Contents

Key elements of qualitative research 10

The Historical Development of Qualitative Research 10

The development of empiricism and positivism 11

The development of interpretivism 12

The development of qualitative research methods and challenges to scientific method 14

Development of qualitative research in psychology 17

Philosophical Assumptions 18

Qualitative research method in psychology 21

Key Philosophical and Methodological Issues 22

Ontology 22

Realism 23

Materialism 24

Idealism 24

Epistemology 24

Relationship between the researcher and the researched 25

Theories of ‘truth’ 25

Acquisition of knowledge 26

Quantitative vs qualitative 26
 Positivism 27

Empiricism 28

Hypothetico-deductivism 29

Criticism of hypothetico-deductivism 30

Hypothetico-deductivism does not provide sufficient space for theory development 30

Hypothetico-deductivism is elitist 31

Hypothetic-deductivism is a myth 31

Feminist critique of established epistemologies 32

The male as the norm 32

The God trick 33

Proposed alternatives 34

Social constructivism 35

Interpretive Communities 35

Postmodern perspectives 36

Feminist theories 37

Critical theory 38

Critical race theory (CRT) 40

Queer theory 41

Disability theories 43
Narrative Research 44

Definition and background 44

Types of narrative studies 44

Types of narrative studies 45

Challenges 46

Phenomenological Research 47

Definition and background 47

Types of phenomenology 49

Procedures 50

Challenges 51

Grounded Theory 52

Definition and background 52

Types of grounded theory studies 53

Systematic procedure 53

Constructivist approach 55

Procedures 55

Challenges 57

Ethnographic Research 58

Definition and background 58

 Types of ethnographies 59

Realist ethnography 59

Critical ethnography 60

Procedures 60

Challenges 62

Case Study 62

Definition and background 62

Types of case studies 63

Single instrumental case study 63

Collective case study 64

Intrinsic case study 64

Procedures 64

Challenge 65

Paradigms or Worldviews 66

Postpositivism 66

Social constructivism 67

Advocacy/participatory 68

Pragmatism 70

Conceptualising Research Questions 71

 The research problem 71

The purpose statement 73

The research questions 74

Central questions 74

Subquestions 75

Sampling Methods 76

Criterion based or purposive sampling 77

Theoretical sampling 79

Opportunistic sampling and convenience sampling 81

Key features of qualitative sampling 81

The use of prescribes selection criteria 82

Sample size 83

Additional and supplementary samples 85

Validation and Reliability 86

Perspectives on validation 86

LeCompte and Goetz 87

Lincoln and Guba 87

Eisner 88

Lather 89
 Wolcott 90

Angen 91

Whittemore, Chase, and Mandle 91

Summary 91

Validation strategies 92

Characteristics of “good” qualitative research 94

Data collection circle 95

The site or individual 96

Narrative study 96

Phenomenological study 97

Grounded theory 98

Ethnographic study 98

Case study 98

Access and rapport 98

Narrative study 99

Phenomenological study 100

Grounded theory 100

Ethnography 100

Forms of Data 101

 Narrative study 102

Phenomenological study 102

Grounded theory 103

Ethnography 103

Case study 103

In-depth Interview 104

Perspectives on the interview 104

Visions of interviewing 106

Interview as tunnel 106

Interview as a topic 107

Interview as tunnel and topic 108

Key features of the in-depth interview 108

Researcher and participant roles 109

Powerplay in interviews 111

Interview as a power dance 112

Interview as a role-play 113

Probing 113

Ground-mapping questions 115

Dimension-mapping questions 115

 Perspective-widening questions 115

Amplificatory probes 116

Exploratory probes 117

Explanatory probes 117

Clarificatory probes 117

In-depth iterative probing 119

Question formulation 120

Using broad and narrow questions 120

Avoiding leading questions 120

Asking clear questions 121

Narrative Analysis 122

Ontology 122

Epistemology 123

How to do narrative analysis 125

Reflexivity and positioning of the researcher in narrative analysis 126

Basic steps in analysing narratives 127

1. Situating the epistemological approach 127

2. Selecting the analytical models to be used 127

3. Selecting narratives to be analysed 127

 4. Analysing narratives 128

Structural model 128

Thematic model 130

Selection of the subtext/segments 131

Definition of thematic categories 131

Sorting the material into categories 132

Drawing conclusions 132

Interactional-performative model 132

Discourse Analysis 134

Ontology 134

Epistemology 136

Four key ideas 136

Multivoicedness 136

Semiotics 137

Resistance 137

Discourse as chain of words and images 138

Discourse analytic reading 138

Discourse analytic interviewing 139

 Unit 1: Foundations of Qualitative
Research

Key elements of qualitative research

● Aims which are directed at providing an in-depth and interpreted understanding of the

social world of research participants by learning about their social and material

circumstances, their experiences, perspectives and histories.

● Samples that are small in scale and purposively selected on the basis of salient criteria.

● Data collection methods which usually involve close contact between the researcher and

the research participants, which are interactive and developmental and allow for emergent

issues to be explored.

● Data which are very detailed, information rich, and extensive.

● Analysis which is open to emergent concepts and ideas and which may produce detailed

description and classification, identify patterns of association, or develop typologies and

explanations.

● Outputs which tend to focus on the interpretation of social meaning through mapping and

're-presenting' the social world of research participants.

The Historical Development of Qualitative Research

● The history of qualitative research should be recounted and appreciated within the wider

context of the evolution of social research more generally.

 ● Against this wider backdrop, it is possible to see how approaches most closely associated

with qualitative research were developed to overcome some of the perceived limitations

of the prevailing methods used to study human behaviour.

The development of empiricism and poscitivism

● Rene Descartes wrote his Discourse on Methodology in 1637 in which he focused on the

importance of objectivity and evidence in the search for truth. A key idea in his writing

was that researchers should attempt to distance themselves from any influences that

might corrupt their analytical capacity.

● Another important idea in social research was proposed by seventeenth-century writers

such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon who asserted that knowledge about the world

can be acquired through direct observation (induction) rather than deduced from abstract

propositions.

● Similarly David Hume (1711-76) who is associated with the founding of the empirical

research tradition suggested that all knowledge about the world originates in our

experiences and is derived through the senses.

● Evidence based on direct observation and collected in an objective and unbiased way are

key tenets of empirical research.

● Following in their footsteps, Auguste Comte (1798-1857) asserted that the social world

can be studied in terms of invariant laws just like the natural world. This belief is the

basis of a school of thought (or paradigm) known as positivism which was a major

influence in social research throughout the twentieth century.

 ● Although positivism has been interpreted in many different ways by social researchers,

beliefs and practices associated with positivism usually include the following:

⮚ The methods of the natural sciences are appropriate for the study of social

phenomenon.

⮚ Only those phenomena which are observable can be counted as knowledge.

⮚ Knowledge is developed inductively through the accumulation of verified facts.

⮚ Hypotheses are derived deductively from scientific theories to be tested

empirically (the scientific method).

⮚ Observations are the final arbiter in theoretical disputes.

⮚ Facts and values are distinct, thus making it possible to conduct objective enquiry.

The development of interpretivism

● Against this backdrop, the early development of ideas now associated particularly with

qualitative research can be linked to the writing of Immanuel Kant who in 1781 published

his Critique of Pure Reason.

● Kant argued that there are ways of knowing about the world other than direct observation

and that people use these all the time. He proposed that:

⮚ perception relates not only to the senses but to human interpretations of what our

senses tell us.

⮚ our knowledge of the world is based on 'understanding' which arises from

thinking about what happens to us, not just simply from having had particular

experiences

⮚ knowing and knowledge transcend basic empirical enquiry.

 ⮚ distinctions exist between 'scientific reason' (based strictly on causal determinism)

and 'practical reason' (based on moral freedom and decision-making which

involve less certainty).

● Qualitative research has generally (though not exclusively) been associated with this set

of beliefs. Those practising qualitative research have tended to place emphasis and value

on the human, interpretative aspects of knowing about the social world and the

significance of the investigator's own interpretation and understanding of the

phenomenon being studied.

● Another key contributor to the development of interpretivist thought and the qualitative

research tradition was Wilhelm Dilthey. His writing emphasised the importance of

'understanding' (or 'verstehen' in his native German) and of studying people's 'lived

experiences' which occur within a particular historical and social context. He also argued

that self-determination and human creativity play very important roles in guiding our

actions.

● He therefore proposed that social research should explore 'lived experiences' in order to

reveal the connections between the social, cultural and historical aspects of people's lives

and to see the context in which particular actions take place.

● Max Weber (1864-1920) was very influenced by Dilthey's ideas and particularly his

views on the importance of 'understanding' (or verstehen). However, rather than taking a

strictly interpretivist stance, Weber tried to build a bridge between interpretivist and

positivist approaches.
 ● He believed that an analysis of material conditions (as would be undertaken by those

using a positivist approach) was important, but was not sufficient to a full understanding

of people's lives. Instead, he emphasised that the researcher must understand the meaning

of social actions within the context of the material conditions in which people live.

● He proposed two types of understanding: direct observational understanding, and

explanatory or motivational understanding. He argued that there is a key difference in the

purpose of understanding between the natural and social sciences. In the natural sciences,

the purpose is to produce law-like propositions whereas in the social sciences, the aim is

to understand subjectively meaningful experiences.

● The school of thought that stresses the importance of interpretation as well as observation

in understanding the social world is known as 'interpretivism'. This has been seen as

integral to the qualitative tradition.

The development of qualitative research methods and challenges to scientific method

● From the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century qualitative

research methods developed and became more widely adopted.

● They evolved as researchers became more sophisticated and aware of the research

process, but also as they responded to challenges from other methodologies and

paradigms, particularly positivism and postmodern critiques.

● Within sociology and anthropology, early qualitative research often took the form of

ethnographic work which flourished in both America and Britain. Early examples of

ethnographers include Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson

and Franz Boas, all of whom studied 'native' populations abroad, and Robert Park and the
 work of the Chicago school where the focus was on the life and culture of local groups in

the city about whom little was known.

● Sociology also saw the development of ethnomethodolgy- the study of how, in practice,

people construct social order and make sense of their social world and symbolic

interactionism- the study of symbolic meanings and interpretations attached to social

actions and environments.

● Within historical studies there has been a strong tradition in the use of oral history- the

use of people's 'life stories' in understanding experiences and social constructions.

● Throughout this period, however, survey research methods also became more widespread

and quantitative researchers were increasingly influenced by positivism, modelling their

approach on the methods of the natural sciences. Positivism became the dominant

paradigm within social research and qualitative research was often criticised as 'soft' and

'unscientific'.

● In response to these criticisms, some qualitative researchers attempted to formalise their

methods, stressing the importance of rigour in data collection and analysis. Denzin and

Lincoln (1994) refer to this period as the 'modernist' phase.

● By the 1970s, however, positivism itself and the legitimacy of social research based on

the 'scientific method' began to be debated. Particular concerns arose in relation to:

❖ whether it is possible to 'control' variables in experimental research involving

human 'subjects' to achieve unambiguous results

❖ whether the elimination of contextual variables in controlled experimental

conditions is an appropriate way to study human behaviour

 ❖ whether it is appropriate to disregard the meaning and purpose of behaviour in

controlled experimental studies.

❖ whether overarching theories of the world and aggregated data have any relevance

and applicability to the lives of individuals

❖ whether emphasis on hypothesis testing neglects the importance of discovery

through alternative understandings.

● These challenges encouraged the use of qualitative research as a means of overcoming

some of the perceived limitations associated with the scientific method. In practice, this

meant that qualitative methods began to be seen as a more valid and valuable approach to

research.

● In addition to criticisms of positivism, new approaches also challenged some of the basic

assumptions of qualitative research. One such challenge has come from postmodern

critiques, such as poststructuralism and deconstruction, which not only question the

notion of objectivity but also maintain that the concepts of meaning and reality are

problematic.

● It is argued that there are no fixed or overarching meanings because meanings are a

product of time and place. The researcher cannot produce a definitive account or

explanation, and any attempt to do so is a form of tyranny because it suppresses diversity.

● Another challenge came from critical theory in the form of Neo Marxism and,

subsequently, feminism, and race research which maintain that material conditions,

social, political, gender, and cultural factors have a major influence on people's lives.
● Within these approaches, research findings are analysed primarily according to the

concepts of race, class or gender, rather than the analysis being open to concepts which

emerge from the data. The value of the findings is judged in terms of their political and

emancipatory effects, rather than simply the extent to which they portray and explain the

social world of participants.

● One of the responses to these challenges was a call for greater equality between the

researcher and research participants, a perspective particularly emphasised in feminist

research.

● Feminist researchers argued that there was a power imbalance in the way that research

was structured and conducted and this led to questioning and some refinement of both the

researcher's and the participants' roles. Similarly, in other arenas, social research was

increasingly being viewed as a collaborative process and researchers were developing

ways to involve the study population in setting the research agenda.

● At the same time, the use of 'action research' - whereby research findings feed directly

back into the environments from which they are generated - was widening, inspired by

similar demands for more participatory and emancipatory research processes.

● Meanwhile, the importance of 'situating' the perspective of the researcher was being

emphasised. This was to encourage a more reflexive approach to research findings rather

than the traditional approach in which the researcher takes an authoritative, 'neutral'

stance. Alongside this, others have attempted to find ways of letting research participants

tell their own story directly, rather than writing about their lives as an outsider.
Development of qualitative research in psychology

● Within psychology, the other primary social science concerned with the understanding of

human phenomena, the growth of qualitative methods has taken place much later than in

sociology.

● Some of the earliest uses of qualitative methods, developed around the middle of the

twentieth century, occurred in the fields of personal construct theory - the study of

psychological constructs that people use to define and attach meaning to their thinking

and behaviour.

● Other longstanding strands of enquiry took place in ethogenics which is concerned with

the roles and rules through which people choose to act or not act, and protocol analysis

which explores the 'thinking' processes that are manifest when people are engaged in

cognitive tasks.

● But it was not until the late 1980s that qualitative methods were being more

systematically used in psychological research. Even then there was still deep resistance to

qualitative research as a method of investigation despite increasing calls for more

interpretative and participatory approaches.

● As a consequence, it was only within the last decade of the twentieth century that

qualitative methods were more widely accepted within British psychological research

practice. Since then, there has been what has been termed an 'explosion' of interest in

qualitative research and rapid growth in its applications within psychological enquiry
 Philosophical Assumptions

● In the choice of qualitative research, inquirers make certain assumptions. These

philosophical assumptions consist of a stance toward the nature of reality (ontology), how

the researcher knows what she or he knows (epistemology), the role of values in the

research (axiology), the language of research (rhetoric), and the methods used in the

process (methodology).

● Within sociology and anthropology, early qualitative research often took the form of

ethnographic work which flourished in both America and Britain. Early examples of

ethnographers include Malinowski, Radcliffe Brown, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson

and Franz Boas, all of whom studied 'native' populations abroad, and Robert Park and the

work of the Chicago school where the focus was on the life and culture of local groups in

the city about whom little was known.

● Sociology also saw the development of ethnomethodology- the study of how, in practice,

people construct social order and make sense of their social world and symbolic

interactionism- the study of symbolic meanings and interpretations attached to social

actions and environments.

● Throughout this period, however, survey research methods also became more widespread

and quantitative researchers were increasingly influenced by positivism, modelling their

approach on the methods of the natural sciences. Positivism became the dominant

paradigm within social research and qualitative research was often criticised as 'soft' and

'unscientific'.
● In response to these criticisms, some qualitative researchers attempted to formalise their

methods, stressing the importance of rigour in data collection and analysis. Denzin and

Lincoln (1994) refer to this period as the 'modernist' phase.

● By the 1970s, however, positivism itself and the legitimacy of social research based on

the 'scientific method' began to be debated. Particular concerns arose in relation to:

⮚ whether it is possible to 'control' variables in experimental research involving

human 'subjects' to achieve unambiguous results

⮚ whether the elimination of contextual variables in controlled experimental

conditions is an appropriate way to study human behaviour

⮚ whether it is appropriate to disregard the meaning and purpose of behaviour in

controlled experimental studies

⮚ whether overarching theories of the world and aggregated data have any relevance

and applicability to the lives of individuals

⮚ whether emphasis on hypothesis testing neglects the importance of discovery

through alternative understandings.

● These challenges encouraged the use of qualitative research as a means of overcoming

some of the perceived limitations associated with the scientific method. In practice, this

meant that qualitative methods began to be seen as a more valid and valuable approach to

research.

● In addition to criticisms of positivism, new approaches also challenged some of the basic

assumptions of qualitative research. One such challenge has come from postmodern

critiques, such as poststructuralism and deconstruction, which not only question the
 notion of objectivity but also maintain that the concepts of meaning and reality are

problematic.

● It is argued that there are no fixed or overarching meanings because meanings are a

product of time and place. The researcher cannot produce a definitive account or

explanation, and any attempt to do so is a form of tyranny because it suppresses diversity.

This resulted in a crisis for social researchers: the researcher cannot capture the social

world of another, or give an authoritative account of his or her findings, because there are

no fixed meanings to be captured.

● Another challenge came from critical theory in the form of Neo Marxism and,

subsequently, feminism, and race research which maintain that material conditions,

social, political, gender, and cultural factors have a major influence on people's lives.

● Within these approaches, research findings are analysed primarily according to the

concepts of race, class or gender, rather than the analysis being open to concepts which

emerge from the data. The value of the findings is judged in terms of their political and

emancipatory effects, rather than simply the extent to which they portray and explain the

social world of participants.

● One of the responses to these challenges was a call for greater equality between the

researcher and research participants, a perspective particularly emphasised in feminist

research.

● Feminist researchers argued that there was a power imbalance in the way that research

was structured and conducted and this led to questioning and some refinement of both the

researcher's and the participants' roles. Similarly, in other arenas, social research was
 increasingly being viewed as a collaborative process and researchers were developing

ways to involve the study population in setting the research agenda

● At the same time, the use of 'action research' - whereby research findings feed directly

back into the environments from which they are generated - was widening, inspired by

similar demands for more participatory and emancipatory research processes.

● Meanwhile, the importance of 'situating' the perspective of the researcher was being

emphasised. This was to encourage a more reflexive approach to research findings rather

than the traditional approach in which the researcher takes an authoritative, 'neutral'

stance.

Qualitative research method in psychology

● Within psychology, the other primary social science concerned with the understanding of

human phenomena, the growth of qualitative methods has taken place much later than in

sociology.

● Some of the earliest uses of qualitative methods, developed around the middle of the

twentieth century, occurred in the fields of personal construct theory - the study of

psychological constructs that people use to define and attach meaning to their thinking

and behaviour

● Other longstanding strands of enquiry took place in ethogenics which is concerned with

the roles and rules through which people choose to act or not act and protocol analysis

which explores the 'thinking' processes that are manifest when people are engaged in

cognitive tasks.
 ● But it was not until the late 1980s that qualitative methods were being more

systematically used in psychological research. Even then there was still deep resistance to

qualitative research as a method of investigation despite increasing calls for more

interpretative and participatory approaches.

