Qualitative Data Collection Essay -- Sociology

Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide (Mack et al 2005) present practical information on qualitative data collection methods. I found this guide very informative, easy to understand, plain and easy to use for collecting data in qualitative research in the field. This guide provides step by step instructions to conduct qualitative research by choosing the most suitable method for that particular situation. This guide enabled me to successfully conduct my interview assignment for qualitative research course. Mack et al (2005) states â€Å"the three most common qualitative methods, participant observation, in-depth interviews, and focus groups and explained the situations where these methods are particularly suited for obtaining a specific type of data, e.g.; †¢ Participant observation is appropriate for collecting data on naturally occurring behaviours in their usual contexts. †¢ In-depth interviews are optimal for collecting data on individuals’ personal histories, perspectives, and experiences, particularly when sensitive topics are being explored. †¢ Focus groups are effective in eliciting data on the cultural norms of a group and in generating broad overviews of issues of concern to the cultural groups or subgroups represented.† Field notes, audio/ video recordings, and transcripts are the different types of data obtained from the qualitative methods discussed above. Open-ended questions and probing questions enabled the researcher to get more in depth information from the participants. While sample is the representation of the whole population by a small group which is chosen randomly or by certain criteria to estimate characteristics of the whole population. The objectives of our research question along ... ...on. The handwritten notes are converted into full narratives and then typed and saved into data file of the project into computer. Data Management Two to three copies of all the data (field notes, voice recordings, and video recordings & observations transcripts) should be made and kept separately from each other in a secure location. Process of transcription of voice and video recordings and typing of field notes should be started as soon as possible and kept together in an organized and systematic fashion. Works Cited Mack, N., Woodsong, C., MacQueen, K., Guest, G., & Namey, E. 2005. Qualitative Research Methods: A Data Collector’s Field Guide. Family Health International, North Carolina, USA. Retrieved from: http://www.fhi360.org/NR/rdonlyres/emgox4xpcoyrysqspsgy5ww6mq7v4e44etd6toiejyxalhbmk5sdnef7fqlr3q6hlwa2ttj5524xbn/datacollectorguideenrh.pdf

Criminal Activity :: Comparative, Criminological Theory

This essay will compare and contrast various perspectives that focus on individual attributes against those that focus on aggregate characteristics of criminal activity. Criminological research has a long history of trying to explain the causes of crime. During its’ history, there have been various theories or schools of thoughts that have attempted to capture the essence of this field of study. There were various theories espoused by some of the early pioneers of criminological theory. For example, Beccaria thought that crime occurred when the benefits of committing crime outweighed the cost (Cullen & Agnew, 2011). Lombroso thought that crime was caused or determined; he placed a great deal of emphasis on deficiencies of a biological nature. He was a phrenologist, he looked to physical features such as a large jaw bone and protrusions on the skull to indicate criminal propensities (Cullen & Agnew, 2011). Lambroso’s work laid the ground work for the positive school of thought; it implied that criminals have no choice for their criminal activity. Later research also focused on individual trait attributes in relation to criminality, but refined the use of more scientific methods to draw their conclusions. These studies were called micro-level theories because their concern was identifying how individual characteristics are related to their involvement in crime. These theories acknowledge that societal factors interact with biological traits, which may in turn produce crime. Some of these traits include low verbal IQ, attention deficit disorder, risk seeking and poor social and problem solving skills (Cullen & Agnew, 2011). Data has suggested that to some degree crime is inherited, and that genes likely contribute to certain traits that are conducive to crime (Ellis & Walsh, 1997) Gene theory suggest that some genes could evolve that predispose an individual to take advantage of the unselfish cooperative behavior of others (Badcock, 1986) Heart rates were also said to have a bearing on criminal dispositions. There are studies that found lower resting heart rates to be associated with a greater crime rate. There was an additional finding that the prefrontal lobes may not work correctly in the brain of criminally predisposed individuals (Rowe, 2002) Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) discovered that individual differences in self control predispose some people to criminal activity. These aforementioned facts point to how individual traits have a bearing on the commission of crime. Although there has been acknowledgement that individuals may have a biological predisposition to become criminals; nonetheless, some may still engage in very little criminal activity if they are raised in loving, supportive family environments.

