Flashcards
Qualitative Research
Cards in this deck (19)
- 1Which kinds of topics/phenomena are suitable for qualitative research?Seven contributions of qualitative research
1. illuminate meanings: How do humans assign meaning and make sense of their world
2. Study how things work: How do boards, start-ups etc... work?
3. Study people's stories, perspectives and experiences
4. How do systems work and what are consequences for people's life?
5. Understand how and why context matters: Political, relational etc. developments and how they influence the case/phenomenon
6. identify unintended consequences
7. Making case comparisons to discover important patterns and themes across cases - 2How do you ensure quality in qualitative research and why is it important?Goal
- establishing credibility of your research and showing warrant for your inferences
General approach...
- be transparent (explicit about research design, procedures, sampling...)
- be reflexive (continuous awareness of the way linguistic, social, political, methodological and theoretical mutually influence each other and research process)
- be comprehensive, systematic & consistent in your procedure
- maintain ethical standards (no harm, dignity. protecting privacy...) - 3What are Guba’s quality criteria and how do you realize them in qualitative research?credibility (authentic findings)
- lengthy & intensive engagement
- persistent inquiry
- triangulation
- negative cases
- member checks
- peer debriefing
transferability (applicable to other topics)
- thick description of context
dependability (consistent replication)
- external audit of process
confirmability (findings depends on subjects and conditions of inquiry)
- triangulation
- reflexivity
- external audit of interpretation - 4Which qualitative methodologies/research designs do Easterby-Smith distinguish? Explain them all/two in particular?Action research
- assumes that social phenomena are constantly changing
- researcher are often part of the change process itself
archival research
- not always necessary to gather new data
- focus on textual information and its analysis
ethnography
- key principle is that the researcher should "immerse" himself in a setting and become part of a group under study
- thus it is a strong form of constructionism
narrative methods
- contain ontological and epistemological elements
- stories and myths from a central element of organisational reality is necessarily incomplete (ontological)
- researcher will get insights into organisational life which could not be reached by more conventional means
Case method
grounded theory - 5Explain two of the qualitative methodologies in particularcase method
- is about an event, person, organisation, proocess...
- it is a bounded system, usually bounded by space and / or time
- it involves multiple sources of data (interviews, observations, documents...)
- use many forms of data to get an in-depth understanding of the case
- 3 different types
a. single instrumental case study (focus on one concern and then selecting a bounded case to illustrate
b. multiple case study (one concern, multiple cases)
c. intrinsic case study (researcher studies case itself without focusing a concern
grounded theory
- studies people's experiences with a process and creates a theory about how that process works
- theory is only generated from the data collected , not from other sources (textbooks, articles)
- theory is grounded in data
- used when no existing or limiting theory regarding the process
1. formulate research question
2. recruitment of participants
3. data collection
4. data analysis - 6How do you “sample” in qualitative research?- cases/informants are carefully chosen based on theoretical considerations
--> otherwise risk of bias
- samples should be representative (having same characteristics as the population from which it is drawn) and precise (bigger samples are more precise)
- triangulation of different data sources and methods of data collection
- qualitative research adopts non-probalistic sampling strategies --> excludes random selection
Examples
- ad-hoc sampling
- snowball sampling
- purposive sampling
- quota sampling
- convenience sampling - 7I How do you prepare (1) and conduct (2) interviews (elaborate!)? (types, preparation, procedure, important aspects etc.)1. develop a sampling strategy
2. interview preparation
a. can be highly formalized and structured
b. interviews can be based on a list of questions that can be addressed in a more flexible way trough topic guides (semi-structured)
c. interviews with questions to stimulate a conversation rather than to guide responses (unstructured)
3. creating a topic guide
- more informal list of topics and questions
- at least 3 topics (opening, main part, closing)
4. informed consent
- address issues from data protection, confidentiality and informed consent - 8II How do you prepare (1) and conduct (2) interviews (elaborate!)? (types, preparation, procedure, important aspects etc.)1. laddering techniques
- laddering up --> to reveal individuals value base (ask why questions)
- laddering down --> researcher seeks to obtain illustrations and examples of occurrences of events
2. avoiding becoming biased
3. six general concerns
a. obtaining trust
b. social interaction
c. appropriate attitude and language
d. getting access
e. location of the interview
f. recording interviews - 9How do you conduct a narrative study/analysis?1. selection
- select stories and storytellers based on research question
- important to include information on background and context of stories
2. analyse the narrative
- conduct a detailed examination of the plot of the story, main actors, activities and places that appear in the story
- if necessary reorganise and/rewrite the story in a chronological order to evaluate casual links
- analyse the sequence of events with a special emphasis on they relate to each other and how transitions are made
3. re-contextualisation
- re-examine stories with a special view to the context in which they were told, f.ex. social, cultural and political background of the story, position of the storyteller, the relationship between storyteller and the audience and the historical context
4. interpretation and evaluation
- against this background, the meaning and the function of a story can be assessed
- Why was the story told?
