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After reading this term paper you will learn about:- 1. Procedure of Panel Studies 2. Advantages of Panel Studies 3. Limitations.
Term Paper # 1. Procedure of Panel Studies:
The researcher may utilize various procedures to secure evidence of the time-relationship between the variables.
(1) The investigator may ask the subjects how they felt about something before a certain event took place or whether there have been any changes in their feelings.
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For example, a question such as this may be asked:
“Can you remember what you thought about life in an industrial complex before you moved into it?” But one cannot afford to overlook the danger in this case, that replies to such questions may be inaccurate. The researcher may sometimes devise indirect checks on the incidence of distortion.
(2) Gathering evidence through studies extended over time Panel Studies. The panel study is a special type of long view technique that measures certain attributes of a given sample of persons at different points in time. The panel study, however, differs from other long view studies in at least two significant ways.
Firstly, the panel study is more likely to have a real historical interest as compared to other long view studies in that it is generally concerned with what happened at particular times. It is understandable why a study at a single point in time can hardly be used to find out how people of a certain programme of development or a certain campaign. Thus, there is no substitute for data on different points of time.
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It is well worth noting that a panel study is not the only way to obtain this type of historical information. Alternatively it may be possible to take separate samples at various points of time and on this basis to attempt a historical documentation.
Suppose we wanted to know in absolute terms what proportion of votes a particular political party has obtained at different times before a particular election, then it hardly matters, in conceptual parlance, whether the poll is taken on a sample of people just about a fortnight before the election or whether a poll is taken on the same sample of the above size (panel) twice.
Major cost differences between these two strategies are not quite substantial. Secondly, the panel study may be distinguished from other long view techniques in that the panel is much more efficient when charges are sought to be measured from period to period rather than on the absolute levels.
For example, a manufacturer may want to know whether or not more people are shifting towards his brand of produce than moving away from it. The panel study typically grapples with such comparative problem with great statistical efficiency.
It is obvious that the panel method in comparison to non-panel long view method reveals much back and forth shifting behaviour that otherwise fails to meet the eye.
Studies which are limited to a single observation or single interview or other measurement of each respondent, and in which the researcher does not have supplementary information about individual’s experiences, there is little possibility of securing evidence about time sequences except by asking the respondents to recall when events took place.
But in studies that focus on the same people over a period of time, the investigator may secure direct evidence of time relationships among variable.
Such longitudinal studies may take the form of repeated observations or interviews with the same subjects; the common group of informants subjected to repeated observations or measurements over a period of time constitute the ‘panel’ for the researcher.
The ‘panel’ is subjected to a ‘multi-phased study.’ The ‘American Soldier Studies’ conducted by Stouffer and associates provide an example of utilizing different kinds of data about the same subjects at different times.
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Samuel Stouffer and associates were interested in the relation between the acceptance of the official value system of the Army and promotion. They interviewed a group of newly-inducted soldiers and ascertained their position on the scale of acceptance of the Army value system.
Four months later, they examined the Army records of these very men and found that a higher proportion of those who had a higher position on the scale of value acceptance, had got promotion. This led them to the conclusion that positive commitment to the Army value system was conducive to promotion.
Term Paper # 2. Advantages of Panel Studies:
We may point out the typical advantages of the panel technique as under:
1(a) If mini-samples of a given population are studied by single contacts and differences in the results noted from one period to another, one cannot know whether these differences are due to differences in the samples surveyed during each period includes the same persons or groups, as in the panel techniques, the variations or shifts in the results may be attributed with certitude to a real change in the phenomena studied.
For example, full effect of a campaign cannot be ascertained through sequence of polls taken on different people. They show only majority changes.
They conceal minor changes which tend to cancel out one another and sometimes even major changes if these are nullified by opposing trends. Most importantly, they neither indicate who is changing nor do they follow the vagaries of the individual voter along the path of his vote, to discover the relative effects of various other influential factors on his final voting verdict.
(b) Data secured from the same persons over a period of time, affording a detailed picture of the factors involved in bringing about shifts in opinions or attitudes, can be secured for everyone in the panel. An analysis of the chartered profile of individuals in a panel may afford the researcher an insight into the causal relationships.