Network Diagram Essay

2. A medium-sized engineering firm has three separate engineering offices. In each office, a local LAN supports all the engineers in that office. Due to the requirement for collaboration among the offices, all the computers should be able to view and update the data from any of the three offices. In other words, the data storage server within each LAN should be accessible to all computers, no matter where they are located. Draw a network diagram that will support this configuration. 3. A small start-up company has a Web-based customer sales system that is written by using PHP and JavaScript. The company is deciding whether to host the system on its own servers, contract with a hosting company for a virtual server, or go to amazon’s cloud. Volumes are expected to be low at the beginning, and it is hard to predict the growth patterns, although there is a potential for rapid growth. Decide which alternative the company should choose. Defend your decision by giving advantages and disadvantages of each solution based on the characteristics of the start-up company. I would recommend them to get a contract from a hosting company that can suffice all their needs. There are lots of web hosts that support companies for sales system; they even give additional functionalities for a reasonable price. Online threats are emerging nowadays, it is not safe to host a system yourself especially if you’re company is still new and needs more experience. Most hosting companies are almost invulnerable to threats and that should be your priority for your company. 4. Find four separate hosting providers and compare their offerings, including prices. Put your answer in a table showing the results of your research. Add additional row for the sources/references. HostPapa http://www.hostpapa.com/ Price Value At HostPapa, you truly feel like you’re getting the family discount, what with so much being offered for less than $4 a month. Enjoy unlimited storage and bandwidth for unlimited sites, all Softaculous-enabled and equipped with HostPapa Website Builder. Beyond that, you’ll also receive online stats and  reporting tools, full email versatility, developers’ tools and extensive third party web design and multimedia software support. Don’t forget, HostPapa web hosting gives you free domain registration for the first year, and free setup. Reliability HostPapa web hosting guarantees you’ll get maximum uptime (99.9% uptime guarantee and 99.9% network uptime guarantee) and promises to provide around the clock/around the calendar server monitoring. They regularly perform secure and reliable backups of all your data to protect against unforeseen emergencies. Control Panel Joy of joys, all HostPapa customers get the full benefits of the industry’s most popular and user-acclaimed control panel: cPanel. Large, intuitively organized icon-based buttons empower you to perform any number of administrative tasks. The main menu includes a real-time display of every stat and figure relevant to your web hosting account and your website’s activity and performance. Customer Support At HostPapa, you’ll get all the one-on-one help setting up and getting started that you need as well as dedicated customer service any time you need it. Choose from phone, live chat, and email support, or do-it-yourself with the HostPapa library of helpful and easy to follow video tutorials and online help docs. iPage http://www.ipage.com/ Price Value The web experts at iPage.com have managed to compile an eye-popping list of services and value-added extras and package them neatly into a all-encompassing web hosting package. Currently on promotion for just $1.99 a month, iPage.com is proving that sometimes you actually get more than you pay for. Reliability iPage.com uses a system of pooled servers – so there is always server space available to you. The first and fastest machine available will serve your website. A pool of servers provides redundancy, streamlined service, and maximum uptime. Control Panel The iPage control panel offers users tools to create, enhance and manage their websites simple and effectively. iPage.com has also worked closely with Google to integrate the industry-leading Google Tools for Websites right into your control panel. Customer Support iPage.com makes a remarkable promise: when you contact their customer service department, they’ll put you in touch with an agent within two minutes. iPage offers around the clock support via live chat, phone and e-mail. HostGator http://www.hostgator.com/ Price Value Host Gator’s shared web hosting plans start at $3.96 a month (the recently upgraded â€Å"Hatchling† plan) and include unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Their reseller plans are offered for prices ranging from $24.95 to $99.95 per month, and their dedicated server plans range from $174.00 to $374.00 per month. Put it all together and you have one company that wants to remain competitive in the web-hosting market. Reliability HostGator has chosen The Planet, located in Dallas, Texas, to house their data center. The Planet boasts over 35,000 square feet of raised floor space, and features state-of-the-art security, safety, and cooling systems. This facility is accompanied with Multiple TXU electrical grids, 4800 volts of input power, DataTrax monitoring software for the whole data center infrastructure, and a fully meshed and redundant Certified Cisco Network  featuring 10 backbone providers. Control Panel Host Gator employs the industry standard control panel, cPanel. This control panel is one of the best in the industry, and has over 39 scripts that can be installed. It is easy to learn and use, as it provides more than one million end users the ability to install dozens of leading open source programs, accompanied with flash movies for instant tutorials. Customer Support Host Gator is becoming one of the leading companies offering quick responses and a personal touch to their support system. They present 24/7/365 phone support, online chat, fax, peer support forums, and a wide variety of cPanel flash video tutorials. Their knowledgebase is also quite extensive and useful. JustHost http://www.justhost.com/ Price Value Unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited domain hosting, unlimited email accounts, unlimited MySQL databases, has it priced at just $2.25 per month. And that fee includes a free domain for life, a free point-and-click SiteBuilder with templates, a free e-Commerce shopping cart, and a free Spam Assassin for your email. Reliability At JustHost you get a 99.9% uptime guarantee on service. Just Host ‘s reliability is guaranteed, in part, thanks to their unique load balancing technology and super fast backbone connections. With load balancing, your site is available from multiple servers, so if one server becomes unavailable, your site will still be live on the other server, virtually eliminating site downtime. Control Panel If we had to pick just one web hosting control panel to use and forgo all  others, it would be the very same control panel that just so happens to come with Just Host web hosting plan. It’s cPanel, of course, the industry leader for mastering user-friendliness and ease-of use. All the resources, tools, and even web statistics are right there in one place, at your disposal. Plus you can personalize and customize your cPanel for an even easier webmastering experience. Customer Support The JustHost support center offers a full range of help features, from assisted support 24/7 via live web chat, 1-888 toll-free telephone, and email support ticket system to self-guided help via searchable and categorized online FAQ and articles, web tutorials, and an active user community. Source: http://www.hosting-review.com/web-hosting.php?aff_sub=H-R-Revised-Legacy-Hosting-International EN&aff_sub2=web%20hosting%20reviews&aff_sub3=b&gclid={gclid}&gclid=COqOnOXH-sACFYeSvQodIHsAHg

