What is an example of critical qualitative research?

What is an example of critical qualitative research?

One of the more famous studies to produce a critical analysis is the doll test first devised by Mamie Clark, then conducted with husband Kenneth Clark starting in the 1940s and replicated in later years. In the doll test, children were asked how they felt about dolls that were put in front of them. The children preferred to play with the dolls that looked white rather than the dolls that looked black, and had more positive views about the white-looking dolls. Children who were black also tended to share the same perception of black-looking dolls, which suggested that their surrounding environment – particularly the school system but more broadly the culture around them – profoundly impacted them by reinforcing negative stereotypes about racial minorities.

Critical theorists argue that such stereotypes, especially when perpetuated by institutions like education and mass media, further contribute to economic and social disparities when children of color experience exposure to negative attitudes about race and ethnicity. This novel research provided fundamental insights that led to the following real-world changes:

• Desegregation of schools: This research took place in the era where public schools in the United States were separated by race. The findings from the doll test helped make the case that institutionalized discrimination had effects on the educational and emotional development of children of color, ultimately leading to judicial rulings that contributed to school desegregation.
• Educational reforms: Subsequent discussions of racial stereotypes have helped to further promote initiatives for racial equity and equality in public education. While still undoubtedly controversial to this day, efforts to promote diversity training for teachers, multicultural curriculum development, and other policies to address racial disparities can be partly attributed to the findings of the doll test.
• Anti-discrimination policies: The findings from the doll test form a scientific basis for anti-discrimination frameworks for public policy, workplace organization, and other formal institutions. Where racism and equality might otherwise be abstract, potentially vague concepts, a scientific framework regarding discriminatory attitudes provides a language for discussing practical implications addressing racism.

Approaches to critical theory

Here are some of the various forms of critical research. Keep in mind that these approaches are not exclusive to each other, though they have their own distinct focus to shed light on specific issues relevant to the social sciences, nor are they exhaustive of the entire array of critical theory.

• Critical discourse analysis: Researchers who critically analyze communication look at how people exercise power through speech to manipulate or control others. This analytical method connects theories from linguistics, sociology, and anthropology to look at the power of language in constructing social reality.
• Critical ethnography: Ethnography is an all-encompassing approach to research aimed at capturing relationships, practices, and behaviors within any given context. Beyond a comprehensive examination of cultures, critical ethnographers use the resulting findings to advocate for social change.
• Critical methodology: Critical scholars may also look at how methods are used to construct scholars’ epistemology about scientific knowledge and question approaches to science that emphasize objectivity to a fault. Critical methodology advocates for reflexivity and participatory research as a departure from traditional research methods.
• Critical race theory: Scholars engaged in critical race theory look at longstanding racial disparities to examine how institutions and power structures perpetuate racism and how people of color can challenge those structures from legal and advocacy standpoints in order to foster equity and equality.
• Decolonizing research: Focusing on the critique that most established research comes from a Western-based perspective, research on decolonization seeks to deconstruct established philosophical paradigms that disadvantage perspectives of indigenous populations, cultures from the Global South, and other communities that have long been ignored by mainstream scholarship