● As a consequence, it was only within the last decade of the twentieth century that

qualitative methods were more widely accepted within British psychological research

practice. Since then, there has been what has been termed an 'explosion' of interest in

qualitative research and rapid growth in its applications within psychological enquiry.

● Qualitative methods are being used in a number of fields of psychology although with

particular interest in the fields of cognitive and social psychology. Increasingly

ethnomethodological approaches, discourse analysis and grounded theory are being used

as methodological approaches in psychological investigation. Qualitative methods are

also being used in more applied fields like clinical and educational psychology.

Key Philosophical and Methodological Issues

Ontology

● The ontological issue relates to the nature of reality and its characteristics; concerned

with beliefs about what there is to know about the world.

● Within social research, key ontological questions concern: whether or not social reality

exists independently of human conceptions and interpretations; whether there is a

common, shared, social reality or just multiple context-specific realities; and whether or

not social behaviour is governed by 'laws' that can be seen as immutable or generalisable.
Realism

● Realism claims that there is an external reality which exists independently of people's

beliefs or understanding about it.

● In other words there is a distinction between the way the world is and the meaning and

interpretation of that world held by individuals.

● Bhasker argues for 'critical realism', Hammersley for 'subtle realism' in which social

phenomena are believed to exist independently of people's representations of them but

are only accessible through those representations.

Materialism

● Materialism also claims that there is a real world but that only material features, such as

economic relations, or physical features of that world hold reality.

● Values, beliefs or experiences are 'epiphenomena' - that is features that arise from, but do

not shape, the material world.

 ● Materialism is the most difficult position to sustain within qualitative research because

qualitative research focuses directly on meaning and interpretation.

● Nevertheless, critical theorists might be considered to be neo-materialists in that they

believe that social structures based on class, race or gender are experienced as 0having an

external, immutable reality.

Idealism

● Idealism, on the other hand, asserts that reality is only knowable through the human mind

and through socially constructed meanings.

● Some idealists maintain that it is possible for meanings and representations to be shared

or collective, while those holding a relativist position argue that there is no single reality,

only a series of social constructions

Epistemology

● 'Epistemology' is concerned with ways of knowing and learning about the social world

and focuses on questions such as: how can we know about reality and what is the basis of

our knowledge? There are three main issues around which there is debate in social

research.

Relationship between the researcher and the researched

● In the natural science model, phenomena are seen as independent of and unaffected by

the behaviour of the researcher, consequently the researcher can be objective in his or her

approach and the investigation can be viewed as value free.

● While some qualitative researchers subscribe to this model, others believe that, in the

social world, people are affected by the process of being studied and that the relationship

between the researcher and social phenomena is interactive. In this case, the researcher

cannot be objective and cannot produce an objective or 'privileged' account.

● Findings are either mediated through the researcher ('value-mediated'), or they can be

negotiated and agreed between the researcher and research participants.

● Between these two positions, some researchers propose 'empathic neutrality', a position

that recognises that research cannot be value free but which advocates that researchers

should make their assumptions transparent. The influence of these assumptions on the

ways data are collected and analysed is one strand of the 'reflexivity' called for on the part

of researchers. The second relates to the impact of the research process on the

participants and the evidence produced.

Theories of ‘truth’

● This links back to views about similarities or differences between the natural and social

worlds.

● In the natural sciences, the dominant theory of truth is one of correspondence- that is,

there is a match between observations or readings of the natural world and an

independent reality.

● An alternative view, known as the inter subjective or coherence theory of truth, and

proposed as more appropriate for the study of the social world, suggests that this

'independent' reality can only be gauged in a consensual rather than an absolute way. If
 several reports confirm a statement then it can be considered true as a representation of a

socially constructed reality.

● Finally, there are those who argue for a pragmatic theory or truth, which rests on the

premise that an interpretation is true if it leads to, or provides assistance to take, actions

that produce the desired or predicted results.

Acquisition of knowledge

● The main options are through induction by looking for patterns and association derived

from observations of the world; or through deduction whereby propositions or hypotheses

are reached theoretically, through a logically derived process.

● Although qualitative research is often seen as an inductive approach, it is not a singularly

defining characteristic of qualitative research. Inductive reasoning is used in other forms

of enquiry and the processes of sampling and generalisation from qualitative research

involve both induction and deduction.

Quantitative vs qualitative

● When comparing quantitative and qualitative methodologies, it is common for these to be

equated with different positions on the merits of scientific enquiry.

● The former is seen to investigate the social world in ways which emulate the 'scientific

method' as used in the natural sciences, with an emphasis on hypothesis testing, causal

explanations, generalisation and prediction.

● By contrast, qualitative methods are seen to reject the natural science model and to

concentrate on understanding, rich description and emergent concepts and theories.

● Again, however, this distinction is not clear cut: some qualitative approaches have sought

to emulate natural science models, and not all quantitative studies are based on

hypothesis testing but can produce purely descriptive and inductive statistics.

Positivism

● One epistemological position is positivism. Positivism suggests that there is a

straightforward relationship between the world (objects, events, phenomena) and our

perception, and understanding, of it.

● Positivists believe that it is possible to describe what is “out there” and to get it right.

Such a position is also referred to as the “correspondence theory of truth” because it

suggests that phenomena directly determine our perception of them and that there is,

therefore, a direct correspondence between things and their representation.

● A positivist epistemology implies that the goal of research is to produce objective

knowledge; that is, understanding that is impartial and unbiased, based on a view from

‘the outside’, without personal involvement or vested interests on the part of the

researcher.

● When the label of positivism is used in contemporary epistemological debates, it usually

constitutes an insult. This is because it is now generally accepted that observation and

description are necessarily selective, and that our perception and understanding of the

world is therefore partial at best.

● What people disagree about is the extent to which our understanding of the world can

approach objective knowledge, or even some kind of truth, about the world.
● The different responses to this question range from naïve realism, which is akin to

positivism, to extreme relativism, which rejects concepts such as ‘truth’ or ‘knowledge’

altogether. In between, we find positions such as critical realism and the different

versions of social constructionism.

Empiricism

● Empiricism is closely related to positivism. It is based on the assumption that our

knowledge of the world must be derived from ‘the facts of experience’. In other words,

sense perception provides the basis for knowledge acquisition, which proceeds through

the systematic collection and classification of observations.

● According to this view, simple observations are combined to give rise to more complex

ideas, and theory follows from observations.

● Few, if any, scientists and researchers subscribe to a pure form of empiricism nowadays.

It is generally accepted that sense perception does not provide direct and uncontaminated

access to ‘the facts’.

● The more we know about a phenomenon, the more detail we perceive when we observe

it. Perception is inevitably selective and people can be trained to observe the same

phenomenon in different ways, depending on the purpose of the observation.

● However, modern-day empiricists would argue that knowledge acquisition depends on

the collection and analysis of data. They do not believe that purely theoretical work can

move us closer to the truth, and they propose that all knowledge claims must be grounded

in data.

Hypothetico-deductivism

● A number of serious practical as well as logical limitations of positivism and empiricism

led to the development of alternative theories of knowledge.

● Karl Popper’s critique of inductivism and subsequent formulation of

hypothetico-deductivism constitutes the most influential alternative. It now forms the

basis of mainstream experimental psychology.

● Popper was aware of the fact that a collection of observations could never give rise to a

categorical statement such as ‘a follows b’. However many times we observe that a

follows b, we can never be sure that our next observation will be the same again. There is

always the possibility that the next occurrence will be an exception. This is the problem

of induction.

● Popper was also unhappy about the fact that many influential theories appeared to be able

to accommodate a wide range of observations, interpreting them as confirmation of the

theory’s claims. It seemed that no scientific theory could ever be conclusively verified.

This is the problem of verification.

 ● To circumvent these problems, Popper proposed that instead of induction and

verification, scientific research ought to rely upon deduction and falsification. Popper’s

hypothetico-deductive method does just that. Here, theories are tested by deriving

hypotheses from them that can then be tested in practice, by experiment or observation.

● The aim of the research is to put a theory’s claims to the test to either reject the theory or

retain it for the time being. Thus, rather than looking for evidence that confirms a

theory’s claims, hypothetico-deductivism works by looking for disconfirmation, or

falsification. In this way, we can find out which claims are not true and, by a process of

elimination of claims, we move closer to the truth.

Criticism of hypothetico-deductivism

● Popper’s hypothetico-deductivism, in turn, was challenged in the 1960s and 1970s for

failing to acknowledge the role of historical, social and cultural factors in knowledge

formation.

● The critique of hypothetico-deductivism includes the following charges:

Hypothetico-deductivism does not provide sufficient space for theory development

● Here, it is argued that the method’s reliance on hypotheses generated by existing theories

foreclose the possibility of generating completely new theories.

● If all we can do is test existing theories to either reject or retain them, we are unlikely to

come across entirely new and unexpected insights in our research practice.

● However, Popper did propose that researchers should be adventurous and test ‘bold

conjecture(s)’, since most is learned from mistakes; however, even the boldest hypotheses

are based upon existing knowledge and expectations.

● What hypothetico-deductivism does not allow for is that the evidence overturns received

wisdom and makes us see things in a completely different light.

Hypothetico-deductivism is elitist

● Since hypothetico-deductivism works with existing theories and relies upon deduction

from existing systems of thought, it excludes those people who are not familiar with such

theories and systems from its practice.

● The hypothetico-deductive method encourages the formation of communities of scientists

and researchers who test their own and each other’s theories. For the outsider or novice, it

is difficult, if not impossible, to contribute to knowledge generation, if knowledge is

defined as the rejection or retention of existing theories.

Hypothetic-deductivism is a myth

● Popper proposed that knowledge generation should be a piecemeal process. Through the

rejection of false hypotheses, knowledge would grow, slowly but continuously.

● Individual scientists contribute to this process by testing their hypotheses to identify those

theories that could be discarded.

● Thomas Kuhn ([1962] 1970) fundamentally disagreed. He argued that, in reality, theories

are not really put to the test in this way. While scientists were attached to a particular

theory, they did not reject it on the basis of experimental evidence.

● Instead, if the evidence did not support the theory, they assumed that the experiment had

gone wrong in some way. Thus, failure was attributed to the scientist and the design of

the experiment rather than to the inadequacy of the theory.

 ● Kuhn argued that science did not progress in an evolutionary, piecemeal fashion, as

Popper had suggested, but that it developed in leaps, through scientific revolutions

leading to paradigm shifts. Here, a paradigm – a particular conceptual framework – is

stretched to accommodate all kinds of evidence.

● Anomalies and inconsistencies accumulate until wider socioeconomic and historical

processes allow a new paradigm to emerge and to provide a legitimate alternative to the

previous one. Once the new paradigm has gained the upper hand, it in turn will resist

change for some time to come.

Feminist critique of established epistemologies

● In the 1960s and 1970s, feminist scholars drew attention to the fact that women had been

largely invisible in social scientific work and that where women had been ‘studied’, they

had been found to be inferior to men in terms of attributes such as moral development,

intelligence and conversational style.

● Such ‘findings’, feminists argued, were then used to justify and perpetuate existing

inequalities between men and women in society. To challenge these inequalities and to

end the oppression of women, feminist scholars questioned the epistemological (and

methodological) foundations upon which sexist knowledge claims rested. This gave rise

to an extensive critique of ‘male science’.

● This critique includes the following key arguments:

The male as the norm

● The vast majority of studies using human participants were carried out with male

participants. This was partly due to opportunity and partly due to the assumption that men

constitute the prototypical ‘human subject’.

● As a result, findings based upon studies with (young, white, middle-class) male subjects

were generalized to the population as a whole. In other words (young, white,

middle-class), men set the standard against which other members of society were then

measured.

● This meant that when women were later used as participants, their performance and

behaviour were assessed against the male norm and found to be wanting. One of the most

well-known critiques of the ‘male as norm’ approach in relation to moral development

was formulated by Carol Gilligan.

● Gilligan challenged Kohlberg’s claim that, on average, women’s moral development was

less advanced than that of men. Kohlberg’s claim was supported by many studies that had

used his moral development scale.

● Gilligan argued that men and women were socialized to develop different moral

orientations, whereby girls were encouraged to develop a care orientation and boys were

encouraged to develop a justice orientation. Kohlberg’s scale was based upon a justice

orientation and was therefore bound to favour male participants.

● Gilligan conducted research that identified alternative patterns of moral reasoning used

by female participants who faced a real-life moral dilemma (abortion). She argued that

the women’s moral considerations based around non-violence within a care orientation
 were just as advanced as Kohlberg’s Level 3 (personal conscience). They were merely

different.

The God trick

● ‘Male science’ claimed to be, or at least aimed to be, ‘objective’. This meant that

researchers had to remain detached from and impartial towards their subject matter.

● Various procedures were developed to ensure that data collection and analysis were not

‘contaminated’ by the researcher. These included standardized instructions for subjects,

minimization of contact between researcher and participants, blind or double-blind

procedures for data collection and analysis, as well as various attempts to ‘neutralize’ the

research environment.

● Feminist critics argued that the attempt to be ‘objective’ and the strategies adopted

towards this aim did, in fact, serve to obscure the fact that the researcher’s identity and

standpoint do fundamentally shape the research process and the findings.

● They argued that it is impossible for a researcher to position themselves ‘outside of’ the

subject matter because the researcher will inevitably have a relationship with, or be

implicated in, the phenomenon that he or she is studying. Donna Haraway refers to

attempts to pretend otherwise as the ‘God’s eye view’.

● The alternative to the ‘God’s eye view’ is for researchers to reflect upon their own

standpoint in relation to the phenomenon that they are studying and to attempt to identify

the ways in which such a standpoint has shaped the research process and findings.
 Proposed alternatives

● Even though there can be said to be a general feminist critique of established

epistemologies and ‘male science’, there is no one feminist epistemology or even

methodology.

● Feminist scholars have responded in different ways to the problems and limitations

associated with positivism, empiricism and hypothetico-deductivism.

● Among the various alternative approaches developed by feminist social scientists and

philosophers are standpoint epistemology, ethnomethodology and various versions of

feminist post-structuralism.

Social constructivism

● Social constructionism draws attention to the fact that human experience, including

perception, is mediated historically, culturally and linguistically. That is, what we

perceive and experience is never a direct reflection of environmental conditions but must

be understood as a specific reading of these conditions.

● Language is an important aspect of socially constructed knowledge. The same

phenomenon or event can be described in different ways, giving rise to different ways of

perceiving and understanding it, yet neither way of describing it is necessarily wrong.

● An obvious example of this is the choice between describing a glass of water as

‘half-full’ or ‘half-empty’; both descriptions are equally accurate, yet one of them

provides a positive, optimistic gloss on the situation (‘halffull’), whereas the other

emphasizes absence and a lack (‘half-empty’).

● Research from a social constructionist perspective is concerned with identifying the

various ways of constructing social reality that are available in a culture, to explore the

conditions of their use and to trace their implications for human experience and social

practice

Interpretive Communities

● Interpretive positions provide a pervasive lens or perspective on all aspects of a

qualitative research project. The participants in these interpretive projects represent

underrepresented or marginalized groups, whether those differences take the form of

gender, race, class, religion, sexuality, and geography

● The problems and the research questions explored aim to understanding specific issues or

topics-the conditions that serve to disadvantage and exclude individuals or cultures, such

as hierarchy, hegemony, racism, sexism, unequal power relations, identity, or inequities in

our society.

● In addition, the procedures of research, such as data collection, data analysis, representing

the material to audiences, and standards of evaluation and ethics, emphasize an

interpretive stance.

● During data collection, the researcher does not further marginalize the participants, but

respects the participants and the sites for research. Further, researchers provide

reciprocity by giving or paying back those who participate in research, and they focus on

the multiple-perspective stories of individuals and who tells the stories.

 ● Researchers are also sensitive to power imbalances during all facets of the research

process. They respect individual differences rather than employing the traditional

aggregation of categories such as men and women, or Hispanics or African Americans.

● Ethical practices of the researchers recognize the importance of the subjectivity of their

own lens, acknowledge the powerful position they have in the research, and admit that

the participants or the co-construction of the account between the researchers and the

participants are the true owners of the information collected.

Postmodern perspectives

● Thomas (1993) calls postmodernists "armchair radicals" (p. 23) who focus their critiques

on changing ways of thinking rather than on calling for action based on these changes.

● Rather than viewing postmodernism as a theory, it might be considered a family of

theories and perspectives that have something in common. The basic concept is that

knowledge claims must be set within the conditions of the world today and in the

multiple perspectives of class, race, gender, and other group affiliations.

● These are negative conditions, and they show themselves in the presence of hierarchies,

power and control by individuals in these hierarchies, and the multiple meanings of

language.

● The conditions include the importance of different discourses, the importance of

marginalized people and groups (the "other"), and the presence of "meta-narratives" or

universals that hold true regardless of the social conditions. Also included are the need to

"deconstruct" texts in terms of language, their reading and their writing, and the
 examining and bringing to the surface concealed hierarchies as well as dominations,

oppositions, inconsistencies, and contradictions.

Feminist theories

● Feminist research approaches centre and make problematic women's diverse situations

and the institutions that frame those situations. Research topics may include policy issues

related to realizing social justice for women in specific contexts and knowledge about

oppressive situations for women.

● The theme of domination prevails in the feminist literature as well, but the subject matter

is gender domination within a patriarchal society. Feminist research also embraces many

of the tenets of postmodern critiques as a challenge to current society.

● In feminist research approaches, the goals are to establish collaborative and

nonexploitative relationships, to place the researcher within the study so as to avoid

objectification, and to conduct research that is transformative. It is a complex area of

inquiry, with numerous frameworks and difficult issues.

● Feminist researchers see gender as a basic organizing principle that shapes the conditions

of their lives. The questions feminists pose relate to the centrality of gender in the

shaping of our consciousness. The aim of this ideological research is to correct both the

invisibility and distortion of female experience in ways relevant to ending women's

unequal social position.

● Stewart suggests that researchers need to look for what has been left out in social science

writing, and to study women's lives and issues such as identities, sex roles, domestic
 violence, abortion activism, comparable worth, affirmative action, and the way in which

women struggle with their social devaluation and powerlessness within their families.

● Also, researchers need to consciously and systematically include their own roles or

positions and assess how they impact their understandings of a woman's life.

● In addition, Stewart views women as having agency, the ability to make choices and

resist oppression, and she suggests that researchers need to inquire into how a woman

understands her gender, acknowledging that gender is a social contract that differs for

each individual.

● Stewart highlights the importance of studying power relationships and individuals' social

position and how they impact women. Finally, she sees each woman as different and

recommends that scholars avoid the search for a unified or coherent self or voice.

