4. STRATEGIES
DESIGN DATA COLLECTION &
FIELD WORK
ANALYSIS
Naturalistic Qualitative Data Uniqueness
Flexible Personal engagement Creativity
Purposeful sampling Neutrality Holistic perspective
Dynamicity Context Sensitivity
Voice, perspective
and reflexivity
Editor's Notes
Deciding qualitative vs quantitative research method: QUOTE
Choosing qualitative vs quantitative research method can be facilitated by knowing the:
Purposes of the inquiry – could be research, evaluation, dissertation, or personal inquiry.
Primary audience – range from scholars to funding agencies to doctoral committee etc.
Research question(s) guiding the inquiry – From core academic theory derived/testing Qs to practical issues to priorities or even passion.
Type of data to answer the inquiry – Qualitative like interviews/observations or Quantitative could be surveys/tests/experiments/secondary data == mix methods
Resources to support the inquiry – Financial, time, people, access, connections etc.
Criteria to Judge quality of findings
- traditional: Rigor, validity, reliability, generalizability
- evaluation: Utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracy
- non-traditional: Trustworthiness, diversity of perspectives, clarity of voice, credibility of the inquirer to primary users of the finding.
THEMES OF QUALITATIVE INQUIRY
Design Strategies
- Naturalistic Inquiry: performing non-judgmental, non-manipulative, non-controlling observation of real-world situation.
- Design flexibility: avoiding getting locked into a rigid design when situations change or information emerges.
- Purposeful sampling: Cases are selected from population wisely, to study relevant information aimed at insight of phenomenon but not just to generalize to the target population.
2. Data Collection and Fieldwork Strategies
- Qualitative Data: Observations to yield details, interviews to know perspectives or case-studies to do document review sensitively.
- Personal engagement: To get in touch with people or phenomenon for better understanding and critical insight.
- Empathetic thoughtful neutrality: Being open-minded and present minded all the time nonjudgmentally.
- Dynamic systems: Be attentive to on-going changes and always expect the potential progress.
3. Analysis Strategies
- Uniqueness: Each case is unique; study individual cases then cross case analysis depending on quality of each case studied.
- Inductive analysis and creative synthesis: immerse in the details to find out patterns and interrelationships. Explore & confirm guided by analytical principles rather than rules to end up into creative synthesis.
- Holistic perspective: Study as a whole system, and focus on complex interdependencies not limiting to just few variables and linear, cause-effect relationships.
- Context Sensitivity: Analyze findings carefully, and look for patterns of possible adaptations and transferability
- Voice, perspective and reflexivity: Own voice an perspective of researcher counts in qualitative analysis. Personal credibility overweighs the subjectivity and objectivity. Analyze authentically and being reflexively self aware.
THEMES OF QUALITATIVE INQUIRY
Design Strategies
- Naturalistic Inquiry: performing non-judgmental, non-manipulative, non-controlling observation of real-world situation.
- Design flexibility: avoiding getting locked into a rigid design when situations change or information emerges.
- Purposeful sampling: Cases are selected from population wisely, to study relevant information aimed at insight of phenomenon but not just to generalize to the target population.
2. Data Collection and Fieldwork Strategies
- Qualitative Data: Observations to yield details, interviews to know perspectives or case-studies to do document review sensitively.
- Personal engagement: To get in touch with people or phenomenon for better understanding and critical insight.
- Empathetic thoughtful neutrality: Being open-minded and present minded all the time nonjudgmentally.
- Dynamic systems: Be attentive to on-going changes and always expect the potential progress.
3. Analysis Strategies
- Uniqueness: Each case is unique; study individual cases then cross case analysis depending on quality of each case studied.
- Inductive analysis and creative synthesis: immerse in the details to find out patterns and interrelationships. Explore & confirm guided by analytical principles rather than rules to end up into creative synthesis.
- Holistic perspective: Study as a whole system, and focus on complex interdependencies not limiting to just few variables and linear, cause-effect relationships.
- Context Sensitivity: Analyze findings carefully, and look for patterns of possible adaptations and transferability
- Voice, perspective and reflexivity: Own voice an perspective of researcher counts in qualitative analysis. Personal credibility overweighs the subjectivity and objectivity. Analyze authentically and being reflexively self aware.
Deciding which research method to use is highly complicated and there are no universal rules or guidelines; it depends on the need, resources, availability, personal preference etc. There are currently three major research paradigms in education (and in the social and behavioral sciences). They are quantitative research, qualitative research, and mixed research.