How to Teach Values Education in a Corrupt Society? Essay

In our corrupt society, there is one line attached to all the corrupt officers of the government, the line goes like this, â€Å"It is all right to steal provided you do not get caught.† Despite the dysfunctional environment we find ourselves in today, teachers need to teach and reinforce essential values in everyday schooling. These begin with values we learn at home and end with societal norms we need to advocate to make this country of ours a functioning democracy. Honesty and integrity is the first should students understand and acquire. Tell the truth, demand the truth and stand by the truth. Second is Responsibility. Act truthfully and people will give you their trust and confidence. Account for your actions and people will follow you. Third is Courage. Take charge of your actions. Do what is right, even if difficult. Stay the course even when others criticize you. Be brave in whatever you do. Fourth is Respect to others. Look out for others, give them due respect and they will respect you in return. And the last one is Love of country. This country is our reflection. This will tell the world if we Filipinos can compete and gain their respect. Although the depressing failure of many of our national and local leaders to become role models, the media, our schools, the religious should take effort to inculcate among everyone, young and old. Considering the present situation in our country, every effort must be made to receive our old values. Difficult as it may seem – at least we could try and try again and to be every persistent to the very end.

Bullying in Schools and Colleges Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Bullying in Schools and Colleges - Essay Example It has been found that bullying has increased to tremendous levels and it is almost impossible now to contain the problem. Due to the ever-increasing problem of bullying, it is seen that several states and schools have taken a notice of the grave situation and implemented laws to ensure that it does not prevail. A person that I recently met was quite a calm person in real but was a former bully in his school. He was known for his aggressiveness back then because of which the students feared them. When I questioned him I got to know quite a lot about him and made a general consensus about the bullies. The environment had a huge effect on the former bully but he got to learn things because of which he moved onto the spiritual way of life. His home life and family were the most disturbing things in his life and I believe that these things made him turn into a bully. According to him his family was more of the masculine type and liked being tough. He had four elder brothers who used to f ight with him often. He was simply frightened of them and had lost self-respect in this cause. His father never paid enough heed to him and he had to rely on his loneliness for some time. This loss of self-respect caused the former bully to target people who were of his own kind. In other words, he looked for people who were more like him and bullied them. He used to look for fellow students who were scared and did not have respect for themselves and then bullied them accordingly. The former bully stated that he was greatly influenced by his family and somehow the genetic factors got to him. His brothers were known to be the most famous bullies in the high school and he followed in their footsteps. He also told that he got to learn different techniques of bullying through his brothers. Fighting with them was an experience, he says which made him learn how to tackle off the guys who were powerful than him. Above all bullying was considered to be a very cool act by him and other guys and this made him fall into the act. Genetic factors obviously did play a role as put down by the bully. Masculinity ran in his family and he practiced this masculinity on the other students believing that this would help him regain his pride. However, he states that over time he has learned a lot of new things and has moved to the spiritual way of life. Above all, he was affected by the fact that his family was nothing about honor. As the bully grew up he realized that his family did not have much to respect for others. Women were not treated as they should have been and he observed his brothers and father to find out the fact that they themselves were hiding from reality. None of his family members were able to lead a good life and soon he realized that masculinity was only a reason for him to be a bully. With the spiritual learning, he started to walk back from fights and became proud of it. He realized the wrongs that he had done as he put in the interview. He also went to many of the people he had bullied to apologize and most of these apologies were accepted, fortunately. His personality traits can be related to those of a normal person as he realized about them when he grew up. The former bully started feeling the emotions of others when he grew up and respected the people who stood up against him.