Critical theory

● Critical theory perspectives are concerned with empowering human beings to transcend

the constraints placed on them by race, class, and gender. Researchers need to

acknowledge their own power, engage in dialogues, and use theory to interpret or

illuminate social action.

● Central themes that a critical researcher might explore include the scientific study of

social institutions and their transformations through interpreting the meanings of social

life; the historical problems of domination, alienation, and social struggles; and a critique

of society and the envisioning of new possibilities.

● In research, critical theory can be "defined by the particular configuration of

methodological postures it embraces".

● The critical researcher might design, for example, an ethnographic study to include

changes in how people think; encourage people to interact, form networks, become

activists, and action-oriented groups; and help individuals examine the conditions of their

existence. The end goal of the study might be social theorizing, which Morrow and

Brown (1994) define as "the desire to comprehend and, in some cases, transform (through

praxis) the underlying orders of social life-those social and systemic relations that

constitute society".

● The investigator accomplishes this, for example, through an intensive case study or

across a small number of historically comparable cases of specific actors (biographies),

mediations, or systems and through "ethnographic accounts (interpretive social

psychology), componential taxonomies (cognitive anthropology), and formal models.

● The design of research within a critical theory approach falls into two broad categories:

methodological, in that it affects the ways in which people write and read, and

substantive, in the theories and topics of the investigator.

● An often-cited classic of critical theory is the ethnography from Willis (1977) of the

"lads" who participate behaviour as opposition to authority, as informal groups "having a

laff) as a form of resistance to their school.

● As a study of the manifestations of resistance and state regulation, it highlights ways in

which actors come to terms with and struggle against cultural forms that dominate them.

Resistance is also the theme addressed in the ethnography of a subcultural group of

youths highlighted as an example of ethnography in this book.

Critical race theory (CRT)

● Critical race theory (CRT) focuses theoretical attention on race and how racism is deeply

embedded within the framework of American society. Racism has directly shaped the

U.S. legal system and the ways people think about the law, racial categories, and

privilege.

● According to Parker and Lynn (2002), CRT has three main goals-

⮚ Its first goal is to present stories about discrimination from the perspective of

PoC. These may be qualitative case studies of descriptions and interviews. Since

many stories advance White privilege through "majoritarian" master narratives,

counter-stories by PoC can help to shatter the complacency that may accompany

such privilege and challenge the dominant discourses that serve to suppress

people on the margins of society.

⮚ As a second goal, CRT argues for the eradication of racial subjugation while

simultaneously recognizing that race is a social construct. In this view, race is not

a fixed term, but one that is fluid and continually shaped by political pressures

and informed by individual lived experiences.

⮚ Finally, the third goal of CRT addresses other areas of difference, such as gender,

class, and any inequities experienced by individuals.

● In research, the use of CRT methodology means that the researcher foregrounds race and

racism in all aspects of the research process; challenges the traditional research

paradigms, texts, and theories used to explain the experiences of PoC; and offers
 transformative solutions to racial, gender, and class subordination in our societal and

institutional structures.

Queer theory

● As a body of literature continuing to evolve, queer theory explores the myriad

complexities of the construct, identity, and how identities reproduce and "perform" in

social forums.

● Writers also use a postmodern or poststructural orientation to critique and deconstruct

dominant theories related to identity. They focus on how it is culturally and historically

constituted, linked to discourse, and overlaps gender and sexuality.

● The term itself-"queer theory," rather than gay, lesbian, or homosexual theory allows for

keeping open to question the elements of race, class, age, and anything else.

● Most queer theorists work to challenge and undercut identity as singular, fixed, or

normal. They also seek to challenge categorization processes and their deconstructions,

rather than focus on specific populations. The historical binary distinctions are inadequate

to describe sexual identity.

● Following are the tenets of queer theory:

⮚ Both the heterosexual/homosexual binary and the sex/gender split are challenged.

⮚ There is a decentering of identity.

⮚ All sexual categories (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, heterosexual) are open,

fluid, and non-fixed.

⮚ Mainstream homosexuality is critiqued.

⮚ Power is embodied discursively.

 ⮚ All normalizing strategies are shunned.

⮚ Academic work may become ironic, and often comic and paradoxical.

⮚ Versions of homosexual subject positions are inscribed everywhere.

⮚ Deviance is abandoned, and interest lies in insider and outsider perspectives and

transgressions.

⮚ Common objects of study are films, videos, novels, poetry, and visual images.

⮚ The most frequent interests include the social worlds of the so-called radical

sexual fringe (e.g, drag kings and queens, sexual playfulness).

● Although queer theory is less a methodology and more a focus of inquiry, queer methods

often find expression in a rereading of cultural texts (e.g., films, literature); ethnographies

and case studies of sexual worlds that challenge assumptions; data sources that contain

multiple texts; documentaries that include performances; and projects that focus on

individuals.

● Queer theorists have engaged in research and/or political activities such as ACT-UP and

QUEER NATION around HIV/AIDS awareness, as well as artistic and cultural

representations of art and theatre aimed at disrupting or rendering unnatural and strange

practices that are taken for granted. These representations convey the voices and

experiences of individuals who have been suppressed.

Disability theories

● Disability inquiry addresses the meaning of inclusion in schools and encompasses

administrators, teachers, and parents who have children with disabilities.

● Mertens recounts how disability research has moved through stages of development, from

the medical model of disability (sickness and the role of the medical community in

threatening it) to an environmental response to individuals with a disability. Now,

researchers focus more on disability as a dimension of human difference and not as a

defect.

● As a human difference, its meaning is derived from social construction (i.e., society's

response to individuals) and it is simply one dimension of human difference.

● Viewing individuals with disabilities as different is reflected in the research process, such

as in the types of questions asked, the labels applied to these individuals, considerations

of how the data collection will benefit the community, the appropriateness of

communication methods, and how the data are reported in a way that is respectful of

power relationships.
 Narrative Research

Definition and background

● Narrative research has many forms, uses a variety of analytic practices, and is rooted in

different social and humanities disciplines.

● "Narrative" might be the term assigned to any text or discourse, or, it might be text used

within the context of a mode of inquiry in qualitative research, with a specific focus on

the stories told by individuals,

● Narrative can be both a method and the phenomenon of study. As a method, it begins

with the experiences as expressed in lived and told stories of individuals. Writers have

provided ways for analysing and understanding the stories lived and told.

● The procedures for implementing this research consist of focusing on studying one or two

individuals, gathering data through the collection of their stories, reporting individual

experiences, and chronologically ordering the meaning of those experiences.

Types of narrative studies

● One approach to narrative research is to differentiate types of narrative research by the

analytic strategies used by authors. Polkinghorne takes this approach and distinguishes

between "analysis of narratives", using paradigm thinking to create descriptions of

themes that hold across stories or taxonomies of types of stories, and "narrative

analysis," in which researchers collect descriptions of events or happenings and then

configure them into a story using a plot line.

 ● A second approach is to emphasize the variety of forms found in narrative research

practices.

⮚ A biographical study is a form of narrative study in which the researcher writes

and records the experiences of another person's life.

⮚ Autobiography is written and recorded by the individuals who are the subject of

the study.

⮚ A life history portrays an individual's entire life, while a personal experience story

is a narrative study of an individual's personal experience found in single or

multiple episodes, private situations, or communal folklore.

⮚ An oral history consists of gathering personal reflections of events and their

causes and effects from one individual or several individuals.

● Narrative studies may have a specific contextual focus, such as teachers or children in

classrooms, or the stories told about organizations. Narratives may be guided by a

theoretical lens or perspective.

Types of narrative studies

1. Determine if the research problem or question best fits narrative research. Narrative

research is best for capturing the detailed stories or life experiences of a single life or the

lives of a small number of individuals.

2. Select one or more individuals who have stories or life experiences to tell, and spend

considerable time with them gathering their stories through multiples types of

information. Research participants may record their stories in a journal or diary, or the

researcher might observe the individuals and record fieldnotes. Researchers may also
 collect letters sent by the individuals; assemble. stories about the individuals from family

members; gather documents such as memos or official correspondence about the

individual; or obtain photographs, memory boxes (collection of items that trigger

memories), and other personal-family-social artifacts. After examining these sources, the

researcher records the individuals' life experiences.

3. Collect information about the context of these stories. Narrative researchers situate

individual stories within participants' personal experiences (their jobs, their homes), their

culture (racial or ethnic), and their historical contexts (time and place).

4. Analyze the participants' stories, and then "restory” them into a framework that makes

sense. Restorying is the process of reorganizing the stories into some general type of

framework. This framework may consist of gathering stories, analyzing them for key

elements of the story (e.g., time, place, plot, and scene), and then rewriting the stories to

place them within a chronological sequence.

5. Collaborate with participants by actively involving them in the research. As researchers

collect stories, they negotiate relationships, smooth transitions, and provide ways to be

useful to the participants. In narrative research, a key theme has been the turn toward the

relationship between the researcher and the researched in which both parties will learn

and change in the encounter. In this process, the parties negotiate the meaning of the

stories, adding a validation check to the analysis.

Challenges

● The researcher needs to collect extensive information about the participant, and needs to

have a clear understanding of the context of the individual's life.

 ● It takes a keen eye to identify in the source material gathered the particular stories that

capture the individual's experiences.

● Active collaboration with the participant is necessary, and researchers need to discuss the

participant's stories as well as be reflective about their own personal and political

background, which shapes how they "restory" the account.

● Multiple issues arise in the collecting, analysing, and telling of individual stories.

Phenomenological Research

Definition and background

● Whereas a narrative study reports the life of a single individual, a phenomenological

study describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a

concept or a phenomenon.

● Phenomenologists focus on describing what all participants have in common as they

experience a phenomenon.

● The basic purpose of phenomenology is to reduce individual experiences with a

phenomenon to a description of the universal essence.

● To this end, qualitative researchers identify a phenomenon- an "object" of human

experience. This human experience may be phenomena such as insomnia, being left out,

anger, grief, or undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery. The inquirer then collects data

from persons who have experienced the phenomenon, and develops a composite

description of the essence of the experience for all of the individuals. This description

consists of "what" they experienced and "how" they experienced it.

● Beyond these procedures, phenomenology has a strong philosophical component to it. It

draws heavily on the writings of the German mathematician Edmund Husserl and those

who expanded on his views, such as Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty.

● Writers following in the footsteps of Husserl also seem to point to different philosophical

arguments for the use of phenomenology today. These assumptions rest on some common

grounds: the study of the lived experiences of persons, the view that these experiences are

conscious ones, and the development of descriptions of the essences of these experiences,

not explanations or analyses.

● At a broader level, Stewart and Mickunas (1990) emphasize four philosophical

perspectives in phenomenology:

⮚ A return to the traditional tasks of philosophy. By the end of the 19th century,

philosophy had become limited to exploring a world by empirical means, which

was called ''scientism." The return to the traditional tasks of philosophy that

existed before philosophy became enamoured with empirical science is a return to

the Greek conception of philosophy as a search for wisdom.

⮚ A philosophy without presuppositions. Phenomenology's approach is to suspend

all judgments about what is real-the "natural attitude" -until they are founded on a

more certain basis. This suspension is called "epoche" by Husserl.

⮚ The intentionality of consciousness. This idea is that consciousness is always

directed toward an object. Reality of an object, then, is inextricably related to

one's consciousness of it. Thus, reality, according to Husserl, is not divided into
 subjects and objects, but into the dual Cartesian nature of both subjects and

objects as they appear in consciousness.

⮚ The refusal of the subject-object dichotomy. This theme flows naturally from the

intentionality of consciousness. The reality of an object is only perceived within

the meaning of the experience of an individual.

Types of phenomenology

● There are two major approaches to phenomenology: hermeneutic phenomenology, and

empirical, transcendental, or psychological phenomenology.

● An educator, van Marren, has written an instructive book on hermeneutical

phenomenology in which he describes research as oriented toward lived experience

(phenomenology) and interpreting the "texts" of life (hermeneutics).

● Researchers first turn to a phenomenon, an "abiding concern", which seriously interests

them. In the process, they reflect on essential themes, what constitutes the nature of this

lived experience.

● They write a description of the phenomenon, maintaining a strong relation to the topic of

inquiry and balancing the parts of the writing to the whole.

● Phenomenology is not only a description, but it is also seen as an interpretive process in

which the researcher makes an interpretation of the meaning of the lived experiences.

● Moustakas's transcendental or psychological phenomenology is focused less on the

interpretations of the researcher and more on a description of the experiences of

participants.
 ● In addition, Moustakas focuses on one of Husserl's concepts, epoche (or bracketing), in

which investigators set aside their experiences, as much as possible, to take a fresh

perspective toward the phenomenon under examination. Hence, ''transcendental" means

''in whicheverything is perceived freshly, as if for the first time".

● Besides bracketing, empirical, transcendental phenomenology draws on the Duquesne

Studies in Phenomenological Psychology and the data analysis procedures of Van Kaam

and Colaizzi.

● The procedures, illustrated by Moustakas, consist of identifying a phenomenon to study,

bracketing out one's experiences, and collecting data from several persons who have

experienced the phenomenon. The researcher then analyses the data by reducing the

information to significant statements or quotes and combines the statements into themes.

● Following that, the researcher develops a textural description of the experiences of the

persons (what participants experienced), a structural description of their experiences

(how they experienced it in terms of the conditions, situations, or context), and a

combination of the textural and structural descriptions to convey an overall essence of the

experience.

Procedures

1. The researcher determines if the research problem is best examined using a

phenomenological approach. The type of problem best suited for this form of research is

one in which it is important to understand several individuals' common or shared

experiences of a phenomenon.
2. A phenomenon of interest to study, such as anger, professionalism, what it means to be

underweight, or what it means to be a wrestler, is identified.

3. The researcher recognizes and specifies the broad philosophical assumptions of

phenomenology. For example, one could write about the combination of objective reality

and individual experiences. These lived experiences are furthermore "conscious" and

directed toward an object.

4. Data are collected from the individuals who have experienced the phenomenon. Often

data collection in phenomenological studies consists of in-depth interviews and multiple

interviews with participants.

5. The participants are asked two broad, general questions: What have you experienced in

terms of the phenomenon? What contexts or situations have typically influenced or

affected your experiences of the phenomenon?

6. Building on the data from the first and second research questions, data analysts go

through the data (e.g., interview transcriptions) and highlight "significant statements,"

sentences, or quotes that provide an understanding of how the participants experienced

the phenomenon. Moustakas calls this step horizonalization. Next, the researcher

develops clusters of meaning from these significant statements into themes.

7. These significant statements and themes are then used to write a description of what the

participants experienced (textural description). They are also used to write a description

of the context or setting that influenced how the participants experienced the

phenomenon, called imaginative variation or structural description.

 8. From the structural and textural descriptions, the researcher then writes a composite

description that presents the "essence" of the phenomenon, called the essential, invariant

structure (or essence). Primarily this passage focuses on the common experiences of the

participants.

Challenges

● A phenomenology provides a deep understanding of a phenomenon as experienced by

several individuals. Knowing some common experiences can be valuable for groups such

as therapists, teachers, health personnel, and policymakers.

● Using the Moustakas approach for analysing the data helps provide a structured approach

for novice researchers. On the other hand, phenomenology requires at least some

understanding of the broader philosophical assumptions, and these should be identified

by the researcher.

● The participants in the study need to be carefully chosen to be individuals who have all

experienced the phenomenon in question, so that the researcher, in the end, can forge a

common understanding.

● Bracketing personal experiences may be difficult for the researcher to implement. This

might be impossible, thus the researcher needs to decide how and in what way his or her

personal understandings will be introduced into the study.

 Grounded Theory

Definition and background

● Although a phenomenology emphasizes the meaning of an experience for a number of

individuals, the intent of a grounded theory study is to move beyond description and to

generate or discover a theory, an abstract analytical schema of a process.

● Participants in the study would all have experienced the process, and the development of

the theory might help explain practice or provide a framework for further research.

● A key idea is that this theory-development does not come "off the shelf," but rather is

generated or "grounded" in data from participants who have experienced the process.

Thus, grounded theory is a qualitative research design in which the inquirer generates a

general explanation (a theory) of a process, action, or interaction shaped by the views of a

large number of participants.

● This qualitative design was developed in sociology in 1967 by two researchers, Barney

Glaser and Anselm Strauss, who felt that theories used in research were often

inappropriate and ill-suited for participants under study.

● The two authors ultimately disagreed about the meaning and procedures of grounded

theory. Glaser has criticized Strauss's approach to grounded theory as too prescribed and

structured.

● More recently, Charmaz has advocated for a constructivist grounded theory, thus

introducing yet another perspective into the conversation about procedures. Through

these different interpretations, grounded theory has gained popularity in fields such as

sociology, nursing, education, and psychology, as well as in other social science fields.
 ● Another recent grounded theory perspective is that of Clarke who, along with Charmaz,

seeks to reclaim grounded theory from its "positivist underpinnings”. Clarke, however,

goes further than Charmaz, suggesting that social "situations" should form our unit of

analysis in grounded theory and that three sociological modes can be useful in analysing

these situations- situational, social world/arenas, and positional cartographic maps for

collecting and analyzing qualitative data.

Types of grounded theory studies

● The two popular approaches to grounded theory are the systematic procedures of Strauss

and Corbin and the constructivist approach of Charmaz.

Systematic procedure

● In the more systematic, analytic procedures of Strauss and Corbin, the investigator

seeks to systematically develop a theory that explains process, action, or interaction on a

topic.

● The researcher typically conducts 20 to 30 interviews based on several visits "to the

field" to collect interview data to saturate the categories.

● A category represents a unit of information composed of events, happenings, and

instances. The researcher also collects and analyses observations and documents, but

these data forms are often not used. While the researcher collects data, she or he begins

analysis.

● The participants interviewed are theoretically chosen (called theoretical sampling) to

help the researcher best form the theory. This process of taking information from data
 collection and comparing it to emerging categories is called the constant comparative

method of data analysis.

● The researcher begins with open coding, coding the data for its major categories of

information. From this coding, axial coding emerges in which the researcher identifies

one open coding category to focus on (called the "core" phenomenon), and then goes

back to the data and create categories around this core phenomenon.

● The final step, then, is selective coding, in which the researcher takes the model and

develops propositions (or hypotheses) that interrelate the categories in the model or

assembles a story that describes the interrelationship of categories in the model. This

theory, developed by the researcher, is articulated toward the end of a study and can

assume several forms, such as a narrative statement, a visual picture, or a series of

hypotheses or propositions.

● In their discussion of grounded theory, Strauss and Corbin (1998) take the model one step

further to develop a conditional matrix. They advance the conditional matrix as a coding

device to help the researcher make connections between the macro and the micro

conditions influencing the phenomenon.

Constructivist approach

● Instead of embracing the study of a single process or core category as in the Strauss and

Corbin approach, Charmaz advocates for a social constructivist perspective that includes

emphasizing diverse local worlds, multiple realities, and the complexities of particular

worlds, views, and actions.

