Drug Use and Study of Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES USED IN TWO STUDIES: INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND DRUG USE AND STUDY OF SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF FEMALE SEX WORKERS.
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Course
Date
A Comparative Study of the Methodological Approaches Used In Two Studies: Interpersonal Relationships and Drug Use and Study of Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers.
A comparative study of two methodologies is an important procedure towards identifying the main strengths and weakness of one approach over the other. Such an analysis allows one to identify the best approach that they can use in the analysis of a similar topic. The choice of each approach of the study depends on the main target of the researchers in undertaking the study. The two articles considered include Interpersonal Relationships and Drug Use over Time among Homeless People: A Qualitative Study by Marilia Ignacio de Espindola and collagues, and A Mixed Methods Study of the Social Support Networks of Female Sex Workers and Their Primary Noncommercial Male Partners in Tijuana, Mexico by Karla D. Wagner and colleagues.
Background
There are several reasons behind the choice of the two articles. The main reason is that the authors use completely different study methodologies, which will help establish proper different between them. Besides, while the two articles pursue different topics, the target groups for their analysis belong to the minority members of the society and hence the methodologies can provide different levels of information to facilitate the understanding of the challenges that the members face. For example, in the first article, the authors sough to understand the correlation between interpersonal relationships and drug use among the members involved. The second article using the mixed methods research approach focuses on establishing the contributors of the social support networks in helping minority groups. While the two studies target different groups of people belonging to the same category, their scope also varies, which helps determine how each one can contribute towards a better understanding of the community experiences that determine the relationship between them. Secondly, the authors use different methods for data collection. Consequently, it will be important to determine the best approach in terms of the quality of the information collected.
The first method uses a purely qualitative study approach, in which the researchers conduct interviews on the subjects to determine their experiences on the interpersonal relationships. In the second article, the researchers use a mixed method research technique, in which they focus on identifying the factors affecting the social support networks that the minority groups use to support each other. The researchers audio-recorded the interviews and then fully transcribed them verbatim with the assistance of the members of the research staff. The researchers collected the information until they attaint a state of theoretical saturation, at which point they could no longer obtain new information from the participants concerning the themes being observed. In the second article, the authors collect both quantitative and qualitative data simultane...