What's worth preserving-King Kong 2005 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

What's worth preserving-King Kong 2005 - Essay Example But paired with a brilliant script and good direction, the maker’s of Kong 2005 knew it was a recipe for success, and not just the box-office kind. No other remake of a fiction film was able to reflect realities or tell truths than the original in such a thrilling and tear-jerking fashion. And truthfully speaking, that’s what really counts. To say that the film took audiences at the edge of their seats is an undeniable understatement. Even without seeing Kong, the scene with the savages is enough to make one suddenly â€Å"goosebumpy†. King Kong then finally arrives and a screech from Ann Darrow confirms the presence of the big beast. And lo, Kong never looked more like a real gorilla. Cheers to science! Thanks to science and the filmmaker’s reference to it that kids watching the movie can easily identify with what their watching. With its massive size, huge fangs, and intimidating bearing, one might think that fear is something that’s instantly instilled in innocent minds as they realize that there are real beings bigger than their parents looking exactly like it. And spectacular as the wrestling scene was with the T-rexes, the big ape is now alone with a human being, â€Å"Is it dinner time?† But then, all fear of the girl being eaten is suddenly gone as they all see that the 50-foot monster is, indeed, the gorilla that they learned in school—it eats plants. And speaking of learning, I remember a story of a friend who shares the same sentiments as I have on the film. He watched the movie with his cousins and their families and their little nephews and nieces watched too. When it came to the particular scene I just mentioned, he laughed quietly as his cousin says to her son, â€Å"See Andre? If you want to be big and strong like King Kong, you have to eat vegetables too.† Again, cheers to science! The film goes on and we realize that Kong of 2005 is more of a gorilla than

Online marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words - 1

Online marketing - Essay Example rk of the editor is to integrate advertisements into its online content while the sponsor ensures that the advertisements displays on the publishers content. Potential agencies help in generating and placing an ad copy. Nowadays, online marketing has become a large business and were growing rapidly because it is widely used across virtually all industry sectors. The script will look at various techniques that online marketing employs to enhance the faster growth as compared to offline marketing. Online marketing has enhanced its fast growth through various ways. One of the methods it has employed to enhance its dynamic growth is through display advertising. Display advertising conveys its advertising message virtually using text, logos, animation, videos, photographs and other graphics. Online advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase their advertisements effect. They use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers to decide which advert to serve to an individual customer. Through the help of, the cookies, the online advertisers are also able to track whether a user left the page without buying anything. It helps the online merchants to retarget the user later with an advertisement from the site the user visited. This Ensures that most customers can see the ads of the products as well as services they need and how to get them. Thus, purchasing them leading to income in that particular industry. Also, consumers who are not satisfi ed by the advertisements, find a form to fill what they think the advert does not achieve and how it can make. The online advertisers look at the same to ensure they satisfy the consumer’s tastes. As the online merchants collect data across multiple external websites about the users the user’s online activity, they can identify the user’s desires to deliver more targeted advertising. The advertisers can also target their audience by using a contextual advertising to provide displays