 ● Constructivist grounded theory lies squarely within the interpretive approach to

qualitative research with flexible guidelines, a focus on theory developed that depends on

the researcher's view, learning about the experience within embedded, hidden networks,

situations, and relationships, and making visible hierarchies of power, communication,

and opportunity.

● She suggests that complex terms or jargon, diagrams, conceptual maps, and systematic

approaches detract from grounded theory and represent an attempt to gain power in their

use. She advocates using active codes, such as gerund-based phrases like "recasting life."

Procedures

1. The researcher needs to begin by determining if grounded theory is best suited to study

his or her research problem. Grounded theory is a good design to use when a theory is not

available to explain a process. The literature may have models available, but they were

developed and tested on samples and populations other than those of interest to the

qualitative researcher. Also, theories may be present, but they are incomplete because

they do not address potentially valuable variables of interest to the researcher.

2. The research questions that the inquirer asks of participants will focus on understanding

how· individuals experience the process and identifying the steps in the process (What

was the process? How did it unfold?). After initially exploring these issues, the researcher

then returns to the participants and asks more detailed questions that help to shape the

axial coding phase, questions such as: What was central to the process? (the core

phenomenon); What influenced or caus~d this phenomenon to occur? (causal conditions);

 What strategies were employed during the process? (strategies); What effect occurred?

(consequences).

3. These questions are typically asked in interviews, although other forms of data may also

be collected, such as observations, documents, and audiovisual materials.

4. The analysis of the data proceeds in stages. In open coding, the researcher forms

categories of information about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting

information. Within each category, the investigator finds several properties, or

subcategories, and looks for data to dimensionalize, or show the extreme possibilities on

a continuum of, the property.

5. In axial coding, the investigator assembles the data in new ways after open coding. This

is presented using a coding paradigm or logic diagram (i.e. a visual model) in which the

researcher identifies a central phenomenon (i.e., a central category about the

phenomenon), explores causal conditions (i.e., categories of conditions that influence the

phenomenon), specifies strategies (i.e., the actions or interactions that result from the

central phenomenon), identifies the context and intervening conditions (i.e., the narrow

and broad conditions that influence the strategies), and delineates the consequences (i.e.,

the outcomes of the strategies) for this phenomenon.

6. In selective coding, the researcher may write a ~'story line" that connects the categories.

Alternatively, propositions or hypotheses may be specified that state predicted

relationships.

7. Finally, the researcher may develop and visually portray a conditional matrix that

elucidates the social, historical, and economic conditions influencing the central
 phenomenon. It is an optional step and one in which the qualitative inquirer thinks about

the model from the smallest to the broadest perspective.

8. The result of this process of data collection and analysis is a theory, a substantive-level

theory, written by a researcher close to a specific problem or population of people. The

theory emerges with help from the process of memoing, a process in which the researcher

writes down ideas about the evolving theory throughout the process of open, axial, and

selective coding.

Challenges

● The investigator needs to set aside, as much as possible, theoretical ideas or notions so

that the analytic, substantive theory can emerge.

● Despite the evolving, inductive nature of this form of qualitative inquiry, the researcher

must recognize that this is a systematic approach to research with specific steps in data

analysis, if approached from the Strauss and Corbin perspective.

● The researcher faces the difficulty of determining when categories are saturated or when

the theory is sufficiently detailed.

● The researcher needs to recognize that the primary outcome of this study is a theory with

specific components: a central phenomenon, causal conditions, strategies, conditions and

context, and consequences.

 Ethnographic Research

Definition and background

● Although a grounded theory researcher develops a theory from examining many

individuals who share in the same process, action, or interaction, the study participants

are not likely to be located in the same place or interacting on so frequent a basis that

they develop shared patterns of behaviour, beliefs, and language.

● An ethnographer is interested in examining these shared patterns, and the unit of analysis

is larger than the 20 or so individuals involved in a grounded theory study.

● An ethnography focuses on an entire cultural group. This group may be small, but

typically it is large, involving many people who interact over time.

● Ethnography is a qualitative design in which the researcher describes and interprets the

shared and learned patterns of values, behaviours, beliefs, and language of a

culture-sharing group. As both a process and an outcome of research (Agar, 1980),

ethnography is a way of studying a culture-sharing group as well as the final, written

product of that research.

● As a process, 'ethnography involves extended observations of the group, most often

through participant observation, in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day

lives of the people and observes and interviews the group participants.

● Ethnography had its beginning in the comparative cultural anthropology conducted by

early 20th-century anthropologists, such as Boas, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, and

Mead. Although these researchers initially took the natural sciences as a model for
 research, they differed from those using traditional scientific approaches through the

first-hand collection of data concerning existing "primitive" cultures.

● Recently, scientific approaches to ethnography have expanded to include "schools" or

subtypes of ethnography with different theoretical orientations and aims, such as

structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, cultural and cognitive anthropology,

feminism, Marxism, ethnomethodology, critical theory, cultural studies, and

postmodernism. This has led to a lack of orthodoxy in ethnography and has resulted in

pluralistic approaches.

Types of ethnographies

● There are many forms of ethnography, such as a confessional ethnography, life history,

autoethnography, feminist ethnography, ethnographic novels, and the visual ethnography

found in photography and video, and electronic media.

● However, the two most popular forms of ethnography are realist ethnography and critical

ethnography

Realist ethnography

● The realist ethnography is a traditional approach used by cultural anthropologists.

Characterized by VanMaanen, it reflects a particular stance taken by the researcher

toward the individuals being studied.

● Realist ethnography is an objective account of the situation, typically written in the

third-person point of view and reporting objectively on the information learned from

participants at a site.
● In this ethnographic approach, the realist ethnographer narrates the study in a

third-person dispassionate voice and reports on what is observed or heard from

participants. The ethnographer remains in the background as an omniscient reporter of

the "facts."

● The realist also reports objective data in a measured style uncontaminated by personal

bias, political goals, and judgment.

● The ethnographer also uses standard categories for cultural. The ethnographer produces

the participants' views through closely edited quotations and has the final word on how

the culture is to be interpreted and presented.

Critical ethnography

● For many researchers, ethnography today employs a "critical" approach by including in

the research an advocacy perspective.

● This approach is in response to current society, in which the systems of power, prestige,

privilege, and authority serve to marginalize individuals who are from different classes,

races, and genders.

● The critical ethnography is a type of ethnographic research in which the authors advocate

for the emancipation of groups marginalized in society.

● Critical researchers typically are politically minded individuals who seek, through their

research, to speak out against inequality and domination.

● The major components of a critical ethnography include a value-laden orientation,

empowering people by giving them more authority, challenging the status quo, and

addressing concerns about power and control.

 ● A critical ethnographer will study issues of power, empowerment, inequality, inequity,

dominance, repression, hegemony, and victimization.

Procedures

1. Determine if ethnography is the most appropriate design to use to study the research

problem. Ethnography is appropriate if the needs are to describe how a cultural group

works and to explore the beliefs, language, behaviors, and issues such as power,

resistance, and dominance.

2. Identify and locate a culture-sharing group to study. Typically, this group is one that has

been together for an extended period of time, so that their shared language, patterns of

behavior, and attitudes have merged into a discernable pattern. This may also be a group

that has been marginalized by society.

3. Select cultural themes or issues to study about the group. This involves the analysis of the

culture-sharing group. The themes may include such topics as enculturation,

socialization, learning, cognition, domination, inequality, or child and adult development.

4. To study cultural concepts, determine which type of ethnography to use. Perhaps how the

group works needs to be described, or the critical ethnography may need to expose issues

such as power, hegemony, and to advocate for certain groups.

5. Gather information where the group works and lives. This is called fieldwork. Gathering

the types of information typically needed in an ethnography involves going to the

research site, respecting the daily lives of individuals at the site, and collecting a wide

variety of materials. Field issues of respect, reciprocity, deciding who owns the data, and

others are central to ethnography. Ethnographers bring a sensitivity to fieldwork issues,

 such as attending to how they gain access, giving back or reciprocity with the

participants, and being ethical in all aspects of the research, such as presenting

themselves and the study.

6. Forge a working set of rules or patterns as the final product of this analysis. The final

product is a holistic cultural portrait of the group that incorporates the views of the

participants (emic) as well as the views of the researcher (etic). It might also advocate for

the needs of the group or suggest changes in society to address needs of the group. As a

result, the reader learns about the culture-sharing group from both the participants and the

interpretation of the researcher.

Challenges

● The researcher needs to have a grounding in cultural anthropology and the meaning of a

social-cultural system as well as the concepts typically explored by ethnographers.

● The time to collect data is extensive, involving prolonged time in the field.

● In many ethnographies, the narratives are written in a literary, almost storytelling

approach, an approach that may limit the audience for the work and may be challenging

for authors accustomed to traditional approaches to writing social and human science

research.

● There is a possibility that the researcher will "go native" and be unable to complete the

study or be compromised in the study.

● A sensitivity to the needs of individual studies is especially important, and the researcher

needs to acknowledge his or her impact on the people and the places being studied.
 Case Study

Definition and background

● Case study research involves the study of an issue explored through one or more cases

within a bounded system (i.e., a setting, a context).

● Case study research is a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a

bounded system or multiple bounded systems over time, through detailed, in-depth data

collection involving multiple sources of information and reports a case description and

case-based themes.

● The case study approach is familiar to social scientists because of its popularity in

psychology (Freud), medicine (case analysis of a problem), law (case law), and political

science (case reports).

● Yin espouses both quantitative and qualitative approaches to case study development and

discusses explanatory, exploratory, and descriptive qualitative case studies. Merriam

advocates a general approach to qualitative case studies in the field of education. Stake

systematically establishes procedures for case study research and cites them extensively

in his example of "Harper School."

Types of case studies

● Types of qualitative case studies are distinguished by the size of the bounded case, such

as whether the case involves one individual, several individuals, a group, an entire

program, or an activity.
● They may also be distinguished in terms of the intent of the case analysis. Three

variations exist in terms of intent: the single instrumental case study, the collective or

multiple case study, and the intrinsic case study.

Single instrumental case study

● In a single instrumental case study, the researcher focuses on an issue or concern, and

then selects one bounded case to illustrate this issue.

Collective case study

● In a collective case study (or multiple case study), the one issue or concern is again

selected, but the inquirer selects multiple case studies to illustrate the issue.

● The researcher might select for study several programs from several research sites or

multiple programs within a single site.

● Yin suggests that the multiple case study design uses the logic of replication, in which the

inquirer replicates the procedures for each case.

● As a general rule, qualitative researchers are reluctant to generalize from one case to

another because the contexts of cases differ. To best generalize, however, the inquirer

needs to select representative cases for inclusion in the qualitative study.

Intrinsic case study

● The final type of case study design is an intrinsic case study in which the focus is on the

case itself because the case presents an unusual or unique situation.

● This resembles the focus of narrative research, but the case study analytic procedures of a

detailed description of the case, set within its context or surroundings, still hold true.
Procedures

1. First, researchers determine if a case study approach is appropriate to the research

problem. A case study is a good approach when the inquirer has clearly identifiable cases

with boundaries and seeks to provide an in-depth understanding of the cases or a

comparison of several cases.

2. Researchers next need to identify their case or cases. These cases may involve an

individual, several individuals, a program, an event, or an activity.

3. The data collection in case study research is typically extensive, drawing on multiple

sources of information, such as observations, interviews, documents, and audiovisual

materials.

4. The type of analysis of these data can be a holistic analysis of the entire case or an

embedded analysis of a specific aspect of the case. Through this data collection, a

detailed description of the case emerges in which the researcher details such aspects as

the history of the case, the chronology of events, or a day-by-day rendering of the

activities of the case.

5. After this description, the researcher might focus on a few key issues (or analysis of

themes), not for generalizing beyond the case, but for understanding the complexity of

the case. One analytic strategy would be to identify issues within each case and then look

for common themes that transcend the cases. This analysis is rich in the context of the

case or setting in which the case presents itself. When multiple cases are chosen, a typical

format is to first provide a detailed description of each case and themes within the case,
 called a within-case analysis, followed by a thematic analysis across the cases, called a

cross-case analysis, as well as assertions or an interpretation of the meaning of the case.

6. In the final interpretive phase, the researcher reports the meaning of the case, whether

that meaning comes from learning about the issue of the case (an instrumental case) or

learning about an unusual situation

Challenge

● One of the challenges inherent in qualitative case study development is that the

researcher must identify his or her case. The case study researcher must decide which

bounded system to study, recognizing that several might be possible candidates for this

selection and realizing that either the case itself or an issue, which a case or cases are

selected to illustrate, is worthy of study.

● The researcher must consider whether to study a single case or multiple cases. The study

of more than one case dilutes the overall analysis; the more cases an individual studies,

the less the depth in any single case.

● Selecting the case requires that the researcher establish a rationale for his or her

purposeful sampling strategy for selecting the case and for gathering information about

the case.

Unit 2: Qualitative Research Design

 Paradigms or Worldviews

● The assumptions reflect a particular stance that researchers make when they choose

qualitative research. After researchers make this choice, they then further shape their

research by bringing to the inquiry paradigms or worldviews.

● A paradigm or worldview is a basic set of beliefs that guide action. Paradigms used by

qualitative researchers vary with the set of beliefs they bring to research, and the types

have continually evolved over time.

● Individuals may also use multiple paradigms in their qualitative research that are

compatible, such as constructionist and participatory worldviews.

Postpositivism

● Those who engage in qualitative research using a belief system grounded in

postpositivism will take a scientific approach to research. The approach has the elements

of being reductionistic, logical, an emphasis on empirical data collection,

cause-and-effect oriented, and deterministic based on a priori theories.

● In terms of practice, postpositivist researchers will likely view inquiry as a series of

logically related steps, believe in multiple perspectives from participants rather than a

single reality, and espouse rigorous methods of qualitative data collection and analysis.

● They will use multiple levels of data analysis for rigor, employ computer programs to

assist in their analysis, encourage the use of validity approaches, and write their

qualitative studies in the form of scientific reports, with a structure resembling

quantitativeapproaches.
Social constructivism

● In this worldview, individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and

work. They develop subjective meanings of their experiences-meanings directed toward

certain objects or things.

● These meanings are varied and multiple, leading the researcher to look for the complexity

of views rather than narrow the meanings into a few categories or ideas. The goal of

research, then, is to rely as much as possible on the participants' views of the situation.

● Often these subjective meanings are negotiated socially and historically. In other words,

they are not simply imprinted on individuals but are formed through interaction·with

others (hence social constructivism) and through historical and cultural norms that

operate in individuals' lives.

● Rather than starting with a theory (as in postpositivism), inquirers generate or inductively

develop a theory or pattern of meaning.

● In terms of practice, the questions become broad and general so that the participants can

construct the meaning of a situation, a meaning typically forged in discussions or

interactions with other persons.

● The more open-ended the questioning, the better, as the researcher listens carefully to

what people say or do in their life setting. Thus, constructivist researchers often address

the "processes" of interaction among individuals. They also focus on the specific

'contexts in which people live and work in order to understand the historical and cultural

settings of the participants.

 ● Researchers recognize that their own background shapes their interpretation, and they

"position themselves" in the research to acknowledge how their interpretation flows from

their own personal, cultural, and historical experiences. Thus the researchers make an

interpretation of what they find, an interpretation shaped by their own experiences and

background.

● The researcher's intent, then, is to make sense (or interpret) the meanings others have

about the world. This is why qualitative research is often called "interpretive" research.

Advocacy/participatory

● Researchers might use an alternative worldview, advocacy/participatory, because the

postpositivist imposes structural laws and theories that do not fit marginalized individuals

or groups and the constructivists do not go far enough in advocating for action to help

individuals.

● The basic tenet of this worldview is that research should contain an action agenda for

reform that may change the lives of participants, the institutions in which they live and

work, or even the researchers' lives.

● The issues facing these marginalized groups are of paramount importance to study, issues

such as oppression, domination, suppression, alienation, and hegemony. As these issues

are studied and exposed, the researchers provide a voice for these participants, raising

their consciousness and improving their lives.

● Following are the features of advocacy/participatory practice:

 ⮚ Participatory action is recursive or dialectical and is focused on bringing about

change in practices. Thus, at the end of advocacy/participatory studies,

researchers advance an action agenda for change.

⮚ It is focused on helping individuals free themselves from constraints found in the

media, in language, in work procedures, and in the relationships of power in

educational settings.

⮚ It is emancipatory in that it helps unshackle people from the constraints of

irrational and unjust structures that limit self-development and self-determination.

The aim of advocacy/participatory studies is to create a political debate and

discussion so that change will occur.

⮚ It is practical and collaborative because it is inquiry completed "with" others

rather than “on" or "to" others. In this spirit, advocacy/participatory authors

engage the participants as active collaborators in their inquiries.

● In practice, this worldview has shaped several approaches to inquiry. Specific social

issues (e.g., domination, oppression, inequity) help frame the research questions.

● Not wanting to further marginalize the individuals participating in the research,

advocacy/participatory inquirers collaborate with research participants. They may ask

participants to help with designing the questions, collecting the data, analyzing it, and

shaping the final report of the research. In this way, the "voice" of the participants

becomes heard throughout the research process.

● The research also contains an action agenda for reform, a specific plan for addressing the

injustices of the marginalized group.

Pragmatism

● Individuals holding this worldview focus on the outcomes of the research-the actions,

situations, and consequences of inquiry-rather than antecedent conditions.

● There is a concern with applications-"what works" -and solutions to problems. Thus,

instead of a focus on methods, the important aspect of research is the problem being

studied and the questions asked about this problem.

● Features of pragmatism are as below-

⮚ Pragmatism is not committed to any one system of philosophy and reality.

⮚ Individual researchers have a freedom of choice. They are "free" to choose the

methods, techniques, and procedures of research that best meet their needs and

purposes.

⮚ Pragmatists do not see the world as an absolute unity. In a similar way, mixed

methods researchers look to many approaches to collecting and analyzing data

rather than subscribing to only one way.

⮚ Truth is what works at the time; it is not based in a dualism between reality

independent of the mind or within the mind.

⮚ Pragmatist researchers look to the "what' and “how" to research based on its

intended consequences-where they want to go with it.

⮚ Pragmatists agree that research always occurs in social, historical, political, and

other contexts.

⮚ Pragmatists have believed in an external world independent of the mind as well as

those lodged in the mind. But they believe that we need to stop asking questions
 about reality and the laws of nature. "They would simply like to change the

subject".

● In practice, the individual using this worldview will use multiple methods of data

collection to best answer the research question, will employ both quantitative and

qualitative sources of data collection, will focus on the practical implications of the

research, and will emphasize the importance of conducting research that best addresses

the research problem.

Conceptualising Research Questions

The research problem

● Qualitative studies begin with authors stating the research problem of the study. In the

first few paragraphs of a design for a study, the qualitative researcher introduces the

"problem" leading to the study.

