{"id":121,"date":"2019-05-13T15:48:13","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T19:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/?post_type=chapter&p=121"},"modified":"2019-06-07T14:17:58","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T18:17:58","slug":"rival-plausible-explanations","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/chapter\/rival-plausible-explanations\/","title":{"raw":"Rival Plausible Explanations","rendered":"Rival Plausible Explanations"},"content":{"raw":"Similar to the threats posed by extraneous variables, a rival plausible explanation (RPE) is an alternative factor that may account for the results you observed in your research, other than what you might have been expecting.\u00a0\u00a0 Threats to internal validity are considered RPEs.\u00a0 While it is true that most RPEs can be eliminated through careful research design (Palys & Atchison, 2014), it is important to acknowledge that some cannot.\r\n\r\nFor examine, imagine that you plan a research project to study a downtown Vancouver community\u2019s level of satisfaction with a safe injection centre that has been operating for a year in the community.\u00a0 You carefully design and plan your research project to eliminate threats to internal validity.\u00a0 Your research includes a mailout survey to every community household registered on the Province of British Columbia\u2019s most recent voters\u2019 list.\u00a0 You have also mailed the survey to all community businesses.\u00a0 Shortly after your survey is mailed out there is a serious violent incident at the safe injection centre.\u00a0 A client has attacked and seriously injured a staff member at the clinic, but he was able to disappear from the clinic without being apprehended.\u00a0 This individual is still on the loose.\u00a0 How do you think this incident will affect the members of the community and the local businesses?\u00a0 How might this incident affect how your survey participants fill out they survey, as it relates to their feelings related to the centre?\u00a0 How might their survey answers differ had the survey taken place before this incident, when there had been no such incidents?\u00a0 It is quite likely that this event will impact or \u201ccolour\u201d the responses of your participants.\u00a0 In other words, there is now a strong likelihood that you have an RPE as to why the research participants have reacted negatively to the safe injection centre.\r\n\r\nRPEs are serious and while it is true that careful research design can eliminate threats to internal validity, the incident as outlined in the previous paragraph demonstrates how an RPE can sink a research project. As a researcher you spent a lot of time designing and planning your research, but essentially the findings are null, in this case, because you are not getting the true feelings of the community.\u00a0 Their feelings will have been negatively influenced by this recent incident.\u00a0 The researcher must decide how significant and how likely it is that the RPE influenced the results, in order to decide whether or not to scrap the research project.\r\n\r\nWhile the preceding is an example of a blatant RPE, some are less obvious.\u00a0 Researchers must always consider the likelihood that an RPE explains the results of their findings when analysing data. Less blatant RPEs (i.e. weather, postal strikes, a new government policy, recent media attention to an incident related to your research) must be discussed in the limitations section of the research findings.","rendered":"

Similar to the threats posed by extraneous variables, a rival plausible explanation (RPE) is an alternative factor that may account for the results you observed in your research, other than what you might have been expecting.\u00a0\u00a0 Threats to internal validity are considered RPEs.\u00a0 While it is true that most RPEs can be eliminated through careful research design (Palys & Atchison, 2014), it is important to acknowledge that some cannot.<\/p>\n

For examine, imagine that you plan a research project to study a downtown Vancouver community\u2019s level of satisfaction with a safe injection centre that has been operating for a year in the community.\u00a0 You carefully design and plan your research project to eliminate threats to internal validity.\u00a0 Your research includes a mailout survey to every community household registered on the Province of British Columbia\u2019s most recent voters\u2019 list.\u00a0 You have also mailed the survey to all community businesses.\u00a0 Shortly after your survey is mailed out there is a serious violent incident at the safe injection centre.\u00a0 A client has attacked and seriously injured a staff member at the clinic, but he was able to disappear from the clinic without being apprehended.\u00a0 This individual is still on the loose.\u00a0 How do you think this incident will affect the members of the community and the local businesses?\u00a0 How might this incident affect how your survey participants fill out they survey, as it relates to their feelings related to the centre?\u00a0 How might their survey answers differ had the survey taken place before this incident, when there had been no such incidents?\u00a0 It is quite likely that this event will impact or \u201ccolour\u201d the responses of your participants.\u00a0 In other words, there is now a strong likelihood that you have an RPE as to why the research participants have reacted negatively to the safe injection centre.<\/p>\n

RPEs are serious and while it is true that careful research design can eliminate threats to internal validity, the incident as outlined in the previous paragraph demonstrates how an RPE can sink a research project. As a researcher you spent a lot of time designing and planning your research, but essentially the findings are null, in this case, because you are not getting the true feelings of the community.\u00a0 Their feelings will have been negatively influenced by this recent incident.\u00a0 The researcher must decide how significant and how likely it is that the RPE influenced the results, in order to decide whether or not to scrap the research project.<\/p>\n

While the preceding is an example of a blatant RPE, some are less obvious.\u00a0 Researchers must always consider the likelihood that an RPE explains the results of their findings when analysing data. Less blatant RPEs (i.e. weather, postal strikes, a new government policy, recent media attention to an incident related to your research) must be discussed in the limitations section of the research findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":724,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-121","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":102,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/724"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":515,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/121\/revisions\/515"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/102"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/121\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/researchmethods\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}