QUALITATIVE RESEARCH SOCIAL METHODS

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QUALITATIVE RESEARCH SOCIAL METHODS

• SC20062
• Leah Wild
• Week Four

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WEEK FOUR-OVERVIEW

• Sampling in qualitative projects
• Fieldwork issues in qualitative projects
• Case study New-Age Travellers
• Group work

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REASONS FOR SAMPLING

• Complete coverage not possible
• Complete coverage is not advantageous
• Less demanding, quick results
• More economical
• More detailed information

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SAMPLING

• Quantitative sampling aims at representativeness
• Qualitative sampling aims at information-rich
  cases
• Be realistic and practical
• Upper and lower limits
• For assignment 3/4 per group
• Dissertation 5-10
• Need range and diversity
• Link to research aim

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QUALITATIVE SAMPLING

• Is directed
• typical cases
• a sample that is flexible in size and type or
  subjects
• not towards statistical or random sampling
• purposive sampling
• theoretical sampling
• Choose a case in terms of your theory
• Choose deviant cases
• Change the size of your sample

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VALIDITY RELIABILITY

• Validation
• Cumulative
• Communicative
• Argumentative
• Ecological
• Reliability

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FINDING INTERVIEWEES

• Pick a realistic site
• Using lists of name and addresses
• Screening questionnaire
• Networking/snowballing
• Selecting from a captive audience
• Involvement of gatekeepers

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FIELDWORK ISSUES

• Recruitment
• Incentives
• Where to interview
• Home
• Work
• Where comfortable
• Reflective methods

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CASE STUDY New Age Travellers Identity and
Community.

• The nature of contact between groups is varied
  and complex.
• Generational differences.
• Geographically dispersed.
• Differing views on
• The influence of politics in motivations to
  travel
• How community is shaped and maintained.
• Overall aim of the research to determine how
  Travellers construct their identities and a sense
  of home and belonging.

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

• To find out what motivated individuals to become
  Travellers.
• To explore the ascribed identities of
  Travellers.
• To explore the impact of ascribed identity of the
  formulation of collective identity?
• To examine concepts of Risk and otherness in
  relation to collective identity.
• Where do Travellers get notions of home and
  belonging from?

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RESEARCH METHODS

• Pilot questionnaire (participant led approach)
• Questionnaire.
• In-depth interviews
• 14 individual interviews (France, Spain, UK)
• 2 Group Interviews.
• participant observation
• Focus Groups to discuss literature.
• Allowing myself to be interviewed by an informant.

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Reflexivity 1

• Personal reflexivity
• Reflexivity requires an awareness of the
  researcher's contribution to the construction of
  meanings throughout the research process, and an
  acknowledgment of the impossibility of remaining
  'outside of' one's subject matter while
  conducting research. Reflexivity then, urges us
  "to explore the ways in which a researcher's
  involvement with a particular study influences,
  acts upon and informs such research."
  (Nightingale and Cromby, 1999 28).
• Epistemological reflexivity
• epistemological reflexivity encourages us to
  reflect upon the assumptions (about the world,
  about knowledge) that we have made in the course
  of the research, and it helps us to think about
  the implications of such assumptions for the
  research and its findings. Willig, (2001 32)

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Reflexivity 2

• Bourdieu reflexive practice to free intellectuals
  from 'their illusions
• Harold Garfinkel (1967) actions and can only be
  fully understood from within the context that
  they were produced.
• 'truth' and validity contingent on both time and
  space
• Referential reflexivity the study of the
  relations between the person who engages in the
  research and the persons or groups who are the
  focus of that research.( May 1998)
• Worsley (1997) communities have their own
  ontological structures the researcher runs the
  risk of imposing ontological structures from
  their own already dominant culture.
• Issues of Power.

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Subjectivity, Reflexivity and Ethics.

• Qualitative inquiry as subjective.
• Locating the self in ones research
• Epistemological questions
• Ontological Questions.
• Questioning relations between researcher and
  researched
• Research as one interpretation among many.
• The issue of authorial authority.
• making the methodologies and the use I make of
  them more transparent and accountable.
• Linking this to ethics.

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OTHER METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES TO CONSIDER.

• Gatekeeper bias
• Participant led research.
• Honesty in interviews
• Data collection
• Data analysis.
• Insider or Outsider and the question of
  epistemological privilege.
• Researching a sensitive topic
• The issue of harm
• What do with contentious data.
• Writing culture the issue of representation and
  misrepresentation.

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KEY FINDINGS FROM MY OWN RESEARCH

• Common representations of Travellers in media
  highly negative.
• In academic discourse hero and victim
  dichotomy.
• Travellers react in unexpected ways to negative
  stereotyping.
• Otherness a structuring principle through which
  travellers formulate their own identities.
• Outsider status used to consolidate a sense of
  home and community.

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KEY ISSUES ARISING IN RELATION TO REFLEXIVITY IN
MY RESEARCH.

• Research always autobiographical.
• Own interests impossible to remove from the
  process and practice of research
• Claims to epistemological privilege hugely
  problematic
• Costs as well as benefits in conducting insider
  research.
• Reflexive engagement can be paralysing, need
  for strategies to overcome this.
• Research always a collective endeavour between
  researcher and researched