Wilhelm van Rensburg Qualitative Research Methodology

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Wilhelm van RensburgQualitative Research
Methodology
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Research Activity Guiding Questions

• What cultural information does this article
  include? (Start by analyzing the different social
  practices, or discourses represented in the
  article)
• What questions could you ask to further uncover
  this culture?
• In what ways are the questions of a qualitative
  researcher different to those of a journalist?
• What other information does a qualitative
  researcher need to answer the question What is
  going on here?

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Discourse

• Discourse is not merely stretches of language.
  It is about being together in the world (Gee)
  social groups organize their lives around
  concepts, purposes, values, beliefs, ideals,
  theories, notions of reality, actions, and the
  like. Through Discourse human life is organized
  and understood it can be read as having
  meaning by ourselves and by others (Lankshear)

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Towards a definition

• Qualitative Research is a form of social action
• Qualitative research is balancing creative
  opportunity and maintaining scientific
  principles

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• Creative exploration makes qualitative research
  akin to the research we all do in everyday life
• As in the rest of everyday life, researchers,
  like other people, are ideologically motivated
• Approaching the research setting appropriately
  involves interaction between the culture of the
  setting and the culture of research
• Accounting for the research strategy, to
  demonstrate how the balance is maintained,
  requires careful articulation which resides in
  the conventions of research language
• All in all, qualitative research is learning
  culture

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How to do research, or learn about a culture

• Qualitative and quantitative research paradigms
  the case of surveys and experiments
• Is it all about counting?

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Example 1 Car survey

• To find out the proportion of Ford cars to
  Peugeots in a particular country. This would
  entail counting the number of each. If it is not
  possible to find out every single occurrence, a
  sample may be taken. Statistical analysis tells
  us both how many, or what percentage of each, and
  how valid the sample is in representing the whole.

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Example 2 Car experiment

• To test the hypothesis that more Ford cars will
  be bought if prospective first-time buyers are
  exposed to advertising that says they are safer.
  A sample of first-time buyers is exposed to the
  advertising another sample is not and the
  degree to which each group buys Fords is
  measured. A variety of techniques is employed to
  reduce contamination. For example, the age and
  social class of the subjects are kept constant

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Example 3 Car study

• An exploration of attitudes towards Ford car
  adverts. An advert is played on video in three
  public spaces frequented by members of the target
  first-time buyer group, and their comments
  recorded. This is followed up by group
  interviews, which explore the topics arising from
  the comments. The public spaces are visited one
  year later, and the same people are interviewed
  about which cars they bought and what this means
  to them

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So the quantitative paradigm

• Activities
• Counts occurrences across a large population
• Uses statistics and replicability to validate
  generalization from survey samples and
  experiments
• Attempts to reduce contaminating social variables

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cont

• Beliefs
• Conviction about what it is important to look for
• Confidence in established research instruments
• Reality is not so problematic if the research
  instruments are adequate and conclusive results
  are feasible

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About qualitative research

• Activities
• Looks deeply into the quality of social life
• Locates the study within particular settings
  which provide opportunities for exploring all
  possible social variables and set manageable
  boundaries
• Initial foray into the social setting leads to
  further, more informed exploration as themes and
  focuses emerge

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cont

• Beliefs
• 1. Conviction that what is important to look for
  will emerge
• 2. Confidence in an ability to devise research
  procedures to fit the situation and the nature of
  the people in it, as they are revealed
• 3. Reality contains mysteries to which the
  researcher must submit, and can do no more than
  to interpret.

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Research Paradigmatic Choices

• Only Quantitative or Qualitative?
• The case of Mixed Methods (converging,
  connecting, embedding quantitative qualitative
  methods)
• Johan Moutons Three Worlds model
• And even more paradigmatic possibilities!

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The key

• The purpose statement of your study
• The purpose of this study is to
• It is all in the verb!