● The intent of a research problem in qualitative research is to provide a rationale or need

for studying a particular issue or "problem."

● Research methods books advance several sources for research problems. Research

problems are found in personal experience with an issue, a job-related problem, an

adviser's research agenda, or the scholarly literature.

● It is important in qualitative research to provide a rationale or reason for studying the

problem. The strongest and most scholarly rationale for a study comes from the scholarly

literature: a need exists to add to or fill a gap in the literature or to provide a voice for

individuals not heard in the literature.

● Besides dialogue and understanding, a qualitative study may fill a void in existing

literature, establish a new line of thinking, or assess an issue with an understudied group

or population.

● In addition to determining the source of the research problem and framing it within the

literature, qualitative researchers need to introduce the problem in a way that the

discussion foreshadows one of the five approaches to inquiry.

● This can be done by mentioning how the particular choice of approach fills a need or gap

in the literature about the research problem.

● In a problem statement for a narrative study the writer would mention how individual

stories need to be told to gain personal experiences about the research problem.

● In a phenomenological study, the author would state that we need to know more about a

particular phenomenon and the common experiences of individuals with the

phenomenon.

● For a grounded theory study, the researcher would explain how we need a theory that

explains a process because existing theories are inadequate, nonexistent for the

population, or need to be modified.

● In an ethnographic study, the problem statement might include thoughts about why it is

important to describe and to interpret the cultural behaviour of a certain group of people

or how a group is marginalized and kept silent by others.

● For a case study, the researcher might discuss how the study of a case or cases can help

inform the· research problem.

 ● Thus, the need for the study, or the problem leading to it, can be related to the specific

focus of one of the five approaches to research.

The purpose statement

● This interrelationship between design and approach continues with the purpose statement,

a statement that provides the major objective or intent, or "road map," to the study.

● As the most important statement in an entire qualitative study, the purpose statement

needs to be carefully constructed and written in clear and concise language.

● Following is a script of the purpose statement:

The purpose of this ______ (strategy of inquiry, such as ethnography, case study, or other type)

study is (was? will be?) to ______ (understand? explore? develop? discover?) the ______

(central phenomenon being studied) for ______ (the participants, such as the individual, groups,

organization) at ______ (research site). At this stage in the research, the ______ (central

phenomenon being studied) will be generally defined as ______ (provide a general definition).

● The writer identifies the specific qualitative approach used in the study by mentioning the

type. The name of the approach comes first in the passage, thus foreshadowing the

inquiry approach for data collection, analysis, and report writing.

● The writer encodes the passage with words that indicate the action of the researcher and

the focus of the approach to research.

● The writer identifies the central phenomenon. The central phenomenon is the one, central

concept being explored or examined in the research study.

 ● The writer foreshadows the participants and the site for the study, whether the

participants are one individual (i.e., narrative or case study), several individuals (i.e.,

grounded theory or phenomenology), a group (i.e., ethnography), or a site (i.e., program,

event, activity, or place in a case study).

The research questions

● Marshall and Rossman conceptualised research questions into four types: exploratory

(e.g., to investigate phenomenon little understood), explanatory (e.g., to explain patterns

related to phenomenon), descriptive (e.g., to describe the phenomenon), and

emancipatory (e.g., to engage in social action about the phenomenon).

● Qualitative research questions are open-ended, evolving, and nondirectional; restate the

purpose of the study in more specific terms; start with a word such as "what" or "how"

rather than "why"; and are few in number (five to seven).

● They are posed in various forms, from the "grand tour" that asks, "Tell me about

yourself," to more specific questions.

Central questions

● The researcher might want to reduce their entire study to a single, overarching question

and several subquestions.

● Drafting this central question often takes considerable work because of its breadth and

the tendency of some to form specific questions based on traditional training.

● To reach the overarching question, the researcher might state the broadest question they

could possibly post about the research question.

● This central question can be encoded with the language of one of the five approaches to

inquiry. Morse speaks directly to this issue as she reviews the types of research questions.

Although she does not refer to narratives or case studies, she mentions that one finds

''descriptive" questions of cultures in ethnographies, "process" questions in grounded

theory studies, and "meaning" questions in phenomenological studies.

● Authors may or may not pose a central question, although one exists in all studies. For

writing journal articles, central questions may be used less than purpose statements to

guide the research. However, for individuals' graduate research, such as theses or

dissertations, the trend is toward writing both purpose statements and central questions.

Subquestions

● An author typically presents a small number of subquestions that follow the central

question.

● One model for conceptualizing these subquestions is to use either issue questions or

topical questions. According to Stake (1995), issue subquestions address· the major

concerns and perplexities to be resolved.

● Issue subquestions take the phenomenon in the central research questions and break it

down into subtopics for examination. A central question such as "What does it mean to

be a college professor?" would be analyzed in subquestions on topics like "What does it

 mean to be a college professor in the classroom? As a researcher? As an advisor?" and so

forth.

● Topical subquestions, on the other hand, cover the anticipated needs for information.

These are questions that advance the procedural steps in the process of research, steps

that are typically conducted within one of the approaches to research. They might also be

called procedural subquestions.

Sampling Methods

● When sampling strategies for social research are described, a key distinction is made

between probability and non-probability samples.

● Probability sampling is generally held to be the most rigorous approach to sampling for

statistical research, but is largely inappropriate for qualitative research.

● In a probability sample, elements in the population are chosen at random and have a

known probability of selection. Often the probability of units being selected is equal in

which case groups will be represented in the sample in their true proportions.

● In other cases, units are selected with unequal (although always known) probabilities.

The data then have to be re-weighted during analysis - that is, differential weights

attached to adjust for the varied probability of selection, so that the sample is brought

back into line with the overall population distribution.

● Either way the aim is to produce a statistically representative sample - that is a kind of

small-scale model of the population from which it is drawn. This approach is essential so

that information generated by the sample can be used to provide statistical estimates of
 the prevalence or distribution of characteristics that apply to the wider population. This

kind of sample is also appropriate when the aim of a study is to test hypotheses

empirically.

● Qualitative research uses non-probability samples for selecting the population for study.

In a non-probability sample, units are deliberately selected to reflect particular features of

or groups within the sampled population.

● The sample is not intended to be statistically representative: the chances of selection for

each element are unknown but, instead, the characteristics of the population are used as

the basis of selection. It is this feature that makes them well suited to small-scale,

in-depth studies.

Criterion based or purposive sampling

● In this approach, the selection of participants, settings or other sampling units is criterion

based or purposive.

● The sample units are chosen because they have particular features or characteristics

which will enable detailed exploration and understanding of the central themes and

puzzles which the researcher wishes to study. These may be socio-demographic

characteristics, or may relate to specific experiences, behaviours, roles, etc.

● Purposive sampling has two principal aims. The first is to ensure that all the key

constituencies of relevance to the subject matter are covered. The second is to ensure that,

within each of the key criteria, some diversity is included so that the impact of the

characteristic concerned can be explored.

● There are a range of different approaches to purposive sampling, designed to yield

different types of sample composition depending on the study's aims and coverage. These

have been described as follows:

❖ Homogeneous samples chosen to give a detailed picture of a particular

phenomenon – for example, individuals who belong to the same subculture or

have the same characteristics. This allows for detailed investigation of social

processes in a specified context.

❖ Heterogeneous samples or maximum variation sampling where there is a

deliberate strategy to include phenomena which vary widely from each other. The

aim is to identify central themes which cut across the variety of cases or people.

❖ Extreme case or deviant sampling. Cases are chosen because they are unusual or

special and therefore potentially enlightening. The logic is that learning about

phenomena is heightened by looking at exceptions or extremes.

❖ Intensity sampling which employs similar logic to extreme or deviant case

sampling but focuses on cases which strongly represent the phenomena of interest

rather than unusual cases.

❖ Typical case sampling. Cases which characterize positions that are 'normal' or

'average' are selected to provide detailed profiling. This requires prior knowledge

about overall patterns of response so that what is 'typical' is known.

❖ Stratified purposive sampling, a hybrid approach in which the aim is to select

groups that display variation on a particular phenomenon but each of which is

fairly homogeneous, so that subgroups can be compared.

 ❖ Critical case sampling in which cases are chosen on the basis that they

demonstrate a phenomenon or position 'dramatically' or are pivotal in the delivery

of a process or operation. The logic is that these cases will be 'critical' to any

understanding offered by the research.

● In purposive sampling, decisions about which criteria are used for selection are often

made in the early design stages of the research.

● They will be informed by a range of factors including the principal aims of the study,

existing knowledge or theories about the field of study, hypotheses that the research may

want to explore or gaps in knowledge about the study population.

● Although 'purposive' selection involves quite deliberate choices, this should not suggest

any bias in the nature of the choices made. The process of purposive sampling requires

clear objectivity so that the sample stands up to independent scrutiny.

● So although the researcher or funders may well have hypotheses they want to test, the

opportunity for these to be proved or disproved needs to be equal.

Theoretical sampling

● Theoretical sampling is a particular kind of purposive sampling in which the researcher

samples incidents, people or units on the basis of their potential contribution to the

development and testing of theoretical constructs.

● The process is iterative: the researcher picks an initial sample, analyses the data, and then

selects a further sample in order to refine his or her emerging categories and theories.

This process is continued until the researcher reaches 'data saturation', or a point when no

new insights would be obtained from expanding the sample further.

● Theoretical sampling is mainly associated with the development of grounded theory.

● Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the

analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyses his data and decides what data to collect next

and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges. This process of data

collection is controlled by the emerging theory, whether substantive or formal.

● Denzin distinguishes between two types of sampling: non-interactive (akin to probability

sampling) and interactive.

● Interactive samples, akin to theoretical samples, are flexibly drawn, iterative selections

which develop as the research proceeds. They are judged according to the richness of

data and the quality of concepts and theories generated.

● The key criteria for selection in theoretical sampling are theoretical purpose and

theoretical relevance. Sampling continues until 'theoretical saturation' is reached and no

new analytical insights are forthcoming. In so doing, the researcher does not look just for

confirmatory evidence but also searches for 'negative cases'.

● Theory generation proceeds on the basis of comparative analysis and so the choice of

comparison groups is extremely important.

● Glaser and Strauss distinguish between samples which minimise differences in which the

researcher will collect much similar data but also spot the subtle differences which would

not be caught in heterogeneous samples; and samples which maximise differences to

facilitate the collection of diverse data which may then uncover similarities between

groups.
 ● Strauss and Corbin suggest that different sampling strategies be adopted at different

stages of a research project. Initially, while categories are being identified and named,

sampling is open and unstructured. As theory develops and categories are integrated

along dimensional levels then sampling becomes more purposive and discriminate in

order to maximise opportunities for comparative analysis.

Opportunistic sampling and convenience sampling

● Other authors have identified opportunistic sampling and convenience sampling as

sampling methods used in qualitative research.

● Opportunistic sampling involves the researcher taking advantage of unforeseen

opportunities as they arise during the course of fieldwork, adopting a flexible approach to

meld the sample around the fieldwork context as it unfolds.

● Convenience sampling, on the other hand, lacks any clear sampling strategy: the

researcher chooses the sample according to ease of access.

● Unlike statistical research, qualitative research does not set out to estimate the incidence

of phenomena in the wider population. Qualitative sampling therefore requires a different

logic to quantitative enquiry, one in which neither statistical representation nor scale are

key considerations.

● The precision and rigour of a qualitative research sample is defined by its ability to

represent salient characteristics and it is these that need priority in sample design. Perhaps

more crucially the principles of probability sampling can work against the requirements

of sound qualitative sampling.

Key features of qualitative sampling

● Although there are some key differences between purposive and theoretical sampling -

the two main approaches used in qualitative research - they also have much in common.

● Both rely on the use of prescribed selection criteria, although prescription takes place at

different stages of the research. They also both use samples which are small in scale

although with the opportunity to add to or supplement the composition as the research

progresses.

The use of prescribes selection criteria

● The aim of qualitative research is to gain an understanding of the nature and form of

phenomena, to unpack meanings, to develop explanations or to generate ideas, concepts

and theories.

● Samples therefore need to be selected to ensure the inclusion of relevant constituencies,

events, processes and so on, that can illuminate and inform that understanding.

● Units are chosen because they typify a circumstance or hold a characteristic that is

expected or known to have salience to the subject matter under study.

● This is termed as the requirement for 'symbolic representation' because a unit is chosen to

both 'represent' and 'symbolise' features of relevance to the investigation.

● A second requirement is to ensure that the sample is as diverse as possible within the

boundaries of the defined population.

● Diversity is needed for two reasons. First it optimises the chances of identifying the full

range of factors or features that are associated with a phenomenon. The greater the

diversity of characteristics or circumstances, the more opportunity there is to identify

 their different contributory elements or influences. Second it allows some investigation of

interdependency between variables such that those that are most relevant can be

disengaged from those of lesser import.

● These two requirements, for symbolic representation and diversity, mean that 'sampling

units' (people, events, organisations etc.) have to meet prescribed criteria in order to be

selected for the sample.

● In addition, because qualitative samples are usually small in size (see below), these

criteria have to be applied with optimum efficiency.

● These principles apply to both purposive and theoretical sampling although the stages at

which criteria are defined differ between the two approaches.

Sample size

● Qualitative samples are usually small in size. There are three main reasons for this.

● First, if the data are properly analysed, there will come a point where very little new

evidence is obtained from each additional fieldwork unit. This is because phenomena

need only to appear once to be part of the analytical map. There is therefore a point of

diminishing return where increasing the sample size no longer contributes new evidence.

● Second, statements about incidence or prevalence are not the concern of qualitative

research. There is therefore no requirement to ensure that the sample is of sufficient scale

to provide estimates, or to determine statistically significant discriminatory variables.

● Third, the type of information that qualitative studies yield is rich in detail. There will

therefore be many hundreds of 'bites' of information from each unit of data collection. In

order to do justice to these, sample sizes need to be kept to a reasonably small scale.
● Finally, and related to this, qualitative research is highly intensive in terms of the research

resources it requires. It would therefore simply be unmanageable to conduct and analyse

hundreds of interviews, observations or groups unless the researcher intends to spend

several years doing so.

● There are a number of issues that need to be taken into account in determining sample

size:

❖ The heterogeneity of the population - if the population is known to be very

diverse in nature in relation to the subject of enquiry, then this is likely to increase

the required sample size. Conversely if the population is reasonably

homogeneous, then a smaller sample will include all the internal diversity that is

needed.

❖ The number of selection criteria - the number of criteria that are felt to be

important in designing the sample will influence the sample size – the more there

are, the larger the sample.

❖ The extent to which nesting of criteria is needed - if criteria need to be

interlocked or 'nested' (that is, controlling the representation of one criterion

within another) for reasons of interdependency or because of the requirement for

diversity, then this will increase the sample size.

❖ Groups of special interest that require intensive study - if groups within the

study population require intensive study, they will need to be included with

sufficient symbolic representation and diversity. This will require a larger overall

sample.
 ❖ Multiple samples within one study - it is sometimes necessary to have more

than one sample within a study for reasons of comparison or control, and this will

have a significant impact on the number of cases that need to be covered.

❖ Type of data collection methods - the overall sample size will be increased

depending on whether the methods of data collection involve (roughly in

ascending order) single interviews, paired interviews, small or average size group

discussions.

❖ The budget and resources available - each sample unit will need intensive

resources for data collection and analysis. The scale of the budget available will

therefore place some limits on sample size.

Additional and supplementary samples

● In qualitative research it is perfectly possible to supplement a sample by adding members

to it, or to draw a second sample within the scope of the same study.

● Indeed, it is an integral feature of theoretical sampling to add to the sample as the

research progresses. This may occur when it is found that important constituencies are

not sufficiently well represented to derive sound qualitative evidence or when it is clear

that the innate diversity of a subgroup warrants further cases or even a separate sample.

● Unlike statistical enquiries, where information from newly drawn samples cannot easily

be 'added' to an original data set unless the probabilities of selection of all the new and

old sample cases are known, additional qualitative data can be quite reliably incorporated

provided the same form of data collection has been conducted.

● This is because missing phenomena will add to the completion of the 'map' and frequency

of occurrence is not of concern.

● The choice of using theoretical sampling or purposive sampling will be heavily

influenced by the purposes of the research, particularly by its theoretical orientation.

● Theoretical sampling is particularly appropriate for exploratory studies in unfamiliar

areas, since it may be difficult to identify in advance the groups and characteristics that

need to be included in the sample. This knowledge will instead emerge from the data

collected.

● The choice will also be influenced by the nature of the study population and its

complexity. Pragmatic factors such as the time and resources available will also play a

part in the decision.

● Theoretical sampling requires more time, since sample selection, fieldwork and analysis

are undertaken iteratively rather than sequentially as in purposive sampling. This also

means that it will generally be harder to predict with precision the time and resources that

will be required for a study using theoretical sampling.

 Validation and Reliability

Perspectives on validation

● Many perspectives exist regarding the importance of validation in qualitative research,

the definition of it, terms to describe it, and procedures for establishing it.

● These perspectives are viewing qualitative validation in terms of quantitative equivalents,

using qualitative terms that are distinct from quantitative terms, employing postmodern
 and interpretive perspectives, considering validation as unimportant, combining or

synthesizing many perspectives, or visualizing it metaphorically as a crystal.

LeCompte and Goetz

● Writers have searched for and found qualitative equivalents that parallel traditional

quantitative approaches to validation.

● LeCompte and Goetz took this approach when they compared the issues of validation and

reliability to their counterparts in experimental design and survey research.

● They contended that qualitative research has garnered much criticism in the scientific

ranks for its failure to "adhere to canons of reliability and validation" in the traditional

sense.

● They applied threats to internal validation in experimental research to ethnographic

research (e.g., history and maturation, observer effects, selection and regression,

mortality, spurious conclusions).

● They further identified threats to external validation as "effects that obstruct or reduce a

study's comparability or translatability".

Lincoln and Guba

● Some writers argue that authors who continue to use positivist terminology facilitate the

acceptance of qualitative research in a quantitative world.

● Lincoln and Guba have used alternative terms that, they contended, adhered more to

naturalistic research.

● To establish the "trustworthiness" of a study, Lincoln and Guba used unique terms, such

as "credibility," "authenticity," "transferability," "dependability," and

 "confirmability,'' as "the naturalist's equivalents" for "internal validation,'' "external

validation," "reliability," and "objectivity".

● To operationalize these new terms, they propose techniques such as prolonged

engagement in the field and the triangulation of data of sources, methods, and

investigators to establish credibility.

● To make sure that the findings are transferable between the researcher and those being

studied, thick description is necessary. Rather than reliability, one seeks dependability

that the results will be subject to change and instability.

● The naturalistic researcher looks for confirmability rather than objectivity in establishing

the value of the data. Both dependability and confirmability are established through an

auditing of the research process.

