Narrative- My Parents' Funeral
Celery sticks served as slugger bats; olives substituted for baseballs to be smashed across the kitchen. Cousins Sonny and Guido were pitcher and catcher, and my sister Dorrie was a combination of infield and outfield. I came up to bat for the first time just as Gramps called for us to come into the living room.
A policeman stood in the doorway. Nonnie and Aunt Sandy were crying. All morning we had been told to stop touching the Thanksgiving dinner or we would be punished. Who expected to go to jail because of olives!
Gramps pulled Dorrie and me onto his lap and hugged us close. "Your momma and daddy were going to get Uncle Vince and a truck hit their car. God took them to heaven." He started to cry. I wished he would let us down. His prickly sweater smelled of tobacco, and his mouth was purple from wine.
Dorrie and I went home with Aunt Sandy. My stomach was hurting and making tiger noises, but everybody was crying so I was afraid to say I was hungry.
In the morning we went to a dark room where Mother and Daddy were lying in coffins. It smelled so sweet in that room, and the red-glassed candles burning everywhere made it sticky hot. Mother wore a lacy pink dress. A pink satin blanket covered her feet. Daddy looked so white, as if he wore makeup like Mother. Folded newspapers were hidden inside his trouser legs.
At night we all knelt down on the blue carpet and prayed a long, long time with Father Minnorra from Our Lady of the Angels Church. My knees were sore and I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. Aunt Sandy touched my shoulder and said, "Marie, stop that rocking. Kneel up."
The morning of the funeral was very bright. The curtains were opened in the coffin room. Aunt Sandy held my hand. She wore a black hat with a big black feather. Her eyes had big red circles around them, and her mouth was bright red. She reminded me of the clown in my circus coloring book.
Thirteen years ago, the biggest energy company in the world experienced the biggest accounting scandal of the century. The company was called Enron and was doing very well in business but unfortunately, after many bad decisions were made by the executives of the company, Enron went bankrupt. The executives of Enron were essentially gamblers in the stock market. They took terrible risks and misreported their financial standings in order to encourage people to invest in their stocks. When the stocks crashed in 2001, these people fell victim to the lies and misleading information that Enron reported. Finally, Enron had reached the point of no return and was bankrupt. Arthur Andersen was a company that had a significant role in Enron’s collapse.
Hansen, K. O., Valesquez, M., Moberg, D., & Calkins, M. (n.d). What Really Went Wrong With Enron? A Culture of Evil?. Retrieved from http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/ethicalperspectives/enronpanel.html
The girl’s mother needed her to take saltine crackers, cokes, and cough syrup to her grandmother because she was sick. Her mother always told her
According to Smith (1983) quantitative research is to explain, predict and develop laws that can be universally applied and Qualitative research is the interpretation and understanding of what people give to their situation. The researchers clearly stated the purpose of their studies, aim, objectiv...
There are many elements involved in conducting a proper research. The two general types of research designs are qualitative and quantitative. These types of designs are different in many ways. Quantitative is an objective research typically focused on numerical data. Qualitative research is subjective research focused on narrative data. This paper further elaborates on many elements that separate quantitative research from qualitative research.
Qualitative research is concerned with understanding people’s many layers of envisioned reality. It is observation of the human practice, descriptive in manner, with careful, detailed factual description of people, objects and action. Viewed in a nonpositivism style, those who look at research in this manner believe all that is important and cannot be measured as in quantitative, concrete measurement. They believe there is an interaction between researcher and participant that has to be accounted for. This being said, experiments cannot be reproduced from one environment to another because the conditions are different, the context of the situation changes and interactions cannot be the same for different researchers and participants (Long, 2014a).
Giroux, G. (Winter 2008). What went wrong? Accounting fraud and lessons from the recent scandals. Social Research, 75, 4. p.1205 (34). Retrieved June 16, 2011, from Academic OneFile via Gale:
Quantitative research uses a deductive reasoning also known as top to bottom or (top down approach) starting with a theory, then the hypothesis, followed by observation and finally confirmation , going from the general to the more specific. Quantitative methods use numbers and statistics to show the results of the research exercise and mainly are concerned with mathematics and statistics. In quantitative research there are levels of measurement being firstly nominal which are names of things followed by ordinal sequence of things, interval where the sequence has equal distance between each item, and ratio where there is a true zero (Alston & Bowles, 2003, p. 7-9).
Prior to 2000, Enron was an American energy, commodities and service international company. Enron claimed that revenue is more than 102 millions (Healy & Palepu 2003, p.6). Fortune named Enron “American most innovative company” for six consecutive years (Ehrenberg 2011, paragraph 3). That is the reason why Enron became an admired company before 2000. Unfortunately, most of the net income for the years 1997-2000 is overstated because of unethical accounting errors (Benston & Hartgraves 2002, p. 105). In the next paragraph, three main accounting issues will identify for what led to the fall of Enron.
Quantitative research may be seen as the less contentious of the two because it is more closely aligned with what is viewed as the classical scientific paradigm. Quantitative research involves gathering data that is absolute, for example numerical data so that it can be examined as unbiased as possible. The main idea behind quantitative research is that it is able to separate things easily so that they can be counted. The researcher generally has a clear idea of what is being measured before they start measuring it, and their study is set up with controls. Qualitative research on the other hand is a more subjective form of research, in which the research allows themselves to introduce their own bias to help form a more complete picture. Qualitative research may be necessary in situations where it is unclear of what is exactly being looked for in a study, while quantitative research generally knows exactly what it is looking for. Questionnaires and surveys are quantitative socio-legal research, because it is the collection of numerical data, or data that can be easily being turned into a numerical form. In terms of analysing quantitative data, Excel is the b...
Rocco, T. S., Bliss, L. A., Gallagher, S., & Perez-Prado, A. (2003). Taking the next step:
My father's eyes opened, and he called out for my sister Kelly and I to come to him. In a very serious and sad voice, he told us that he was very sick, and he was going to the Fort Wayne hospital. My mother told Kelly and I to help her pack some things for him, because he was going to be leaving soon. We helped her pack, keeping quiet because we did not want to interrupt the silence that had taken over the room.
Qualitative and quantitative research methods take different approaches to gathering and analysing information. Whether it is a qualitative or quantitative study, the research study begins with a question or series of questions. Both use rigorously designed studies to get the most accurate, detailed and complete results. Qualitative studies common methods are interviews, surveys and observation. A qualitative study aims to provide a detailed description of the study results, often using pictures and written descriptions to describe what the research revealed. A qualitative study looks at the big picture, helping researchers to narrow in on points of interest that then can be followed up on in a quantitative study. While a quantitative study has a narrower focus, it attempts to provide a detailed explanation of the study focus, along with this using numbers and statistics. And the results from a quantitative study can reveal bigger questions that call for qualitative study. Or vice versa a qualitative study may reveal at analysis that a more focus and direct approach may be needed. With both methods analysis is a key part of any study whether qualitative or quantitative.
Another characteristic of qualitative research is that it is personal and contains very little scientific terminology. For example, the researchers seek to understand human issues and problems or why humans behave in a certain manner. This type of empathetic approach in a quantitative research is a very unique in characteristic. Also, in a qualitative research, researches interact with the participants or sample, this is very important because they need to observe their behavior. As a result, it causes the research to be more up close and personal. This type of approach is what makes a qualitative research unique or different from quantitative research. (Smith &...