Lecture 1 Introduction to Qualitative Research

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LECTURE 1INTRODUCTION TO

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

INTRODUCTION

The design of a research study begins with the selection of a topic and a paradigm. A paradigm is essentially a worldview, a whole framework of beliefs, values, and methods within which research takes place. It is this world view within which researchers work.

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RESEARCH PARADIGM

The choice of either a qualitative or quantitative paradigm in social science research depends on the assumptions of :

• Philosophy• Ontology• Epistemology• Methodology(Guba and Lincoln, 2005; Creswell, 1994; Morgan and Smircich, 1980; Burrel and Morgan, 1979).

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RESEARCH PHILOSOPHY1. guides the researcher to clarify a research design or strategy to be used in

a study. This includes the type of evidence gathered and analysed, the way such evidence is interpreted in order to provide good answers to the basic research questions;

2. enables the researcher to recognise the different methodologies and methods that are most suitable. It also helps a researcher to avoid inappropriate use and unnecessary work by identifying the limitations of particular approaches at an early stage; and

3. helps the researcher to be creative and innovative in identifying, creating, and designing a method that were previously outside his or her past experience.

Easterby-Smith, et al. (1991, p. 21).

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ONTOLOGY• Reflects beliefs about the nature of reality .

“what is the form and nature of social reality and what is there that can be known about it”

(Denzin and Lincoln, 1994)

Is reality an objective phenomenon that holds truth?

(“reality” to be investigated is objective and external to the individual, imposing itself on individual consciousness from without)

OR

Is reality virtually constructed through social, political, and gendered meanings? (reality is the product of individual cognition)

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EPISTEMOLOGY•Refers to beliefs about the preferred relationship between the researcher and the researched.

•The epistemological debate is therefore divided between positivism and phenomenology.

Should we remain objective and removed from what we study? (explain and predict what happens in the social world by searching for regularities and causal relationships between its constituent elements)

OR Should we get immersed in it? (explain that the social world can only be understood from the point of view of the individuals directly involved in the activities which are to be studied)

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METHODOLOGY• Refers to the techniques we use for collecting information about the

world. The assumptions about how one attempts to investigate and obtain “knowledge” about the social world.

• The basic methodological question concerns whether the social world is a hard, real, objective reality, external to the individual, or a softer, personal reality, internal to the subjective experience of the individual.

Should we manipulate and measure variables in order to test hypotheses? (base research on systematic protocol and techniques, using methods found in the natural sciences that focus on the process of hypothesis testing- nomothetic principles)

OR Should we search for meaning in words and behaviours?

(base research on the view, that one can only understand the social world by obtaining first hand knowledge of the subject under investigation-ideographic principles)

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RESEARCH PARADIGM

• The frames of reference that researchers use to shape observation and understanding.

• They include basic assumptions underpinning the research, key issues, models of quality research, and methods used.

(Neuman, 2006, p. 81; Rubin and Babbie, 2001)

• There are three main paradigms associated with social research:– Positivist Paradigm– Critical Paradigm– Interpretivist Paradigm

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Positivism• Neuman (2006, p. 82) defines positivist social research as:

“An organised method for combining deductive logic with precise empirical observations of individual behaviour in order to discover and confirm a set of probabilistic causal laws that can be used to predict general patterns of human behaviour.”

• likely to remain formal or apart from the "subjects" who take part in their studies;

• social world exists externally, and that its properties should be measured through objective methods ;

• believe that research produces truthful information about an objective world;

• commonly employ structured methods such as experiments or surveys that produce quantitative data;

• might use structured interviews or observation to record qualitative data in a systematic fashion.

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CriticalNeuman (2006, p. 95) defines critical social research as:

“A critical process of inquiry that goes beyond surface illusions to uncover the real structures in the material world in order to help people change conditions and build a better world for themselves.”

• The aim of research in this paradigm is not just to study society but also to play an active role in social change (Alston and Bowles, 1998). Critical social researchers believe that research is a political activity and argue that uncritical research is in danger of maintaining the status quo rather than helping to create a better world (Neuman, 2006).

• Critical researchers assume that social reality is historically constituted and that it is produced and reproduced by people. Although people can consciously act to change their social and economic circumstances, critical researchers recognise their ability to do so is constrained by various forms of social, cultural, and political domination (Neuman, 2006).

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Interpretive

Neuman (2006, p. 88) defined interpretive social research as:

“The systematic analysis of socially meaningful action through the direct detailed observation of people in natural settings in order to arrive at understandings and interpretations of how people create and maintain their social worlds.”

 • assumes that reality exists in the thoughts and perceptions of each

individual; thus, objectivity is impractical and researchers should try to understand the contextual realities and subjective meanings that shape peoples' interactions with their world.

• generally attempt to understand phenomena through the meanings that people assign to them

• believe in multiple realities rather than a single Truth. They will collaborate with participants in an attempt to understand lived experience from the point of view of the participants.