Eisner

● Eisner proposed the use of alternative terms that provide reasonable standards for judging

the credibility of qualitative research.

● Rather than using the term "validation," Eisner (1991) discussed the credibility of

qualitative research. He constructed standards such as structural corroboration,

consensual validation, and referential adequacy.

● In structural corroboration, the researcher relates multiple types of data to support or

contradict the interpretation.

● Consensual validation sought the opinion of others, and Eisner referred to "an agreement

among competent others that the description, interpretation, and evaluation and thematics

of an educational situation are right".

● Referential adequacy suggested the importance of criticism, and Eisner described the goal

of criticism as illuminating the subject matter and bringing about more complex and

sensitive human perception and understanding.

Lather

● Validation also has been reconceptualized by qualitative researchers with a postmodern

sensibility.

● Lather commented that current "paradigmatic uncertainty in the human sciences is

leading to the re-conceptualizing of validation" and called for "new techniques and

concepts for obtaining and defining trustworthy data which avoids the pitfalls of orthodox

notions of validation", and advanced a "reconceptualization of validation."

● She identified four types of validation, including triangulation (multiple data sources,

methods, and theoretical schemes), construct validation (recognizing the constructs that

exist rather than imposing theories/constructs on informants or the context), face

validation (as "a click of recognition' and a 'yes, of course/ instead of 'yes, but'

experience", and catalytic validation (which energizes participants toward knowing

reality to transform it).

● In a later article, Lather's terms became more unique and closely related to feminist

research in "four frame~ of validation."

● The first, ironic validation, is where the researcher presents truth as a problem.

● The second, paralogic validation, is concerned with undecidables, limits, paradoxes, and

complexities, a movement away from theorizing things and toward providing direct

exposure to other voices in an almost unmediated way.

● The third, rhizomatic validation, pertains to questioning proliferations, crossings, and

overlaps without underlying structures or deeply rooted connections. The researcher also

questions taxonomies, constructs, and interconnected networks whereby the reader jumps

from one assemblage to another and consequently moves from judgment to

understanding.

● The fourth type is situated, embodied, or voluptuous validation, which means that the

researcher sets out to understand more than one can know and to write toward what one

does not understand.

Wolcott

● Wolcott has little use for validation.

● He suggested that "validation neither guides nor informs" his work. He did not dismiss

validation, but rather placed it in a broader perspective.

● Wolcott's goal was to identify "critical elements" and write "plausible interpretations

from them". He ultimately tried to understand rather than convince, and he voiced the

view that validation distracted from his work of understanding what was really going on.

● Wolcott claimed that the term "validation" did not capture the essence of what he sought,

adding that perhaps someone would coin a term appropriate for the naturalistic paradigm.

● But for now, he said, the term "understanding" seemed to encapsulate the idea as well as

any other.

Angen

● Angen (2000) suggested that within interpretative research, validation is "a judgment of

the trustworthiness or goodness of a piece of research".

● She two types of validation: ethical validation and substantive validation.

● Ethical validation means that all research agendas must questions their underlying moral

assumptions, their political and ethical implications, and the equitable treatment of

diverse voices. It also requires research to provide some practical answers to questions.

● Substantive validation means understanding one's own understandings of the topic,

understandings derived from other sources, and the documentation of this process in the

written study. Self-reflection contributes to the validation of the work.

Whittemore, Chase, and Mandle

● Analysed 13 writings about validation, and extracted from these studies key validation

criteria.

● They organized these criteria into primary and. secondary criteria

● They found four primary criteria: credibility (Are the results an accurate interpretation of

the participants' meaning?); authenticity (Are different voices heard?); criticality (Is

there a critical appraisal of all aspects of the research?); and integrity (Are the

investigators self-critical?).

● Secondary criteria related to explicitness, vividness, creativity, thoroughness,

congruence, and sensitivity.

Summary

● Validation in qualitative research is an attempt to assess the accuracy of the findings, as

best described by the researcher and the participants.

● Validation is also a distinct strength of qualitative research in that the account made

through extensive time spent in the field, the detailed thick description, and the closeness
 of the researcher to the participants in the study all add to the value or accuracy of a

study.

● Validation emphasises a process, rather than verification.

● The subject of validation does arise in several of the approaches to qualitative research,

however, distinct validation approaches might not exist for the five different approaches.

Validation strategies

● Prolonged engagement and persistent observation in the field include building trust with

participants, learning the culture, and checking for misinformation that stems from

distortions introduced by the researcher or informants. In the field, the researcher makes

decisions about what is salient to the study, relevant to the purpose of the study, and of

interest for focus.

● In triangulation, researchers make use of multiple and different sources, methods,

investigators, and theories to provide corroborating evidence. Typically, this process

involves corroborating evidence from different sources to shed light on a theme or

perspective.

● Peer review or debriefing provides an external check of the research process, much in the

same spirit as interrater reliability in quantitative research. The role of the peer debriefer

is that of a devil’s advocate, an individual who keeps the researcher honest; asks hard

questions about methods, meanings, and interpretations; and provides the researcher with

the opportunity for catharsis by sympathetically listening to the researcher's feelings.

● In negative case analysis, the researcher refines working hypotheses as the inquiry

advances in light of negative or disconfirming evidence. The researcher revises initial

 hypotheses until all cases fit, completing this process late in data analysis and eliminating

all outliers and exceptions.

● Clarifying researcher bias from the outset of the study is important so that the reader

understands the researcher's position and any biases or assumptions that impact the

inquiry. In this clarification, the researcher comments on past experiences, biases,

prejudices, and orientations that have likely shaped the interpretation and approach to the

study.

● In member checking, the researcher solicits participants' views of the credibility of the

findings and interpretations. This approach, writ large in most qualitative studies,

involves taking data, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions back to the participants so

that they can judge the accuracy and credibility of the account.

● Rich, thick description allows readers to make decisions regarding transferability because

the writer describes in detail the participants or setting under study. With such detailed

description, the researcher enables readers to transfer information to other settings and to

determine whether the findings and be transferred "because of shared characteristics".

● External audits allow an external consultant, the auditor, to examine both the process and

the product of the account, assessing their accuracy. This auditor should have no

connection to the study. In assessing the product, the auditor examines whether or not the

findings, interpretations, and conclusions are supported by the data.

Characteristics of “good” qualitative research

● The importance of fit. Analytic categories generated by the researcher should fit the data

well. To demonstrate good fit, the researcher is encouraged to write explicit, clear and
 comprehensive accounts of why phenomena have been labelled and categorized in

particular ways.

● Integration of theory. Relationships between units of analysis should be clearly

explicated and their integration at different levels of generality should be readily

apparent. The analyst’s memos should demonstrate the process of integration and its

rationale.

● Reflexivity. Since the research process inevitably shapes the object of inquiry, the role of

the researcher needs to be acknowledged in the documentation of the research.

● Documentation. The researcher should provide an inclusive and comprehensive account

of what was done and why throughout the research process.

● Theoretical sampling and negative case analysis. The researcher should continuously

seek to extend and modify emerging theory. To do this, he or she should explore cases

that do not fit as well as those that are likely to generate new insights.

● Sensitivity to negotiated realities. The researcher needs to attend to the ways in which

the research is interpreted by the participants who generated the data in the first place.

While participant validation is not always a requirement, the researcher should at least be

aware of participants’ reactions and attempt to explain differences between his or her own

interpretation and those of the participants.

● Transferability. To allow readers to explore the extent to which the study may, or may

not, have applicability beyond the specific context within which the data were generated,

the researcher should report the contextual features of the study in full.

Unit 3: Data Collection

Data collection circle

● Data collection is a series of interrelated activities aimed at gathering good information to

answer emerging research questions.

● A qualitative researcher engages in a series of activities in the process of collecting data.

● An important step in the process is to find people or places to study and to gain access to

and establish rapport with participants so that they will provide good data.

● A closely interrelated step in the process involves determining a strategy for the

purposeful sampling of individuals or sites. This is not a probability sample that will

enable a researcher to determine statistical inferences to a population; rather, it is

purposeful sample that will intentionally sample a group of people that can best inform
 the researcher about the research problem under examination. Thus, the researcher needs

to determine which type of purposeful sampling will be best to use.

● Once the inquirer selects the sites or people, decisions need to be made about the most

appropriate data collection approaches. Increasingly, a qualitative researcher has more

choices regarding data collection, such as e-mail messages and online data gathering, and

typically the researcher will collect data from more than one source.

● To collect this information, the researcher develops protocols or written forms for

recording the information and needs to develop some forms for recording tl>e data, such

as interview or observational protocols. Also, the researcher needs to anticipate issues of

data collection, called "field issues," which may be a problem, such as having inadequate

data, needing to prematurely leave the field or site, or contributing to lost information.

● Finally, a qualitative researcher must decide how he or she will store data so that they can

easily be found and protected from damage or loss.

The site or individual

Narrative study

● In a narrative study, one needs to find one or more individuals to study, individuals who

are accessible, willing to provide information, and distinctive for their accomplishments

and ordinariness or who shed light on a specific phenomenon or issue being explored.

● Plummer recommends two sources of individuals to study. The pragmatic approach is

where individuals are met on a chance encounter, emerge from a wider study, or are

volunteers. Alternatively, one might identify a "marginal person" who lives in conflicting
 cultures, a "great person" who impacts the age in which he or she lives, or an "ordinary

person" who provides an example of a large population.

● An alternative perspective is available from Gergen, who suggests that narratives "come

into existence" not as a product of an individual, but as a facet of relationships, as a part

of culture, as reflected in social roles such as gender and age. Thus, to ask which

individuals will participate is not to focus on the right question. Instead, narrative

researchers need to focus on the stories to emerge, recognizing that all people have stories

to tell.

● Also instructive in considering the individual in narrative research is to consider whether

first-order or second-order narratives are the focus of inquiry. In first-order narratives,

individuals tell stories about themselves and their own experiences, while in

second-order narratives, researchers construct a narrative about other people's

experiences or present a collective story that represents the lives of many.

Phenomenological study

● In a phenomenological study, the participants may be located at a single site, although

they need not be. Most importantly, they must be individuals who have all experienced

the phenomenon being explored and can articulate their lived experiences.

● The more diverse the characteristics of the individuals, the more difficult it will be for the

researcher to find common experiences, themes, and the overall essence of the experience

for all participants.

 Grounded theory

● In a grounded theory study, the individuals may not be located at a single site; in fact, if

they are dispersed, they can provide important contextual information useful in

developing categories in the axial coding phase of research.

● They need to be individuals who have participated in the process or action the researcher

is studying in the grounded theory study.

Ethnographic study

● In an ethnographic study, a single site, in which an intact culture-sharing group has

developed shared values, beliefs, and assumptions, is often important.

● The researcher needs to identify a group (or an individual or individuals representative of

a group) to study, preferably one to which the inquirer is a "stranger" (Agar, 1986) and

can gain access.

Case study

● For a case study, the researcher needs to select a site or sites to study, such as programs,

events, processes, activities, individuals, or several individuals.

● Although Stake refers to an individual as an appropriate "case," the study of multiple

individuals, each defined as a case and considered a collective case study, is acceptable

practice.

Access and rapport

● Gaining access to sites and individuals also involves several steps.

● Regardless of the approach to inquiry, permissions need to be sought from a human

subjects review board, a process in which campus committees review research studies for

their potential harmful impact on and risk to participants. This process involves

submitting to the board a proposal that details the procedures in the project.

● Because many review boards are more familiar with the quantitative approaches to social

and human science research than they are with qualitative approaches, the qualitative

project description may need to conform to some of the standard procedures and

language of quantitative research as well as provide information about the protection of

human subjects.

● It is helpful to examine a sample consent form that participants need to review and sign in

a qualitative study. This consent form often requires that specific elements be included,

such as:

❖ the right of participants to voluntarily withdraw from the study at any time

❖ the central purpose of the study and the procedures to be used in data collection

❖ comments about protecting the confidentiality of the respondents

❖ a statement about known risks associated with participation in the study

❖ the expected benefits to accrue to the participants in the study

❖ the signature of the participant as well as the researcher

Narrative study

● For a narrative study, inquirers gain information from individuals by obtaining their

permission to participate in the study.

● Study participants should be appraised of the motivation of the researcher for their

selection, granted anonymity (if they desire it), and told by the researcher about the

purpose of the study. This disclosure helps build rapport.

● Access to biographical documents and archives requires permission and perhaps travel to

distant libraries.

Phenomenological study

● In a phenomenological study in which the sample includes individuals who have

experienced the phenomenon, it is also important to obtain participants' written

permission to be studied.

● In the Anderson and Spencer study of the patients' images of AIDS, 58 men and women

participated in the project at three sites dedicated to persons with HIV/AIDS: a hospital

clinic, a long-term care facility, and a residence. These were all individuals with a

diagnosis of AIDS, 18 years of age or older, able to communicate in English, and with a

Mini-Mental Status score above 22.

● In such a study, it was important to obtain permission to have access to the vulnerable

individuals participating in the study.

Grounded theory

● In a grounded theory study, the participants need to provide permission to be studied,

while the researcher should have established rapport with the participants so that they

will disclose detailed perspectives about responding to an action or process.

 ● The grounded theorist starts with a homogeneous sample, individuals who have

commonly experienced the action or process.

Ethnography

● In an ethnography, access typically begins with a "gatekeeper," an individual who is a

member of or has insider status with a cultural group.

● This gatekeeper is the initial contact for the researcher and leads the researcher to other

participants.

● Approaching this gatekeeper and the cultural system slowly is wise advice for "strangers"

studying the culture.

Forms of Data

● New forms of qualitative data continually emerge in the literature but all forms might be

grouped into four basic types of information: observations (ranging from nonparticipant

to participant), interviews (ranging from close-ended 'to open-ended), documents

(ranging from private to public), and audiovisual materials (including materials such as

photographs, compact disks, and videotapes).

● In recent years, new forms of data have emerged, such as journaling in narrative story

writing, using text from e-mail messages, and observing through examining videotapes

and photographs.

● Stewart and Williams discuss using online focus groups for social research. They

reviewed both synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (non-real-time) applications

highlighting new developments such as virtual reality applications as well as advantages

 (participants can be questioned over long periods of time, larger numbers can be

managed, and more heated and open exchanges occur).

● Problems arise with online focus groups, such as obtaining complete informed consent,

recruiting individuals to participate, and choosing times to convene given different

international time zones.

● Despite such problems, innovative data collection methods are important. They might

encourage readers and editors to examine the studies. Researchers need to consider visual

ethnography, or the possibilities of narrative research to include living stories,

metaphorical visual narratives, and digital archives.

● The particular approach to research often directs a qualitative researchers' attention

toward preferred approaches to data collection, although these preferred approaches can’t

be seen as rigid guidelines.

Narrative study

● For a narrative study, Czarniawska mentioned three ways to ·collect data for stories:

recording spontaneous incidents of storytelling, eliciting stories through interviews, and

asking for stories through such mediums as the Internet.

● Clandinin and Connelly suggest collecting field texts through a wide array of sources,

autobiography, journal, researcher fieldnotes, letters, conversations, interviews, stories of

families, documents, photographs, and personal-family-social artifacts.

Phenomenological study

● For a phenomenological study, the process of collecting information involves primarily

in-depth interviews (see, e.g., the discussion about the long interview in McCracken,

1988) with as many as 10 individuals.

● The important point is to describe the meaning of the phenomenon for a small number of

individuals who have experienced it. Often multiple interviews are conducted with the

each of the research participants.

● Besides interviewing and self-reflection, Polkinghorne advocates gathering information

from depictions of the experience outside the context of the research projects, such as

descriptions drawn from novelists, poets, painters, and choreographers.

Grounded theory

● Interviews play a central role in the data collection in a grounded theory study.

● Other data forms besides interviewing, such as participant observation, researcher

reflection or journaling (memoing), participant journaling, and focus groups, may be used

to help develop the theory.

● However, these multiple data forms often play a secondary role to interviewing in

grounded theory studies.

Ethnography

● In an ethnographic study, the investigator collects descriptions of behavior through

observations, interviewing, documents, and artifacts, although observing and

interviewing appear to be the most popular forms of ethnographic data collection.

 ● Participant observation offers possibilities for the researcher on a continuum from being a

complete outsider to being a complete insider.

● The approach of changing one's role from that of an outsider to that of an insider through

the course of the ethnographic study is well documented in field research.

● Wolcott's study of the Principal Selection Committee illustrates an outsider perspective,

as he observed and recorded events in the process of selecting a principal for a school

without becoming an active participant in the committee's conversations and activities.

Case study

● Like ethnography, case study data collection involves a wide array of procedures as the

researcher builds an in-depth picture of the case.

● Yin recommends multiple forms of data collection in his book about case studies. He

refers to six forms: documents, archival records, interviews, direct observation,

participant observation, and physical artifacts.

In-depth Interview

Perspectives on the interview

● The different traditions of qualitative research have resulted in a diversity of perspectives

on in-depth interviewing.

● In particular, there are debates about how far knowledge is constructed in the interview or

is a pre-existing phenomenon, and about how active or passive the role of the interviewer

should be.

● Two alternative positions on in-depth interviewing are put forward by Kvale.

 ❖ The first, which he summarises as the 'miner metaphor', falls broadly within a

modern social science research model which sees knowledge as given.

❖ The second, which Kvale calls the 'traveler metaphor', falls within the

constructivist research model in which knowledge is not given but is created and

negotiated.

❖ The interviewer is seen as a traveller who journeys with the interviewee. The

meanings of the interviewee's 'stories' are developed as the traveller interprets

them. Through conversations, the interviewer leads the subject to new insights:

there is a transformative element to the journey.

● Holstein and Gubrium stress that the researcher is not simply a 'pipeline' through which

knowledge is transmitted. They, too, see knowledge as constructed in the interview,

through collaboration between interviewee and researcher.

● This emphasis on knowledge as something that is created within the unique situation of

the interview has led to concerns among some authors about the stability and validity of

interview data.

● But other writers, while they acknowledge the influence of postmodern thinking on the

nature of interviewing, nevertheless see the interview as meaningful beyond its

immediate context.

● The influence of postmodernism, constructionism and feminism has also led to new

perspectives on in-depth interviewing, and new forms of interview. Postmodern

approaches emphasise the way in which a reality is constructed in the interview, and the

relationship that develops between researcher and interviewee.

 ● In creative interviewing the researcher moves away from the conventions of interviewing,

with lengthy or repeated interviews taking place in people's everyday world situations,

and an emphasis on free expression. Heuristic approaches emphasise the personal

experience of the interviewer, and see the process of interviewing as a collaboration

between researcher and participant, sharing reflection and enquiry.

● Feminist research approaches have particularly raised issues about the form and features

of in-depth interviewing.

● Feminist interviewing attempts to be more reflexive and interactive, aiming to take a

non-hierarchical approach which avoids objectifying the participant. The distinction

between the roles of researcher and participant becomes less stark: the interview is seen

as a collaboration between them as they share in the process of negotiating coverage,

language and understanding.

