers delving into the research, such as (Bartle, 2003; Campbell & Winters , 2008; White et al., 1999; Winters & Campbell, 2007) who carried out research on qualitative publications on British electoral behavior. Emphasis was placed on the theoretical sphere such as research on realism, liberalism, Marxism, constructivism and feminism, to name a few. There are some anomalies in the field of international relations that cannot be predicted or fully explained by structured theories and, as such, have created a need for more explanatory variables that provide an explanation for the voting phenomenon. International relations research data tends to focus on political elites while political psychology as a discipline focuses on “operational code analysis” (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 Qualitative Study of the 2015 Elections in Britain”. The second section will discuss the philosophical approach used in the study and why it is best suited to the needs of this research study. The third section will discuss the qualitative methodology used in the research article and whether the methods used to collect their data and where the methods used were appropriate to answer the questions asked as well as the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology used. The fourth section will address all the ethical issues raised by the research conducted and finally, the fifth section finishes the discussion and presents the conclusion analyzing the four main sections. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Section 1: Presentation of the research article. The research study by Winters, Carvalho and Oliver, (2017) "The Qualitative Study of the 2015 Elections of Britain" has been cited twice according to Google Scholar, and although this is a very Conservative, this is the only qualitative longitudinal study with a dataset analyzing political attitudes and voting behavior across multiple UK elections and referendums. The study examines information and datasets obtained in previous studies as part of the Qualitative Study of the 2005, 2010 and 2015 Great Britain elections respectively. The research study aims to investigate voters' political attitudes and voting behavior in several elections and referendums in the United Kingdom. Hoping to "identify, isolate and measure causal processes in political behavior, making it ideal for studying people's understanding or perceptions of meaning, relationships, states of mind and social processes” (Winters, Carvalho and Oliver, 2017). The authors were able to follow the succession thinking processes of theparticipants over time, as this research paper followed the 2005 and 2010 UK general election research study by Rosie Campbell and Kristi Winters as well as the 2014 Scottish Referendum, it is the third wave of focus groups held before and after the UK elections. the research paper is not an ordinary seminal article, it meets the objectives 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 so long, "historical and social inquiries have tended to ignore the personal and individual. In their emphasis on the big picture" (McCulloch, 2004 p.7), it is necessary to understand the relationship between an individual and their structure, because “the sociological imagination allows us to grasp history and biology as well as the relationships between the two”. within society” (mills, 1959 p. 5 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 assumptions regarding knowledge development” (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). The authors use a pragmatic approach (experientialism), it is not explicitly stated in the article that it is the philosophical approach that they use, we can deduce that this is the case because the very nature of the research is based on the reality that the participants experienced and/or observed are real, the very fact that the authors create focus groups before and after an election will show that the responses will depend on the results of the election, where and whether the reality is constantly evolving, as we can see. if we look at the longitudinal study of the 2010 British general election and the 2015 Scottish referendum. An educational philosophy, pragmatism has its origins in the teachings of the mathematician Charles Sanders Pierce “who believed that thought should produce action , rather than lingering in the mind and leading to indecision” (oregonstate.edu). this philosophy works very well in terms of robustness because it is exploratory rather than explanatory and focuses on the participants' thoughts rather than the outcome. In the study, participants' political views can be tracked across multiple elections, pragmatism also works very well as a philosophical approach in this study because each participant has a different view of reality (Bailey, 1997). Although idealism may 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 by vote and then pursue this ideal when the election comes, the philosophical approach does not fully support itself, moving more towards pragmatism and further away from idealism. Thanks to the authors' work, realism is not a philosophical approach that can be applied here because it is the belief that reality exists independently of the mind (Pluto, cited in oregonstate.edu), the participants do not cannot achieve true objectivity before or after an election. Existentialism as a philosophical approach also does not apply because it requires participants to be subjective and because 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 as those used in the study. For the 2010 and 2014 datasets, this was done deliberately as it allowed this study topreserve the series of qualitative study on elections in Great Britain. This seems ideal because there was no need to try to find new participants, and they already knew that they matched their goals and objectives as they had been used previously. It is important to note that there could be potential bias by only selecting participants who have completed the study before; this would exclude new insights into why people vote the way they do, in eliminating any potential new datasets. Using the same participants and datasets does not account for systematic error. It is important to note that there is bias in the sampling data because participants were selected based on their prior participation in the 2010 and 2014 research studies. The authors of this research conducted sampling discretionary (or reasoned). The advantages of this type of sampling were that it was cost effective and time efficient because they already had their participants on hand to go back to and through data replication they could almost predict the outcome of the data. However, it does exclude all new participants as they were not involved in the previous studies or any potentially new datasets. The research study does not provide any justification for how the participation size was selected, only how they collected a group of participants for sampling. which was done via social media, particularly but not exclusively, Twitter, local Dundee media, both radio and newspapers, and through email recruitment using the Dundee mailing lists. At the University of Dundee, this created a unique panel of participants, as previously stated, thanks to 100% participants. participants from previous studies. Data collection. This research relies on the longitudinal case study method of the same participants, the research study does not give an explicit sampling strategy as it requires previous participants from the years 2005, 2010 and 2014 respectively to still be willing to participate in the study and relies on one's ability to examine better information about a unique experience in a real-life context (Yin, 2004, cited in 1732359, 2019). The authors have used in-depth interviews in the research paper which help to provide