(c) The information collected about each person from time to time tends to be deeper and more voluminous than that obtained in single contacts. It is possible, despite certain limitations to build up an inclusive case history of each panel member.
(d) Provided, of course, that the group constituting the panel is cooperative, it may well be possible to set up experimental situations which expose all members of
the panel to a certain influence and thus enable the effectiveness of this influence to be measured.
(e) It has been the experience of researchers that the members of a panel learn to open out and unload their feeling in the course of frequentative interviews and so valuable comments and elaboration of points made by them can be secured.
Whereas the first interview may elicit only ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses from the respondents, the repeated interviews or measurements spread over a continuum of time may elicit from them elaborate responses in so far as they might have thought deeply about the problem after the first administration. On first contact, the informants may be suspicious of the investigator and may have little familiarity with the problem.
Term Paper # 3. Limitations of the Panel Studies:
The problems raised by the panel procedure are often sufficient to off-set the gains attendant upon it. We may briefly discuss the Limitations of the Panel techniques.
(a) The loss of panel members presents a formidable problem for the researcher. People change their locale, become ill, or die or are subjected to other influences which make it necessary for them to drop out of the panel. Thus, the panel that was initially intended as a representative sample of the population may subsequently become unrepresentative.
The losses in the membership of the panel may be occasioned by the loss of interest among the panel members or a change in attitude toward the panel idea. Not infrequently, the enthusiasm of the panel members dies down after the first or the second interview.
(b) Paul Lazarsfeld has pointed out that the members of a panel develop a ‘critical set’ and hence cease to be representatives of the general public. The panel invariably has an educational effect.
It tends to dramatize and increase one’s interest in otherwise unobserved elements and to heighten one’s interest in otherwise unobserved elements and to heighten one’s awareness of things and events around him. Hence the mere fact of participation in the panel may change a person’s attitude and opinions.
(c) Once the members of a panel have expressed an attitude or opinion they tend to try to be consistent and stick to it. Thus, panel members as compared to the general public are loss likely to change. Thus, the panel may misrepresent the population.
(d) The detailed records are available for the most stationary elements of the population. Of course, the mobile groups of a community belong to the panel for a shorter time. Panels composed of the same persons for many years will gradually become panels of old people and eventually die out.
A panel study, however, is not always feasible. One of the difficulties is that the events or thoughts may already be long past by the time the researcher begins. Occasionally, memory is not always reliable and the respondents may be inclined to ‘construct’ these part events not so much from their fading memories but from their personalized theory about their past.
Lastly, let us consider the problem of how to search for competing causal assumptions (whether Y to X is the cause) in a non-experimental situation. It is often reasonable to expect that if X were the cause it would show a higher degree of Y. But this would not be so if Y were the causal factor.
Klineberg had hypothesized that the comparatively low Intelligence Quotients of Negroes in the southern part of U.S.A. might be attributed to their poor environments. This led him to expect that the I.Q. of Negro children will increase with the length of residence in a city such as New York. His hypothesis was borne out by investigation of Negro children in New York.
In this reference we would do well to remember that the mere fact of scores on Y differing with different lengths of exposure to X does not provide a clear-cut basis for an inference of causality. The possibility is that X and Y may be mutually reinforcing.
Again, it is also possible that other factors may be associated with differences in length of exposure to the independent variable (X) and it may be these other factors which really account for differences in the dependent variable (Y). In Kleinberg’s study the possibility that the more intelligent Negroes had moved to New York much earlier might really be a reflection of this characteristic (high I.Q.) of their parents.
A variety of checks for such possibilities have been used, viz.:
(a) Repetition of the study at another time might provide a basis for scrutinizing whether some factor other than the assumed one could have caused the changes in the dependent variable.
(b) Controlling factors that may be confounded with the length of exposure to the assumed causal variable. For example, the researcher controls the ‘age’ factor if it is likely to affect the dependent variable in conjunction with the independent variable, i.e., he compares individuals of the same age who differ in length of exposure to the causal variable.