Visions of interviewing

Interview as tunnel

● The interview has been defined by Beatrice Potter Webb and Sidney Webb, as a

conversation with a purpose, with the purpose being gathering information.

● This is viewing the interview as a tunnel, a tunnel to someone’s heart, to someone’s

history.

● And the purpose of the interview then is to obtain as much and as specific as possible

information that is also useful, about events and facts and emotions, experiences,

attitudes and so on and so forth, about the live world.

A successful tunnel interviewing

● This tunnel has to be as neutral as possible. And this can be achieved by creating good

instruments. These might include good questions, which should be free from

double-barrelled, suggestive, or over-directive questions. Good question order is also

required.

● Good and consistent behaviour is also crucial. Not an interviewer that is very active for

the first interview and very relaxed and laid back for the second interview. Because then,

these can't really be compared. They're not reliable, they're not comparable.

● The interviewer also needs to pose each and the same question to every person in order to

compare.

● And lastly, good interviewee behaviour is also crucial. The interviewee has to be trained

well. The interviewee should not have to give socially desirable answers, but good,

honest answers. Honest to the heart or to the brain.

Criticisms of interview as tunnel

● People do accounting all the time. Since people are always analysing, what is being

analysed? A tunnel or an accounted tunnel?

● Are the observations and interpretations of an interviewee correct? We cannot tell with

any guarantee because the interviewee and the interviewer, both keep accounting all the

time, and thus the observations and interpretations will be distorted.

● There is a chance of reactivity in the interview process because the interview itself is a

social situation. Both the interviewer and the interviewee react to the situation based on

their accounting.
● Can language grasp external reality? Can we really grasp emotions in language? Or do

we need other forms, theatre, dance, and so on? So is an interview, then, the best way to

grasp emotions? Maybe not, maybe it is. On an ontological level, we are constructing the

external world in an interview rather than simply describing it.

Interview as a topic

● Although the intent here too is collecting as much information as possible, but not on

something outside the interview but on the interview itself. And this is done through

observation of the interview.

● There are two uses of interview data: indirect source and as interaction.

● The indirect source used a little bit of the tunnel, but not all of it. The interviewer is

looking for interviewee’s talk as accounting behaviour. The interviewer focuses on how

people are using certain terms, definitions, and words, and how people present certain

views in the interview itself.

● The second use, as interaction, focuses not how someone presents themselves, but how it

is done in interaction with the interviewer. The interviewer is analysed as a social event.

● The main question that underlies the interview as a topic is how the interviewee accounts.

Interview as tunnel and topic

● Some people maintain that the interview is not only a topic or not only a tunnel. This is

called active interview, or active interviewing.

● Under this approach, meaning is not constantly formulated anew, but reflects relatively

and during local conditions. It means that in the interview, there is some co-construction
 taking place, but it relates to something out there. It relates to probably what's in the

brain, in the heart, or in the history of someone. So it is partly co-constructed.

● The interviewee and the interviewer are active.

Key features of the in-depth interview

● It is intended to combine structure with flexibility. Even in the most unstructured

interviews the researcher will have some sense of the themes they wish to explore, and

interviews will generally be based on some form of topic guide (or interview schedule or

guide) setting out the key topics and issues to be covered during the interview.

● However, the structure is sufficiently flexible to permit topics to be covered in the order

most suited to the interviewee, to allow responses to be fully probed and explored and to

allow the researcher to be responsive to relevant issues raised spontaneously by the

interviewee.

● Interview is interactive in nature. The material is generated by the interaction between the

researcher and interviewee.

● The researcher uses a range of probes and other techniques to achieve depth of answer in

terms of penetration, exploration and explanation. An initial response is often at a fairly

'surface' level: the interviewer will use follow-up questions to obtain a deeper and fuller

understanding of the participant's meaning.

● The in-depth format also permits the researcher to explore fully all the factors that

underpin participants' answers: reasons, feelings, opinions and beliefs. This furnishes the

explanatory evidence that is an important element of qualitative research.

 ● The is generative in the sense that new knowledge or thoughts are likely, at some stage, to

be created. The extent to which this is so may vary depending on the research questions,

but it is likely that the participant will at some point direct themselves, or be directed by

the researcher, down avenues of thought they have not explored before.

● The emphasis on depth, nuance and the interviewee's own language as a way of

understanding meaning implies that interview data needs to be captured in its natural

form. This means that interview data is generally tape recorded, since note taking by the

researcher would change the form of data.

● Finally these key features together mean that qualitative interviews are almost always

conducted face-to-face. The interview is an intense experience, for both parties involved,

and a physical encounter is essential context for an interview which is flexible, interactive

and generative, and in which meaning and language is explored in depth.

Researcher and participant roles

● Researcher and participant have different roles in the interview process. The researcher

needs to be clear about his or her own role in the process, and needs to help the

participant to understand what their role is to be at an early stage in the interview.

● The role of the researcher is that of a facilitator to enable the interviewee to talk about

their thoughts, feelings, views and experiences. However, the role of the facilitator is an

active, not a passive, one. It does not mean sitting back and just letting the interviewee

talk. On the contrary, it means managing the interview process to ensure that the required

subjects are covered to the required depth, without influencing the actual views

articulated.
 ● Managing the interview process involves ensuring coverage of the agenda to be discussed

within the interview, steering the interviewee back to topics from which they stray. It

means exercising judgement about the length of time that should be devoted to any given

topic and when to move on to the next one, and about how to respond if the interviewee

moves on to unanticipated topics.

● The researcher has to decide what questions are asked and how they are phrased, and how

to follow up until a satisfactory answer has been obtained.

● Another important part of the researcher's function is to help interviewees to see what

their role is in the interview process. The interviewee's role is to give fulsome answers, to

provide more depth when probing questions are asked, to reflect and to think, and to raise

issues they see as relevant but which are not directly asked about.

● By using open questioning techniques, demonstrating interest and actively encouraging

the interviewee to talk, the researcher is intimating to participants that their role involves

opening up and talking as opposed to giving simple answers.

Powerplay in interviews

● In the early 80s, Ann Oakley wrote about the interview as a power game. She wrote about

the interviewer as the powerful one, who was using respondents or who was trying to use

the respondents in order to objectify, create neutral Social Science

● Oakley was a harsh critique of this structure. And she said, what we need to do as

researchers, what we need to do as interviewers, especially as feminist interviewers.

● She said, we have to focus a lot more on non-hierarchical relationships. And so, she

suggested power sharing. She suggested reciprocity, she suggested that in order to ask
 people to disclose something about themselves, the interviewer has to disclose about

themselves as well, as an interviewer.

● Her focus was very much on power. How interviewers use power. Or, abused power

even.

● Oakley had a very strong focus on rapport, on the trust relationship and especially on this

reciprocity. If the researcher asks someone to disclose, they you have to disclose

themselves a bit as well.

● There is indeed a sense of power and distinction in the interview process. The

interviewee tells the interviewer all their personal stories and the latter uses them.

● Oakley’s critique was also influential as she said there is no difference between the

interview as a topic and the interview as a method. All that matters is, as a critical

researcher or a feminist researcher, the interviewer is using the people they are trying to

advocate for.

Interview as a power dance

● Later authors, discuss whether this power game is really taking place, or it's not so much

a game, or maybe it's more of a power dance.

● For instance, the interviewer is pretty powerful, the interviewer is an expert. The

interviewer determines the topic of their conversation. It's a conversation with a purpose

for the interviewer, not so much probably for the interviewee.

● The interviewer poses the questions, and selects which questions are relevant and which

are not. But the interviewer also tests the answers. Assesses the answers. And sometimes
 people feel that they're in an exam. The interviewee is obviously not on a level playing

field.

● The interviewer, besides, after assessing the answer to probe and to prompt. And, very

important, the interviewer decides when the interview has finished

● Even when rapport is terrible, people don't get up and walk away from an interview. It's

the interviewer who decides, now it's enough. So the interviewer is the expert. However,

the interviewer might not feel like this.

● It makes more sense to characterise the interview as a power dance than a power game.

Because the interviewee is an expert him or herself, as well. Sometimes, the interviewer

is on their knees, asking, begging for information.

● The interviewer is begging the expert for their opinions, stories, something from the

heart, something from the brain, or maybe something from the past. And, the interviewee

decides what information to give, and what information not to share.

● So the interviewee decides what information to tell or not to share at all, how to present

the information, how much to share, and how specifically, and so on. And the interviewer

is just begging down and trying to get something out of the interviewee.

● In this view, sometimes, an interviewer is pretty powerless.

Interview as a role-play

● The interview can also be viewed as a role play. The process can be looked at as a stage

where the interviewee and the interviewer play various roles.

 ● The interviewer plays the role of answering the questions. After the interview, the

participant breaks out of the role and play another role as a guest and host or something

like that.

● The interviewer can play the student role whereas the interviewee can play the student

role.

● If looked at the interview from this perspective, it quickly gets to a certain type of role

that works pretty well.

Probing

● The aim of the in-depth interview is to achieve both breadth of coverage across key

issues, and depth of coverage within each.

● A distinction can be made between content mapping and content mining questions.

Content mapping questions are designed to open up the research territory and to identify

the dimensions or issues that are relevant to the participant. Content mining questions

are designed to explore the detail which lies within each dimension, to access the

meaning it holds for the interviewee, and to generate an in-depth understanding from the

interviewee's point of view.

● Any interview involves a combination of these question types and they are not confined

to distinct parts of the interview. A content mapping question is asked to raise issues;

content mining questions are used to explore them in detail; content mapping questions

are used to raise further issues, and so on.

● Both types, but particularly content mining questions, also involve probes. Probes are

responsive, follow-up questions designed to elicit more information, description,

 explanation and so on. They are usually verbal, but nonverbal probes - such as a pause, a

gesture, a raised eyebrow - are also highly effective.

● In content mapping questions, probes are used to help in mapping out the territory; in

content mining questions, they are the essential tool through which depth is achieved.

Ground-mapping questions

● Ground mapping questions are the first questions asked to 'open up' a subject. They are

generally widely framed questions designed to encourage spontaneity and to allow the

interviewee to raise the issues that are most relevant to them.

● With, at this stage, minimal probing, they will often generate a rich list of dimensions

which will need to be followed up.

Dimension-mapping questions

● Dimension mapping questions are used to focus the participant a little more narrowly on

particular topics or concepts: they are used to signpost, structure and direct the interview.

● Dimension mapping questions are used to focus the participant a little more narrowly on

particular topics or concepts: they are used to signpost, structure and direct the interview.

They may be used, for example, to structure a participant's account of a process or

experience, perhaps in broadly chronological order, where they may be as simple as

'What happened next?'

● They would be used to focus on each of the dimensions or topics raised by the

interviewee in response to the initial ground mapping question, encouraging the

participant to talk about each in turn (self-sufficiency, entitlement, contribution, charity)

and uncovering the elements that make up each concept.

Perspective-widening questions

● To understand the interviewee's perspective fully, they need to have an opportunity to

give more than their first thoughts on a subject. Encouraging them to look at issues from

different perspectives will uncover more layers of meaning and greater richness.

● The third type of content mapping questions are therefore ones through which the

researcher widens the interviewee's perspective, stimulates further thought or ensures

comprehensive coverage.

● They may be questions which invite the participant to consider dimensions or subtopics

which the researcher wishes to hear explored, rather than ones which have been generated

by the interviewee.
● These are sometimes described as 'prompts' - items to which the researcher explicitly

directs the interviewee's attention rather than ones raised by the interviewee through more

open questioning.

● Such questions need to be raised with a light touch, so that dimensions which are not of

relevance to the participant are not given undue emphasis and the unique perspective of

the participant lost.

● Perspective-widening questions might also involve stimulating thought by putting to the

participant issues or perspectives that have emerged in earlier interviews or in other

research.

● A further technique involves checking out all sides of the interviewee's perspective, to

ensure that the answer obtained is a comprehensive and fully rounded one - asking for

other views or factors, encouraging them to think about positive as well as negative

issues and so on.

Amplificatory probes

● Participants rarely provide the level of depth of articulation that qualitative interviewing

requires without further probing, and amplificatory probes are used to encourage them to

elaborate further.

● They are important for obtaining full description and in-depth understanding of the

manifestation or experience of a phenomenon.

Exploratory probes

● A key role of qualitative research is to explore the views and feelings that underlie

descriptions of behaviour, events or experience, and that help to show the meaning that

experiences hold for interviewees.

● Exploring impacts, effects and consequences also helps to illuminate experiences and

behaviours, and to create a more rounded understanding of them.

Explanatory probes

● One of the hallmarks of the in-depth interview is probing for reasons – asking 'why?'

Explanations are repeatedly sought for views, feelings, behaviours, events, decisions and

so on.

● There is often an initial reluctance to do this among new researchers since it seems to be

contravening social norms, to be impolite, to do so. Nevertheless it is fundamentally

important for the researcher to understand the reasons for a participant's views and

behaviours.

● Explanations are often multi-layered, and it is a key value of qualitative interviewing that

responsive, iterative probing can uncover these layers.

Clarificatory probes

● Exploring issues in depth requires a high degree of precision and clarity. Clarificatory

probes are therefore important, and used in different ways:

To clarify terms and explore language

● It is all too easy to assume the researcher understands the meaning of terms used by the

interviewee.

● But exploring the language used will often show that the assumptions differed from the

interviewee's reality, and will add real depth and richness to the researcher's

understanding of the interviewee's perspective.

● It is therefore important to be alert to the use of emotive or descriptive words.

To clarify details, sequences, etc.

● There will be points in any interview where details, dates or sequences need to be

clarified - whether someone is talking about the same colleague or a different one,

whether they saw the solicitor before they began mediation or only after, whether

descriptions of a client's manner related to the same encounter or to different meetings,

and so on.

Clarifying through testing an expressed position

● Asking clarifying questions which gently challenge or test the participant's account,

without being confrontational, can encourage them to elaborate further.

Challenging inconsistency

● It is also important to be alert to conflicts or inconsistencies in the interviewee's account.

These may arise because an issue that involves social norms is being addressed and the

interviewee is gradually gaining confidence to express their real view.

● Or they may occur where someone is being encouraged to think about something for the

first time so that their view is developing as they speak.

● Again, it is important to find a non-confrontational way of drawing the participant's

attention to inconsistency or contradiction, and asking them to clarify.

In-depth iterative probing

● Probes are not meant to be used in isolation. It is not sufficient to move on to the next

point having asked just one probe ('why', for example). The response to that probe will

then require another, and so on.

● This will reveal a whole mine of information around the particular point that would

otherwise remain unexplored, and probing needs to continue until the researcher feels

they have reached saturation, a full understanding of the participant's perspective.

● This kind of iterative probing involves asking for a level of clarification and detail that

can sometimes feel unnatural or artificial. It goes far beyond what is usual in everyday

conversation.

● The researcher is putting aside their own knowledge and their own intuitive

understanding, and asking for explanations of things they might think they comprehend.

● But this is essential to achieve the depth of understanding that is the aim of qualitative

research. Questions which may feel obvious or banal, or even ridiculous, can reveal a

layer of complexity or detail that the researcher would otherwise have missed. They can

if necessary be prefaced by a phrase which recognises that an unusual level of

clarification is being sought

Question formulation

Using broad and narrow questions

● It is often said that good in-depth interviewing involves open questions. These are

contrasted with dichotomous yes/no questions which call for affirmation rather than

description.

● Although short, open questions look deceptively easy, they are much harder to implement

in practice. Asking closed questions is a habitual aspect of ordinary social intercourse and

one has to make a conscious effort to think in an 'open' way in an interview.

● However, to suggest that in-depth interviewing involves only open questions is to

understate the specificity that good interviewing requires. Both content mapping and

content mining involve asking questions which vary in terms of how broad or narrow

they are.

● Closed questions can also play a role in controlling the interview process. They are

useful, for example, where the participant's answer is straying from the question and the

researcher needs them to focus on the particular topic. They are also helpful where a

participant is extremely voluble and the researcher needs to structure their response by

asking narrower questions to ensure an issue is discussed in the detail required.

Avoiding leading questions

● The researcher's questions in an in-depth interview are designed to yield a full answer:

they are not intended to influence the answer itself.

● However, it is all too easy to ask a question that suggests a possible answer to the

interviewee, such as 'Were you furious when he said that?' or - even worse - 'You must

have been furious when he said that.'

● A much better version of the question, which allows the participant to supply the

response and will reveal what they actually felt, would be:

> How did you react when he said that?

● The participant is then free to supply whatever responses he or she chooses.

Asking clear questions

● The most effective questions are those that are short and clear, leaving the interviewee

with no uncertainty about the sort of information sought. There are various pitfalls to

avoid here.

● First, it is sometimes tempting to preface a question - perhaps to make it seem less

intrusive if it covers a delicate issue, or to link it with something said earlier by the

participant, or to explain how the question was prompted by the researcher's

understanding of the subject. Although some explanation will occasionally be necessary

to clarify the relevance of the question, preambles can easily become so convoluted that

the question itself gets lost or obscured.

● Double questions too should be avoided. In the heat of the moment, it is very easy to ask

two questions in one: 'How old were you when that happened and what effect did it have

on you?' This is a relatively simple example of a double question. However, where they
 are more complex it becomes very confusing for the participant to remember or to answer

both halves.

● Third, it is important to avoid questions that are too abstract or theorised. The most

effective questions are those to which the interviewee can relate directly and which are

clearly pertinent to their own views or circumstances.

● Finally, it is important to be sensitive to the language and terminology used by people,

and to 'mirror' it as far as possible. Using official or bureaucratic language where

someone has used more colloquial language can set up a barrier which might impede the

interview process.

Unit 4: Qualitative Analysis

Narrative Analysis

Ontology

● The assumption that narrative analysis makes about the nature of social reality lie in the

understanding and use of ‘narrative’ within this approach. The definition of ‘narrative’

varies depending on the discipline and approach to narratives.

● Narratives are stories with a clear sequential order that connect events in a meaningful

way for a definite audience. Story and narrative are often used interchangeably. Sequence

is necessary for narrative. A narrative always responds to the question ‘And then what

happened?’
 ● Narratives are powerful forms of giving meaning to experience. Narratives are seen as the

vehicle through which we talk about our world, lives and selves. Narratives do not simply

express some independent, individual reality. Rather they help to construct the reality

within relationships between the narrator and their external world.

● Narratives are produced in social interactions between individuals; they are not privately

created.

● Narrative analysis perceives narratives as creative means of exploring and describing

realities, which are arranged and bound in time. While interpreting the individual

narratives, analysts take into account the individual and cultural resources people use to

construct their narratives, as well as the interpersonal or organisational functions of

narratives

● Narrative analysis is not applicable to all research topics. If narrative analysis is to be

used, the focus of the analysis must be narratives/stories. Topics suited to narrative

analysis include various aspects of identity, individual experiences of psychological

processes, interpersonal and intimate relationships, experiences of body, beauty and

health.