• Quantitative research – relies primarily on the collection of quantitative data like surveys, tests, experiments or secondary data. It could be sub-classified into experimental or non-experimental.
• Qualitative research –relies on the collection of qualitative data interviews, field observations or document reviews. It could be a utilization-focused evaluation research.
• Mixed research – research that involves the mixing of quantitative and qualitative methods or paradigm characteristics.
Here are the definitions and an example of the different types of qualitative research:
• Phenomenology – a form of qualitative research in which the researcher attempts to understand how one or more individuals experience a phenomenon. For example, you might interview 20 widows and ask them to describe their experiences of the deaths of their husbands.
• Ethnography – is the form of qualitative research that focuses on describing the culture of a group of people. For an example of an ethnography, you might decide to go and live in a tribal communities and study the culture and their educational practices.
• Case study research – is a form of qualitative research that is focused on providing a detailed account of one or more cases. For an example, you might study a classroom that was given a new curriculum for technology use.
• Grounded theory – is a qualitative approach to generating and developing a theory form data that the researcher collects. For an example, you might collect data from parents who have pulled their children out of public schools and develop a theory to explain how and why this phenomenon occurs, ultimately developing a theory of school pull-out.
• Historical research – research about events that occurred in the past. An example, you might study the use of corporeal punishment in schools in the 19th century.
As described earlier it is the form of qualitative research that focuses on describing the culture of a group of people. Note that a Culture: Shared attitudes, Values, Norms, Practices, Language, Music, Dance, Art, Sports, Virtual (internet) and Material Things. Distinction of approach is the matter of applying and interpreting cultural perspective. For an example of an ethnography, you might decide to go and live in a tribal communities and study the culture and their educational practices.
Autoethnography is a
Term Originated by David Hayano in 1979
Defines as study of own culture by anthropologists
Oneself being a part of the same culture
Various term to describe this partial lexicology
Political, socially-just and socially-conscious act
It is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. This approach challenges recognized ways of doing research and representing others and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act. A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography.
Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product.
Laurel Richardson (2000, pp. 15–16) described five factors she uses when reviewing personal narrative papers that includes analysis of both evaluative and constructive validity techniques. The criteria are:
Substantive contribution. Does the piece contribute to our understanding of social life?
(b) Aesthetic merit. Does this piece succeed aesthetically? Is the text artistically shaped, satisfyingly complex, and not boring?
(c) Reflexivity. How did the author come to write this text? How has the author’s subjectivity been both a producer and a product of this text?
(d) Impactfullness. Does this affect me emotionally and/or intellectually? Does it generate new questions or move me to action?
(e) Expresses a reality. Does this text embody a fleshed out sense of lived experience?
Constructionism and Constructivism
Definition
Constructionism views the world as being internally created through constructs or internal models. We thus view the world through these constructs and which have significant and often unrealized effect on our perceptions. Michael Crotty (1998) delineates terms: Constructivism is reserved for epistemological consideration focusing on “the meaning-making activity of the individual mind” vs. Constructionism as a wide term where focus includes “the collective generation and transmission of meaning”.
There are two parts to a construction: the elements themselves and the connections/relationships between them. Construction can thus involve adding new elements or making new connections. Removing and changing are also options, as well as addition.
Social constructionism
Social constructionism considers the creation of constructs and understanding between people and within societies. We thus build our internal models in a pseudo-shared way in response to our perceptions of perceived constructs we receive from others. Construction can thus be seen as a social process whereby constructs (and hence 'reality') emerge from ongoing conversations and interactions.
Education, Constructivism and Constructionism
In education, Piaget described Constructivism as being the process whereby students constructed their own unique systems of knowing, in consequence of which the teacher should focus on this individual process of internal construction rather than standing at the front and spouting their own models. Seymour Papert, a student of Piaget, expanded on this to describe Constructionism in terms of helping the student produce constructions that others can see and critique. In this educational frame, then, Constructivism is more cognitive and Constructionism more physical.
Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books
Seymour Papert and Idit Harel, I. (1991). Constructionism, Ablex Publishing Corporation
Constructionism and Constructivism
Definition
Constructionism views the world as being internally created through constructs or internal models. We thus view the world through these constructs and which have significant and often unrealized effect on our perceptions. Michael Crotty (1998) delineates terms: Constructivism is reserved for epistemological consideration focusing on “the meaning-making activity of the individual mind” vs. Constructionism as a wide term where focus includes “the collective generation and transmission of meaning”.