optimal data on the personal stories, experiences and perspectives of the individuals. focus groups were used to “investigate what British people thought about the campaign (2015) and the election results” (Winters, Carvalho, & Oliver, 2017). The questions used were the same as those used in the 2010 study in order to preserve the (Winters, 2010; Winters & Campbell, 2008) as well as questions linking the 2015 datasets, from the Grande Qualitative Election Study -Britain (QESB) of 2010 and the Scottish referendum of 2014 for the continuation of the longitudinal series using open-ended questions to allow participants to take into account their attitudes, feelings and understanding of the subject and encourage a deeper understanding in-depth (Srivastava and Thomson, 2009, cited in 1351912, 2019). There is an already established rapport between the participants and Winters, creating a quick rapport that allows the participants to be more open than if they did not know the interviewers. The transmission of information and data between the participant and the author is an important factor in longitudinal studies because it strengthens the ability to transmit the studyto the next researcher, even though Winters is part of the previous studies, his co-authors are new, so there is still a sense of heavy responsibility to successors, which makes the use of interviews more suitable for this case study and maintaining the longitudinal study. Longitudinal studies like this do have their own limitations such as time consumption, potential exposure to participants from previously published datasets as well as potential replication of inaccuracies when adopting techniques statistics that do not take into account the individualistic correlation of measures as well as the possibility of increased financial time demands associated with longitudinal research studies. Longitudinal research also contributes to the production of rich and in-depth data on participants' participation in experiences before and after an election and/or referendum. The questions asked were reproduced from the qualitative study on the 2010 Great Britain elections to preserve the series (Winters). ,2010; Winters & Campbell, 2008) as well as answering some questions from the 2014 Scottish referendum in order to link the 2015 data to previous datasets and contribute to the maintenance of the longitudinal series. For any interview question, it is important to know that there are potential biases, such as interviewer bias, because Winters had participated in the previous studies, there is a vested interest in the results. Another bias that can arise is recall bias (or response bias), because these are the same participants as in the research studies. There was exposure to the datasets, collections and exhibition, raising questions about data quality. The use of interviews is an advantage of this study because it allows researchers to analyze the different processes and factors, as interviews are storytelling techniques (Seidman, 2015). Although replicating these questions gives researchers the ability to conduct multi-level analyses, which helps maintain and analyze the responsiveness of the data collected in correlation to events taking place before and after an election and/or a referendum. The research study replicated qualitative research, the interview schedule replicated that of the 2005 focus groups, the focus groups were recorded using digital and audio equipment and then transcribed by an outside source who was a professional transcriber who converted these audible words into text. This allows for maximum precision in what was asked and the responses, only the gender of the participant was recorded by the transcriber, not identifying the participants, there are no transcripts of non-verbal communication. Special focus groups were held in Cardiff, Colchester and Dundee. There was also a pre-discussion session of the focus group which lasted for an hour – which is consistent with Krueger & Casey, 2015 who suggested that focus groups should take place over 1-2 hours. Participants watched the debate live. For the pre-debate focus group, participants were recorded in real time to capture their verbal and non-verbal reactions. Section Four: Ethical Considerations. Winters Carvalho and Oliver obtained ethical approval from their host university, the University of Dundee, UK, and the appropriate body. departments. They included plans for the anonymity of their participants, data management, data protection and confidentiality. They provided participant information leaflets and consent formsof participants. It is important to note that a good qualitative research study goes beyond obtaining approval from institutional review boards (Creswell, 2007). Researchers must apply rigorous ethics when evaluating design methodology and protecting 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 grant permission for another study; there must be explicit consent for personal data to be used, even if they had previously given permission for its use. This was avoided because participants had been informed that they would be part of a longitudinal research study into the 2010 UK general election, the 2014 Scottish referendum and the 2015 general election. Previously their participation was voluntary, it is become (almost) obligatory for the purposes of this study. In this research paper, it is understood that informed consent is a static concept in the past tense (Munhall, 1988). It is a continuous, dynamic and constantly evolving process, the events and consequences of which are unpredictable; relying on prior consent is insufficient and inappropriate. In this particular research paper, he facilitates the consent process, not only verbally but also through consent forms filed with the data, as it reflects the dynamic and ongoing nature of qualitative research. Overall, when it comes to ethics, the first and most important question one must ask is: “To what end and for what purpose?” (Munhall, 1988), because people's behaviors change based on experience, data sets can change and authors must be aware of these possibilities for change and not interfere with the results. When collecting data, ethics plays a vital role in research projects and authors must record "ethically and accurately with a minimum of bias and distortion" (Biernacki and Waldoorf, 1981. The validity of data Replicating big data presents a challenge in ethics, it would be difficult, although not impossible, to verify and validate previous data, in order to replicate it the data consent forms would have to be resigned because someone could have changed. opinion aboutparticipant from previous data, people can withdraw their participation in the research and thus modify the recorded data. The use of the terminology of the word "replication" is contested in the field of social sciences because replication. in the research carried out raises ethical questions because it does not take into account “the context, reflexivity and bias of the investigator” (among others, Hernson, 1995, Lucas et al., 2013 cited in E. Carvalho, T . Oliver and K. Winters, (2017)Keep in mind: This is just a sample.Get a custom paper now from our expert writers.Get a custom essaySection Five: Conclusion. The authors of the qualitative study on the 2015 UK elections approach their study as a longitudinal continuation of the study which began during the 2010 UK general election and continued during the 2014 Scottish referendum. Previous sections of this essay have been evaluated. the qualitative research design of Winters, Carvalho and Oliver's (2017) research paper which aimed to develop a longitudinal study that investigates the political attitudes and voting behavior of voters across multiple elections and referendums in the United Kingdom. Winters, Carvalho and Oliver supervised their. ». 15.