- What made it interesting to the storyteller and the audience
- use coding, diagramming and the preparation of metrics to identify different types of narratives - 10How do you conduct a grounded theory based study/analysis?1. familiarisation
- researcher should remind themselves what the focus of the study is , what the data suggest and whose point of view is being expressed
2. relfection
- so much data, that making sense of it is almost impossible
- What are these data about? Do they support/challenge existing knowledge?
3. open coding
- summarising chunk of data with words/sentences
- creating a link between messy overwhelming data
4. conceptualisation
- discover patterns among codes that are characterised by similarity, difference, frequence...
- by comparing codes and organising them into different categories, the researcher identifies concepts for understanding what is going on
5. focused re-coding
- once most significant codes and categories have been established, researcher re-codes with a limited number of more focused codes
6. linking
- pattern emerging between concepts, by conceptualising how key categories and concepts relate to each other
- first draft can be produced and then tried out on others
7. re-evaluation
- researcher may feel that more work is needed in some areas - 11How do you conduct a case study?- a case study looks in depth at one, or a small number of organisation, events or individuals generally over time
1. determine and the define the research question
- establish focus by forming questions about the problem
2. select the cases and determine data gathering and analysis techniques
- researcher determines which approaches to use
3. prepare to collect the data
- because of huge amount of data from multiple sources, systematic organisation is extremely important, to prevent researcher from losing sight of the original research purpose and questions
4. data collection
5. evaluate and analyse the data
6. prepare the report - 12How do you conduct an ethnographic study?- key principle is that the researcher should become part of a group under study to understand the meanings people give to their behavior
- three modes of data collection in ethnography: observation, interviewing, and archival research
1. problem formulation
- define the main focus of the study
2. selecting a research setting
- setting should permit a clear observation
3. gaining access
- how do you get into a group you wish to study
4. presenting oneself
- decide on how you present yourself to those in the field
5. gathering and recording information
- what are the types of information that should be recorded or takes as field notes - 13How do you conduct action research?- action research is about change and intervention, within which researchers work with practitioners on matters of concern
1. individual analysis of the data and identification of common themes, through quoations or interpretive descriptions
2. group meeting to negotiate on meanings of those interpretations and why these were considered relevant in the first place --> form categories of related issues/interpretations
3. filtering and dissecting the content, to identify linkages from which a conceptual framework was created. Core number of clusters are formulated in the end
4. reflection on what has been achieved up to that point, encompasses testing the framework in other settings
5. refining the different clusters into a framework, with theoretical justification - 14How do you conduct argument analysis?- is about framing a series of arguments that reflect people's negotiations of the social world and their role in it
- based on the work of Toulmin it can be structured the following way
1. story
- happenings that involve the interviewee
2. statement
- why did they care about particular issues in the story and what was their explanation
3. claims
- identify the claims they had made in the stories and provide an explanation
4. evidence identify and substantiate evidence for claims, e.g. the data
Toulmins approach frames arguments as having three arguments
- claims: arguable statements
- evidence: data that are drawn on to support claims
- warrant: explanation why data and claims are connected - 15What is reflexivity and which role does it play in qualitative research?- continuous awareness and attention to the way different kinds of linguistic, social, political and theoretical elements are woven together in the process of knowledge development, during which empirical material is constructed, interpreted and written
- a lot of definitions on reflexivity, they all share a deep underlying scepticism for the truth claims put forward
- researchers aim to be aware throughout the research process of how various elements of their identities become significant
- involves paying tribute to social categories such as race, gender and class
- allows to make the researcher understand how their personal characteristics may have influenced the research process - 16How do you analyze data in a “grounded” manner (7 steps)?1. familiarisation
2. reflection
3. open coding
4. conceptualisation
5. focused re-coding
6. linking
7. re-evaluation - 17Please explain different types of textual data- written sources of information produced for a purpose other than research but with some relevant to a given research project
- company reports, archival data, newspaper articles, books and blogs - 18Please explain different types of observational research- all types require researcher to record observations, most common is making preliminary scribblings in a notebook
1. complete observer
- researchers maintains distance to the object and context + avoids direct engagement
2. observer as participant
- researcher engages with the field in relatively passive way (asking questions), without influencing the field under study
3. participant as observer
- researcher does not conceal the intention of observation and participates in the context as researcher and participant
4. complete participant
- researcher conceals the intention to study and adopts more fully the role of a participant when observing a field - 19What (if anything at all?) can we learn from a single case study?- can provide very convincing tests of theory
- we only need one anomaly to destroy a dominant theory (analogy of a talking pig)
- although very unlikely to identify a talking pig, there are many examples where single cases can be uniquely interesting
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- Flashcards on Qualitative Research , created by Peter Lustig on 15/12/2017.
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- Peter Lustig
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