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Some strong verbs

• Test, prove, experiment, predict, estimate
• Understand, describe, analyze, investigate
• Build, construct, create determine,
  differentiate
• Change, de-construct, emancipate, redress,
  transform
• Participate, co-construct, co-operate

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Paradigms

• Denzin Lincoln (2005)
• Positivist
• Post-positivist
• Critical Theory
• Constructivist
• Participatory

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More paradigmatic taxonomies

• LeCompte Schensul (1999)
• Positivist approaches
• Interpretive approaches
• Critical approaches
• Ecological approaches
• (Levels of influence of family, peers, school,
  work, community and society on the individual)
• Network approaches
• (Relationships within and between individuals as
  a consequence of social relationships)

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About paradigms

• Legitimacy
• More interest/studies/ practitioners/conferences.
  A qualitative turn in social sciences
  precipitated by an interpretivist, postmodernist,
  critical stance
• Hegemony
• Blurring of genres, Paradigms not in
  contestation with one another, but seeking
  confluences (e.g. Action Research and Critical
  Theory), controversial issues (e.g. validity,
  voice/inquirer posture, reflexivity), and
  contradictions (e.g. Experiment vs Action
  Research), etc.
• Ethics, responsibility
• Morality
• Spirituality

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Basic beliefs of each paradigm

• Ontology
• Pos. Naïve realism - real reality, but
  apprehensible
• Inerpret. Critical realism real reality but
  only imperfectly and probabilistically
  apprehensible
• Crit. Historical realism virtual reality
  shaped by social, political. Cultural, economic,
  ethnic, and gender values crystallized over
  time.
• Construct. Relativism local and specific
  co-constructed realities
• Part. Participative reality subjective-objectiv
  e reality, co-created by mind and given world

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Basic Beliefs (cont)

• Epistemology
• Pos. Dualist/objectivist findings true
• Interpret. modified dualist/objectivist
  critical tradition/community finding probably
  true
• Crit. Transactional/subjectivist value mediated
  findings
• Constuct. Transactional/subjectivist co-created
  findings
• Part. Critical subjectivity in participatory
  transaction with world experiential,
  propositional and practical knowing co-created
  findings

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Basic Beliefs (cont)

• Methodology
• Pos. Experimental/manipulative verification of
  hypotheses chiefly quantitative methods.
• Interpret. qualitative methods
• Crit. Dialogic/dialectic
• Construct. Hermeneutical/dialectical
• Part. Political participation in collaborative
  action inquiry primacy of practical

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Critical issues for each of these paradigms

• Axiology
• Accommodation commensurability
• Action
• Control
• Epistemology
• Validity (goodness criteria)
• Voice, reflexivity, postmodern representation

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Questions, questions

• What is the pivot around which your study
  revolves? What are your basic beliefs? In what
  way does your study relate to the world?
• What do you plan to do with the results of your
  study?
• To what extent are you in control of your study?
• What knowledge do you want to generate?
• How do you know your findings will be
  sufficiently authentic/trustworthy/related to the
  way others see/construct their worlds/the basis
  for contracts/legislation?
• In what voice do you want to speak?
• How do you conceive of yourself as a researcher?
• How do you ideally want to represent your
  findings?

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Unpacking some critical issues

• Axiology the branch of philosophy dealing with
  ethics, aesthetics and religion. Your basic
  beliefs/values guiding the choice of problem,
  paradigm, theoretical framework, data gathering,
  analysis, format, etc.
• Commensurability Can paradigms be measured by
  the same standard?
• Action Action on the research results?
  Advocacy/subjectivity/change?

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(cont)

• Validity
• Criterion-referenced (judging processes and
  outcomes) vs a farewell to criteriology
  (Schwandt, 2000) (radical/practical philosophy/
  transformative)
• Generate knowledge that complements/supplements
  rather than displaces lay probing of social
  problems
• Enhance critical intelligence
• Can the research findings be used to legislate,
  train, calibrate human judgment

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Validity (cont)

• 2. Authenticity Fairness, Ontological,
  Educative, Catalystic, and Tactical Authenticity
• 3. Ethical relationships
• Positionality,/standpoint/judgment specific
  discourse community to keep in line voice
  critical subjectivity, reciprocity, sacredness
  (how science contribute to human flourishing)
• 4. Post-structural transgressions poems/plays,
  the crystalline (Richardson)

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Qualitative Research Where does it come from?

• Started in the 1920/30 in Sociology (Chicago
  School) and Anthropology (Mead, Malinowski) as
  the study of human group life. Other
  disciplines such as Education, History, Political
  Science, Business, Medicine, Nursing, Social
  Work, Communication quickly followed in its wake.

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Qualitative Research (cont)

• Connotations
• Mere fieldwork
• A measure of control
• Subordinates the status of scientific research
• Humanistic
• Imperialist and colonial
• A racist project

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What is qualitative research?

