Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China
Political sensitivity is always a challenge for the scholar doing fieldwork in nondemocratic and transitional systems, especially when doing surveys and quantitative research. Not only are more research topics likely to be politically sensitive in these systems, but in trying to collect precise and...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Cambridge University Press
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64709 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5264-4655 |
| _version_ | 1811074803744899072 |
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| author | Tsai, Lily L. |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Tsai, Lily L. |
| author_sort | Tsai, Lily L. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Political sensitivity is always a challenge for the scholar doing fieldwork in nondemocratic and transitional systems, especially when doing surveys and quantitative research. Not only are more research topics likely to be politically sensitive in these systems, but in trying to collect precise and unbiased data to give us a quantitative description of a population, we are sometimes doing exactly what the government – and sometimes certain members of that population -- would like to prevent. In this chapter, I discuss some of the methodological and ethical issues that face researchers working in these contexts and describe strategies for dealing with these issues. I argue that in these contexts a “socially embedded” approach to survey research that carefully attends to the social relationships inherent in the survey research process can help alleviate problems of political sensitivity, protect participants and researchers in the survey research process, and maximize data quality. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:55:45Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/64709 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T09:55:45Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/647092022-09-26T14:36:41Z Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China Tsai, Lily L. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science Tsai, Lily L. Tsai, Lily L. Political sensitivity is always a challenge for the scholar doing fieldwork in nondemocratic and transitional systems, especially when doing surveys and quantitative research. Not only are more research topics likely to be politically sensitive in these systems, but in trying to collect precise and unbiased data to give us a quantitative description of a population, we are sometimes doing exactly what the government – and sometimes certain members of that population -- would like to prevent. In this chapter, I discuss some of the methodological and ethical issues that face researchers working in these contexts and describe strategies for dealing with these issues. I argue that in these contexts a “socially embedded” approach to survey research that carefully attends to the social relationships inherent in the survey research process can help alleviate problems of political sensitivity, protect participants and researchers in the survey research process, and maximize data quality. 2011-06-29T19:20:06Z 2011-06-29T19:20:06Z 2010-12 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/BookItem 9780521197830 9780521155762 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64709 Tsai, Lily L. "Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China." In Contemporary Chinese politics: new sources, methods, and field strategies, edited by Allen Carlson et al. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5264-4655 en_US http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item2705615/?site_locale=en_GB Contemporary Chinese Politics: New Sources, Methods and Field Strategies Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Cambridge University Press Prof. Tsai via Bob Kehner |
| spellingShingle | Tsai, Lily L. Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title | Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title_full | Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title_fullStr | Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title_full_unstemmed | Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title_short | Quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural China |
| title_sort | quantitative research and issues of political sensitivity in rural china |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64709 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5264-4655 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT tsaililyl quantitativeresearchandissuesofpoliticalsensitivityinruralchina |