week 4 measurement

Blog Question: What distinguishes Quantitative from Qualitative designs,
what is the difference between “validity” and “reliability,” and what is
meant by the terms “probability” and “significance?”

According to Goubil-Gambrell, quantitative research tries to attach numerical values to variables, populations, samples, etc. and show their relationship to each other. When conducting quantitative inquiry, researchers perform experiments that manipulate the variables for analysis in order to establish causal links. Qualitative research is descriptive and identifies variables in light of circumstances that frame inquiry. Lauer and Ashe add that qualitative research is not concerned with treatments or manipulating control groups.

Frederick Williams offers an analysis of validity and reliability and provides key distinctions. The main difference is that validity requires some standard outside of the component of measurement to which comparisons are made, whereas reliabiltiy is concerned with "comparing a measure with itself," but one does not necessarily imply the other. In other words, validity questions the fitness of a researchers tools to that thing he/she claims to measure and reliability has to do with the replication of research, which may or may not be consistent based on the component "subparts."

Probability means that an outcome will occur in all likelihood due to the necessary factors being in place, whereas significance occurs based on circumstances that are not necessarily present. In the words of Lauer and Ashe, "significance in statistics is a statement of the degree of rarity of a result based on chance probability alone. In almost all cases of statistical analysis, the calculated statistic is compared with standard, tabled values of chance distribution of that statitistic. If the calculated value is sufficiently larger (for almost all statistics) than the tabled value, the result is called statistically significant, meaning that the statistical relationship between two variables observed is unlikely to have occurred simply by random chance alone. Significance is declared usually at a probability (p) level of five or one percent" (287, emphasis mine).

week 3 Modes and Meanings

Kinneavy's "Intro to the Modes of Discourse" sheds light on how the 4 modes indicate specific means or methods for how to approach rhetorical analysis. I like how clear he is in breaking down the difference between static and dynamic discourses and classifies them by their orientation towards time. This is helpful to me as I have never considered narrative, description, classification, and evaluative. Kinneavy explains how not seeing the modes as discreet units and accepting them as fluid and blurring into each other can help develop composition theory progress. Kinneavy's text, itself, is a classification and also a description.

Garret seeks to classify the elements of user of experience into the 5 S's. They are from bottom to top -- strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface. Garret then breaks them into the two fields of user experience. They are "web as software interface" and "web as hypertext system." Like Kinneavy, Garret does not see these divisions of planes as entirely discreet and separate unto themselves, but instead as a porous connection that bleeds together and moves dialogically from top down, as well as bottom up. Garret provides a hybrid between an evaluative and classification mode because he's explaining the drawback and advantages of pursuing use experience across 5 elements.

Miller takes up the question of practicality and technical writing and makes a case for the discipline's need to develop explicitly liberatory aims. She argues that "[i]n a world in which it is more dishonorable to own slaves than it is to work for a living, we might question whether this association should prevail" (Miller15). Miller sees no reason for technical writing to exclusively serve the interests of private wealth or industry. Rather, Miller believes it is incumbent upon the academy to apply the methodology of observation and inquiry in order to develop communication conventions that are transparent and in service to the greater good in humanity. She definitely gives technical writing foes reason to pause and reconsider their motivations. Miller's text is evaluative because it offers a critique of technical writing.

Phaedrus is a narrative that leads the reader into imminent understanding of the ethics and principles of knowledge as it relates to persuasion.