• A collective noun A loosely defined category of
  research designs or models and methodologies,
  covering a wide range of disciplines, fields,
  subject matter, concepts, and assumptions, which
  elicit verbal, visual, tactile, and olfactory
  data in the form of descriptive narratives such
  as field notes, transcriptions of audio and/or
  video recordings and other written records. It is
  multi-method in focus. Qualitative researchers
  study things in natural settings (Denzin
  Lincoln).
• An approach to knowledge production
  interpretive, generative, constructivist,
  transformative, critical

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Preferences of qualitative researchers

• Analysis of words and pictures rather than
  numbers
• Naturally occurring data observation rather
  than experiment, unstructured rather than
  structured interviews
• Meaning rather than behaviour attempt to
  investigate the world from the point of view of
  people studied
• Skeptic about natural science as a model
• Inductive, hypothesis-generating research rather
  than hypothesis testing
• (Silverman, 2000)

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Common qualitative research designs

• Ethnography
• Field study
• Community study
• Case study
• Life story and autobiographical method
• Document and historical study
• Survey study
• Auto-ethnography
• Narrative inquiry
• Portraiture
• Action Research, collaborative research
• Observational studies

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How are qualitative data collected?

• Participant observation
• Non-participant observation
• Interviews individual, focus group
• Surveys
• Artifacts, documents
• Data may be generated face-to-face, or via
  telephone, email, internet

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How are qualitative data analyzed?

• Analytic induction
• Constant comparison
• Typological analysis
• Narrative analysis
• Semiotic analysis
• Discourse analysis
• Conversation analysis
• Content analysis

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When is qualitative research used?

• Description What is happening here?
• Detailed accounts of events, experiences,
  activities
• Fresh perspectives on familiar phenomena
• Participants views of processes, groups,
  settings
• Subjective accounts of phenomena
• Analysis What does this mean?
• Connections and relationships
• Context and its influences
• Differing perspectives toward phenomena
• Theory How can this be understood or explained?
• Philosophical perspectives
• Socio-cultural, psychological, economic and
  political constraints
• Ideological interpretations such as critical or
  feminist theories

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Differences between qualitative and quantitative
research?

• Qualitative Quantitative
• Soft Hard
• Flexible Fixed
• Subjective Objective
• Political Value-free
• Speculative Hypothesis testing
• Grounded Abstract

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(cont)

• More inductive
• Grounded in thick descriptive accounts
• More discovery oriented
• Fewer people are studied more intensively
• Subjective as well as objective data and stances
• Recursive
• Triangulation
• Naturalistic
• Researcher as instrument

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What makes a qualitative study good?

• Thick, descriptive accounts of what is being
  studied
• Intensive investigation over time
• Multiple approaches, triangulation
• Participant corroboration
• Thorough description and appropriate development
  of selection of research methods and research
  design
• Reflective accounts of the researchers
  experiences
• Authenticity, credibility, insightfulness,
  clarity, comprehensiveness
• Thorough consideration of previous literature
• Assessment of evidence and alternative
  explanations for patterns discovered.

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What criteria can we use to assess the quality of
research?

• How far can we demonstrate that our research has
  mobilized the conceptual apparatus of our social
  sciences disciplines, and thereby, helped to
  build useful social theories?
• How far can our data, method and findings satisfy
  the criteria of reliability and validity?

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(cont)

• To what extent do our preferred research methods
  reflect careful weighting of the alternatives or
  simple responses to time and resource constraints
  or even an unthinking adoption of the current
  fashion?
• How can valid, reliable and conceptually defined
  qualitative studies contribute to practice and
  policy by revealing something new to
  practitioners, clients and/or policy makers?
• Source Silverman, 2000, p284

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Characteristics of good qualitative researchers

• Comfortable with ambiguity
• Comfortable with a range of methodological
  possibilities and a range of interpretations
• Have a killer instinct for data
• Have a proclivity to seek patterns
• Are highly intuitive in that they are sensitive
  to context (physical settings and people, overt
  and covert agendas, verbal and nonverbal
  behaviours)
• Are able to live with long periods of boredom

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(cont)

• Have a keen sense of timing, particularly in
  interviews
• Are able to establish rapport with others
• Are empathetic
• Are excellent listeners
• Arent easily embarrassed or judgmental
• Are extremely well-organized
• Are good writers who can describe phenomena
  clearly and in interesting detail
• Are self-critical, self-analytical, and are
  capable of detachment
• Are enthusiastic bricoleurs (Denzin Lincoln,
  2005)

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Do you qualify?

• What exactly makes your study a qualitative study
  (or something else)?
• What qualities makes you a potentially good
  qualitative researcher?

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The next step

• Theoretical frameworks
• Conceptual frameworks
• Literature reviews