Epistemology

● Narrative analysis does not only function as a method through which researchers explore

how people remember, structure and story their experiences. It is also a process that can

lead researchers to understanding the complexities of human selves, lives and relations.

This means it is useful to illuminate both the individual experiences and social processes

that shape these experiences.

 ● Narrative analysis provides the analyst with useful tools to integrate the individual details

and complexity in the construction of stories rather than analysing these stories under

predetermined categories

● Narrative research enables researchers to see multiple and sometimes contradictory layers

of meaning, to reconstruct meanings through linking these layers, and to explore and

understand more about individual and social processes. By working with narratives,

researchers investigate multiple aspects in the construction and function of stories.

● There are two key epistemological approaches to narrative analysis: the naturalist and the

constructivist approaches,

● ‘Naturalist’ approaches use rich descriptions of people in their natural habitats. For

example, this approach is applicable to research that aims to explore interpersonal

relations in specific conditions (e.g. trauma cases).

● Constructivist’ approaches focus on how a sense of social order is created through talk

and interaction. These are useful to consider how identities are constructed in various

psychosocial contexts (e.g. in education, in families), for example.

Naturalistic approach: focuses on ‘what’ Constructivist approach: focuses on ‘how’

questions questions
What happened? How do storytellers make sense of their
experiences?
What experiences have people had? How do storytellers talk about their
experiences?
What did people do at that particular How do storytellers position themselves while
time? telling stories about their lives?
What does it mean to storytellers?
 How are multiple stories told in the research
context?
How does interpersonal and/or social
interaction shape the construction of stories?

● The discursive positioning of storytellers and listeners is important in the constructivist

approach. Davies and Harre argue that it is through discursive practices that people

position themselves.

● According to them, storytellers draw upon both cultural and personal resources in

constructing the present moment in telling their stories. Narratives are constructed within

a special conversation that includes both their cultural resources and the interaction

between the people who are producing these narratives.

● A subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location. Having once

taken up a particular position as one’s own, a person inevitably sees the world from that

position, and in terms of the particular images, metaphors, storylines and concepts that

are made relevant within the particular discursive practice in which they are positioned.

How to do narrative analysis

● Narrative analysis considers how the narrator, the leading character of the told story,

makes meaning of her/his life and/or experiences while telling their story. The analyst

makes a systematic interpretation of these meaning-making processes by considering

various aspects of the story being told.

 ● Narrative analysis considers the structure, content and context of narratives. While it is

possible to analyse only one of these aspects, applications of narrative analysis often

integrate all of them. This is because it is important to understand the narrative process

through which meaning is created and mediated as whole.

● As we have seen, narrative analysis refers to a family of methods. Each technique

interprets texts that have in common a storied form. Models of narrative analysis offer

different focuses and questions to analysts. Each model is shaped by different yet

connected theoretical discussions.

● Depending on the research questions and collected data, multiple models can be

combined so as to capture multiple layers in the construction of narratives.

Models of narrative analysis Focus of analysis

Structural model (Labov, 1972) The structure of stories
The ways in which in which stories are told
Thematic model (Riessman, 2008) The content of stories
The themes around which stories are told
Interactional/performative model The contextual features that shape the
(Riessman, 1993; Mishler, 1995; construction of narratives
Denzin, 2001) How the meaning is collaboratively created
through interaction between storytellers and
listeners
Reflexivity and positioning of the researcher in narrative analysis

● The positioning of researchers, both in interview conversations and in the analytical

process, is particularly important in understanding, analysing and presenting narratives.

● Ruthellen Josselson defines two distinct positions for narrative analysts.

❖ The first is characterised by a willingness to listen and understand meaning in its

given form. The analysts in this category aim to present the narratives of

storytellers as they are told and highlight meanings that are present in the

participants’ story.

❖ By contrast, the second position focuses on decoding the meaning while analysing

narratives. According to Josselson, this second position recognises the relativity

of all narratives.

● The integration of critical and systematic reflexivity in narrative analysis is a way for

researchers to position themselves. Reflexivity as a research practice means examination

of research decisions such as theoretical assumptions, selection of participants, interview

schedules, interviewing, analysing the data and presentation of analysis, as well as the

relationship between the researcher and participants. Reflexivity underlines the role of the

researcher in the constitution of narratives.

Basic steps in analysing narratives

1. Situating the epistemological approach

● This first step will influence the choice of the analytical model as well as the analytical

position of the researcher.

● Research questions and the theoretical framework of the research can help the researcher

in his/her decision about whether they are going to situate their analysis within a

naturalist or constructivist approach to narratives.

2. Selecting the analytical models to be used

● The next step is to decide which analytical model or models will be used in analysing

narrative data.

● Different models of narrative analysis are interested in different features of the narratives

and they ask different questions while analysing narratives.

● Decisions on using singular or plural models in analysing the narratives are informed by

the epistemological approach that shapes the research design.

3. Selecting narratives to be analysed

● Selecting narratives in the data is important. Even in applications that aim to analyse the

data as a whole instead of selecting parts of it, particular narratives can be put under close

scrutiny for analytical purposes.

● The selection can be made by first breaking down the text into segments (sentences and

paragraphs). Then segments can each be considered as a self-contained episode in telling

a story, as they constitute the micro units of analysis.

● The selection of these units is determined by the researcher’s analytical strategy.

4. Analysing narratives

● The clear and systematic application of one or multiple analytical models is essential in

narrative analysis practice. It does not matter which method or methods are employed in
 generating insight into the structure or function, content, context and impacts of

narratives.

● Narrative analysts are aware that the stories located in data are also varied. Storytellers

often do not follow structured lines in telling their stories. This variety leaves the analyst

with questions concerning the choice of the best analytical model that can preserve and

respect the content, meaning and context of stories within which they are constructed.

Structural model

● The structural model proposed by Labov and Waletzky closely examines how the

narrative is formed, how different elements in this structure function in personal

experience narratives.

● This model treats personal narratives as a text, which functions as a representation of past

events in the form of a story. The focus of analysis in the structural model is on the way

an event is told in a story text.

● Labov developed his model on the assumption that stories of events contain narrative

clauses. These clauses have a beginning, a middle and an end. But there are other

elements of narrative structure found in more fully developed narrative clauses. He

developed a six-part model to be used in analysing the structure of narratives. Following

are the elements of story text in Labov’s model:

1. Abstract (A) There are one or two clauses that summarise

the story
When the whole story is heard it can be seen
that the abstract does
encapsulate the point of the story
2. Orientation (O) Orientation clauses function to provide a
setting in which the events of the
story are told
3. Complicating action (CA): Complicating action clauses relate the events
of the story
These clauses usually represent time in a
linear way with a chronological order
following the ‘then, and then’ structure
They may relate a series of events.
4. Result (R): These are the clauses that tell the listener how
the story ends
5. Evaluation (E): The evaluation clauses present the narrator’s
perspective on the events
They mediate the ‘point’ of the story
6. Coda (C): These clauses link the past world of the story
to the present world of the storytelling
They function ‘to “sign off” the story and
offer the floor to the listener’

● Strict use of the structural model has the danger of decontextualising narratives by paying

little attention to the broader historical, socio-cultural and institutional narratives as well

as to the interactional factors that shape the context of the narration.

● Labov focuses on the narrative as a straightforward representation of past events in a

story. The narrative text to be analysed is a naturally produced monologue in his

approach rather than being co-constructed in interview conversations. These narratives

are likely to be produced in research interviews within which the interviewer has a
 minimal role and the interviewee sticks to the point. This idealised, controlled context is

rarely the case in interview experiences.

● However, the structural model provides the analyst with a detailed method that can be

utilised as a good starting point in analysing transcripts of spoken narratives produced in

various contexts. It can be used to identify important narratives in a transcript.

Thematic model

● This model focuses on the content of a narrative: ‘what’ is said more than ‘how’ it is said,

the ‘told’ rather than the aspects of ‘telling’.

● The content of the told story is at the centre of thematic analysis. There is minimal

attention to structures selected by the narrator to tell her/his story, function or contextual

details of the stories.

● The analyst can start the thematic analysis by the open coding of data. This means

building a set of themes by looking for patterns and meaning produced in the data,

labelling and grouping them in connection with the theoretical framework of the research.

● In practice analysts utilise both the ideas and themes from their conceptual framework

and ‘new’ themes in data while conducting thematic narrative analysis.

● The thematic model is useful for theorising across a number of cases, finding common

and different thematic elements between the narratives of different research participants.

● One of the limitations of using this model is to do with the meaning reported in

narratives. It is not possible to know that all the participants in a research context mean

the same thing although the analyst groups their narratives into a similar thematic

category. The narrative analyst can tackle this problem by making nuanced,
 well-illustrated descriptions of the thematic categories, including the contextual details of

the interviews.

Selection of the subtext/segments

● All the relevant sections of the transcript relevant to the research question are marked and

assembled to create a new file or subtext.

● Usually the selected subtexts are treated independently from the total context of the

narrative. However, in practice, narrative researchers include contextual details in their

interpretation.

Definition of thematic categories

● Themes or perspectives are identified across the selected subtext. These can be in the

form of words, sentences or groups of sentences. These categories can be predefined by

the theory.

● Another method can be reading the selected subtexts multiple times and defining the

themes that emerge from these readings. There is no limit to the number or form of

thematic categories.

● The decisions on the number of categories depend on the analyst’s perspective. Some

analysts work with many, subtle categories that retain the richness of the narrative, which

will require meticulous work on the identification and analysis of categories. Some

analysts, on the other hand, work with a small number of broad categories, which require

less work.
 Sorting the material into categories

● Separate sentences and utterances across the narrative texts are assigned to relevant

categories.

● In this way, different parts of narratives will be grouped under the defined thematic

categories.

Drawing conclusions

● The narrative content collected in each thematic category can be used to describe the

meanings in the content of the narrative text.

Interactional-performative model

● The focus of analysis in this model is storytelling as a co-construction in which narrator

and listener (the interviewer and audience in a broader sense) collaboratively create

meaning.

● This model also pays attention to thematic content and narrative structures, but goes

beyond a structural analysis. It requires close reading of contexts, including the influence

of researcher, audience, setting and social circumstances on the constitution and

performance of the narrative.

● Storytelling is seen as performance by an individual with a history, who involves,

persuades and moves the audience through language and gesture, both ‘doing’ and

‘telling’.

● The interactional-performative model understands stories as composed and received in

interactional, historical, institutional and discursive contexts. As social products, stories

 not only tell listener(s) about individuals, but also about society and culture in which they

are constituted and performed.

● The interactional context of interviews is particularly important in this model. Mishler

defines interview interaction as ‘a dialogic process, a complex sequence of exchanges

through which interviewer and interviewee negotiate some degree of agreement on what

they will talk about, and how.

● The analysis of interview conversations as one of the contextual layers provides the

analyst with the necessary tool to understand how the interview moment facilitates or

obstructs the way respondents make sense of their lives.

● Close reading of data is essential in applying interactional-performative analysis. The

analyst can ask several questions about the co-construction of narratives; these will help

them to reveal multiple elements in the construction of narratives.

● The process of analysis can be constructed as a conversation between the analyst and the

narrative. The analyst can ask these questions and other relevant ones to gather data,

build her/his interpretation on the responses and ask further questions to make the

analysis more detailed.

● The model requires transcripts that present all conversational details of the interview

interaction. This should include all participants in the conversation and unspoken features

of interaction.

● The transcript should not only be seen as a vehicle for content: it must tell the analyst the

story of the interview conversation. The unspoken is a very important element in the

analysis.
 ● The interactional-performative model is suitable for detailed studies of identity

construction and for studies of communication practices, as it analyses the positioning of

the narrator and her/his interaction with the audience in narrative performance.

● Narrative researchers working with the interactional-performative model use creative

ways to present their analysis. As the analyst follows the narrative closely in analysis, the

presentation usually aims to demonstrate this close relationship. It usually takes the form

of a narrative, which tells the audience the story of the interaction-performance.

● In addition to extracts from transcripts, details of cultural and historical contexts that

shape the narrative, as well as the details of dialogic performance, are presented as part of

the analysis.

Discourse Analysis

Ontology

● Discourse analysis is underpinned by a constructionist ontology. As such, it is at odds

with, and attempts to challenge, the realism that underpins more mainstream research

methods (such as quantitative experimental methods).

● Such mainstream realist methods tend to be based on the assumption that pre-existing

‘structures’ determine social life. Such structures might be assumed to exist ‘inside our

heads’ as more psychological paradigms, such as cognitivism, might suggest. Or they

might be assumed to exist ‘out there’ in the world, as more sociological paradigms, such

as Marxism, might suggest.

● In contrast, constructionist methodologies (such as discourse analysis) make no

assumptions about the social world, and instead aim to expose and highlight the

constructedness of these assumptions. They also aim to question the implications of

taking for granted such assumptions.

● As well as making assumptions about the social world, mainstream realist methods also

make assumptions about being a person. That is, they take as their (unquestioned) starting

point an essential, rational and boundaried subject (or person).

● While in our everyday interactions it is perfectly reasonable to draw on common-sense

assumptions about the world and the people in it, this does become problematic if we do

the same thing in our research and fail to ever question the nature of what it is we are

researching.

● One of the good things about constructionist methodologies is that they won’t let us take

for granted alleged ‘truths’ about the world. And, once we start questioning these ‘truths’,

and start seeing them as only one of many possible ‘truths’, then we are liberated to

consider alternative ways of thinking about (or constructing) the world and the people in

it.

● Constructionists would argue that it is here where research can produce real change –

rather than the superficial change that more realist research might produce.

● All of this means that one of the defining features of discourse analysis is the way in

which the questioning of taken-for-granted ‘truths’ is intrinsic to the research question

itself. That is, the research question should always aim to be looking to uncover particular

assumptions that we make about the world and to consider what the effects of it might be.
Epistemology

● While realist approaches to social research view language as a means to access ‘The

Truth’, constructionist approaches view language as constitutive of truth. This means that

it is through language that meanings are negotiated and ‘realities’ are produced. In effect,

nothing pre-exists language.

● Thus, our knowledge about the world is produced through the organisation of language

and particular behaviours (or ‘practices’) into particular discursive formations that

comprise ‘discourses’. Discourses serve to seemingly provide a coherent and credible

‘truth’.

Four key ideas

Multivoicedness

● We should look out for the multivoicedness of language instead of searching for

underlying psychological processes or themes. This attention to the contradictoriness of

our experience of speaking and being spoken of runs counter to most standard

psychological research.

● Instead of looking for how one particular word is the same as another, we look at how it

is different. There is a difference, for example, between the description of someone as

‘homosexual’ or as ‘lesbian’, and both descriptions position the self and others as

different in specific ways.

● We attend to how we are made to fit into certain categories and how are we marked out as

different, and how the contradictions in and within the categories work.
Semiotics

● Discourse analysis focuses on semiotics, by which we mean the way we put language

together in discussions and other kinds of text (in advertising images, journal articles or

student essays), and how we are put together in a certain shape by the language as already

organized into discourse.

● At the same time as we actively form sentences and turns in a conversation, we also have

to use words and phrases that carry meanings we cannot entirely control.

● The description of oneself or someone else as suffering from ‘mental illness’, for

example, may not only construct an image of the self as a medical object but also

construct a certain kind of career through the mental health system. Alternative terms like

‘mental distress’ might be used to try and avoid this construction.

Resistance

● Language does not only describe the world, it does things. Innocent comments may carry

a force of blame or complaint or indirect request, for example, but these often deliberate

uses of language as ‘speech acts’ are the very least of the problem for discourse analysts,

for the speaker may actually be quite innocent of what discourse is doing.

● To look at power and resistance in discourse is a way of illuminating how language keeps

certain power relations in place or challenges them.

● To speak of some small islands near Argentina as the ‘Malvinas’ or as the ‘Falklands’, for

example, is to disturb or to keep intact taken for granted understandings of how the world

is. Dominant forms of cultural identity are kept in place precisely by the banal ways the

categories are repeated in everyday discourse.

 Discourse as chain of words and images

● The fourth idea that is useful for linking the study of multivoicedness, semiotic

construction and resistance to power is that of ‘discourse’ as a chain of words and

images.

● Here we treat ‘discourse’ as the organization of language into certain kinds of social

bond, and each bond includes certain kinds of people and excludes others. There is

something close to this idea in the description of ‘interpretative repertoires’ as patterns

that capture how certain ‘social practices’ work.

● This then brings us closer to an examination of how discourse functions ideologically,

how it presents an oppressive version of the world that may feel suffocating to speakers

and listeners, and which shows no way out. For example, a discourse of heterosexuality

defines what is deviant, a medical discourse defines what is sick and a dominant patriotic

discourse defines what is alien.

● Within each discourse there are, of course, contradictions, and the way the discourse is

constructed in specific texts will mean that it functions in favour of certain power

relations, or perhaps against them

Discourse analytic reading

● There is no discourse analysis machine into which you can feed a piece of text; the

analysis that is performed will be determined both by the kind of text and by the

questions that are brought to bear on it.

● When we are dealing with a ‘ready-made text’ – such as an advertisement, newspaper

article or existing interview transcript – we need to think through the following questions.
 If these four questions cannot be answered, then perhaps this is not a text that you can

analyse. Perhaps someone else can do it. These four questions anticipate important

aspects of the analysis.

● First, why is the text interesting? Something complex or contradictory must strike you

about it. The text may set up a puzzle, and our first question then focuses on the way the

contradictions work.

● Second, what do we know of the material out of which it is constructed? When we are

able to say something about a text we draw on our own already constructed position in

relation to it. In a text built out of shared cultural images, we have some kind of stake in

it.

● Third, what might be the effects of different readings of the text? Everyday

commonsensical readings and politically-attuned readings lead in different directions, and

you will need to question the function of the text in its everyday taken-for-granted sense.

● Fourth, how does the text conform to or challenge patterns of power? The ideological

force of the text may seem to point in one direction, but it may also attend to elements

that point in another direction.

Discourse analytic interviewing

● In the case of an interview, the conceptual questions about a discourse-analytic reading

will unfold and perhaps be answered by the person you are interviewing, your

‘co-researcher’. Now it is they who are the discourse analyst. This still means that there

needs to be some careful preparation and reflection about the topic, and in some ways this

is a more difficult kind of research.

● Not only do you need to have done some historical work beforehand to clarify the

conceptual questions – why you chose this topic, what stake you have in it, why you may

want to question it, and what theoretical resources might be useful – but you also need to

have determined that your co-researcher is also interested in questioning those issues and

that they will be willing to engage in the additional task of helping you question their

own discourse analysis.

● More than this, a discourse-analytic interview is a ‘text-in-process’, and so there are some

complex issues that need to be addressed.