There are two parts to a construction: the elements themselves and the connections/relationships between them. Construction can thus involve adding new elements or making new connections. Removing and changing are also options, as well as addition.
Social constructionism
Social constructionism considers the creation of constructs and understanding between people and within societies. We thus build our internal models in a pseudo-shared way in response to our perceptions of perceived constructs we receive from others. Construction can thus be seen as a social process whereby constructs (and hence 'reality') emerge from ongoing conversations and interactions.
Education, Constructivism and Constructionism
In education, Piaget described Constructivism as being the process whereby students constructed their own unique systems of knowing, in consequence of which the teacher should focus on this individual process of internal construction rather than standing at the front and spouting their own models. Seymour Papert, a student of Piaget, expanded on this to describe Constructionism in terms of helping the student produce constructions that others can see and critique. In this educational frame, then, Constructivism is more cognitive and Constructionism more physical.
Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books
Seymour Papert and Idit Harel, I. (1991). Constructionism, Ablex Publishing Corporation
There are several implications of chaos theory on Qualitative Inquiry:
Famous “Butterfly Effect” or Sensitive Dependence
The smallest of changes in a system can cause large differences in that system's behavior
Non-Linearity: Researcher may solve or create problems
Qualitative importance is not dependent on quantitative magnitude. “For want of a nail …. The war was lost”
Qualitative analysis attempts to bring order from Chaos
Try to research the constantly changing phenomenon without imposing static structure during our inquiry.
Chaos theory’s meaning and implications for qualitative inquiry in human setting remain to be developed
The theoretical and philosophical perspectives presented in this Slide. This is not an complete list of theoretical possibilities, but it does include the most common conceptual and philosophical frameworks-and it certainly documents the variety of perspectives that can inform qualitative inquiry. No consensus exists about how to classify the varieties of qualitative research.
Here are the definitions and an example of the MAJOR types of qualitative research:
• Phenomenology – a form of qualitative research in which the researcher attempts to understand how one or more individuals experience a phenomenon. For example, you might interview 20 widows and ask them to describe their experiences of the deaths of their husbands.
• Ethnography – is the form of qualitative research that focuses on describing the culture of a group of people. For an example of an ethnography, you might decide to go and live in a tribal communities and study the culture and their educational practices.
• Case study research – is a form of qualitative research that is focused on providing a detailed account of one or more cases. For an example, you might study a classroom that was given a new curriculum for technology use.
• Grounded theory – is a qualitative approach to generating and developing a theory from data that the researcher collects. For an example, you might collect data from parents who have pulled their children out of public schools and develop a theory to explain how and why this phenomenon occurs, ultimately developing a theory of school pull-out.
• Historical research – research about events that occurred in the past. An example, you might study the use of corporeal punishment in schools in the 19th century.
1. Ethnography-in-education@mailbase.ac.uk:Use of ethnographic research methods in education; to subscribe, send this message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk:join ethnography-in-education
2. Ethno@cios.org: Ethnomethodology/conversation analysis; to subscribe, send this message to comserve@cios.org:join ethno yourname
3. http://www.tgsa.edu/online/cybrary/phenom.html: Phenomenology
4. http://www.ped.gu.se/biorn/phgraph/home.html: Phenomenography
5. www.groundedtheory.com/vidserles1.html: Grounded theory Web site
6. Q-METHOD@listserv.kent.edu: Q Methodology discussion list on this broad approach to the study of subjectivity; to subscribe, send this message to listserv@listserv.kent.edu: subscribe Q-METHOD yourname; for help contact Q-Method-request@listserv.kent.edu
7. BIOG-METHODS@mailbase.ac.uk: Biographical Methods for the Social Sciences; to subscribe, send this message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk:join BIOG-METHODS
8. PSYCH-NARRATIVE@massey.ac.nz: A discussion of narrative in everyday life; to subscribe, send this message to majordomo@massey.ac.nz: subscribe psych-narrative
9. www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/cyber/cyber.html: Cyber Semiotic Institute
10.www.shop.affinia.com/ppsesystemstheory/Store1/: Systems theory site
11.H-ORALHIST@h-net.msu.edu: H-Net/Oral History Association Discussion list on Oral History; to subscribe, send this message to listserv@h-net.msu.edu subscribe H-ORALHIST LASTNAME AFFILIATION