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Interpretive (cont…)

• commonly use repeated or on-going interviews and field notes that produce qualitative data, though they might use supporting empirical measures or count the frequency of events to supplement their qualitative understandings.

• asking participants to verify the way that the researcher represents their stories. The participant, not the researcher, is viewed as the authority on the phenomenon under study.

• Interpretive research does not predefine dependent and independent variables, but focuses on the full complexity of human sense making as the situation emerges

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Interpetive research: use of theory

• Initial guide to design and data collection– Initial theoretical framework– Sensibility to data– Danger of not-seeing

• Part of an iterative process of data collection and analysis– Being open to field data– Modify initial assumptions and theories

• A final product of the research– Concepts– Conceptual framework

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Interpretive research: empirical work• Access to other people’s interpretations• Own role as researcher

– Outside observer – not direct involvement– Involved researcher (action, participant observation)

• Evidence: interview as primary data source– Styles of interview– Reporting media

• Reporting fieldwork– Credibility: document your process of data collection– Importance of details (research site, motivation for choices,

number of people, data sources, ... and theory-data iterations)

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Types of generalizations from interpretive case study (Walsham)

• Development of concepts• Generation of theory• Drawing of specific implications• Contribution of reach insight

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Key Distinctions between Qualitative and Quantitative Research

1. Words and numbers Qualitative research places emphasis on understanding through looking closely at

people's words, actions and records. The traditional or quantitative approach to research looks past these words, actions and records to their mathematical significance. The traditional approach to research (quantifies) the results of these observations.

In contrast qualitative research examines the patterns of meaning which emerge from the data and these are often presented in the participants' own words. The task of the qualitative researcher is to find patterns within those words (and actions) and to present those patterns for others to inspect while at the same time staying as close to the construction of the world as the participants originally experienced it.

2. Subjective versus objective views3. Discovery versus proof The goal of qualitative research is to discover patterns which emerge after close

observation, careful documentation, and thoughtful analysis of the research topic. What can be discovered by qualitative research are not sweeping generalizations but contextual findings. This process of discovery is basic to the philosophic underpinning of the qualitative approach.

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Quantitative• Quantitative study is an inquiry into a social or human

problem, based on testing a theory composed of variables, measured with numbers, and analyzed with statistical procedures, in order to determine whether the predictive generalizations of the theory hold true.

• Quantitative researchers use methods as a way to remain objective and removed.

• Under the quantitative framework, researchers place much emphasis on defining and adhering to a methodological protocol.

• Methodological rigor, after all, assures objectivity and reliability in the data.

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SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM FOR QUANTITATIVE

• Scientific materialism• Laws of nature• Measurable and observable ‘proof’• Experiment, large scale data collection,

quantitative analysis

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Definitions of Qualitative ResearchDenzin and Lincoln (1994)

“Qualitative research is multi-method in focus, involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of a variety of empirical materials case study, personal experience, introspective, life story interview, observational, historical, interactional, and visual texts-that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in individuals' lives.”

Cresswell (1994) “Qualitative research is an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, reports detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting.”

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Why use qualitative?

“Qualitative methods can be used to explore substantive areas about which little is known or about which much is known to gain novel understandings (Stern, 1980). In addition, qualitative methods can be used to obtain the intricate details about phenomena such as feelings, thought processes, and emotions that are difficult to extract or learn about through more conventional research methods.”

(Strauss and Corbin, 1998, p. 11)

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REASONS FOR CONDUCTING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

• Given these distinctions and definitions of a qualitative study, why does a person engage in such a rigorous design?

• To undertake qualitative research requires a strong commitment to study a problem and demands time and resources.

• Qualitative research shares good company with the most rigorous quantitative research, and it should not be viewed as an easy substitute for a "statistical" or quantitative study.

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Qualitative• qualitative researchers cannot anticipate all

the methods they might use in a study; instead, they actively construct their methods as the study progresses.

• qualitative researchers do not forgo the importance of methodological rigor but they define rigor quite differently.

• researchers use methods as a way to enter the subjective reality of the participant.

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Characteristics of Qualitative Research

• An exploratory and descriptive focus • Emergent Design • Data collection in the natural setting • Emphasis on ‘human-as-instrument’ • Qualitative methods of data collection • Early and On-going inductive analysis

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Qualitative Research Types

• The Biography • Phenomenology • Grounded Theory • Ethnography • Case Study

Cresswell (1994)

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Biography

• The researcher needs to collect extensive information from and about the subject of the biography.

• The investigator needs to have a clear understanding of historical, contextual material to position the subject within the larger trends in society or in the culture.

• It takes a keen eye to determine the particular stories, slant, or angle that "works" in writing a biography and to uncover the "figure under the carpet" (Edel, 1984) that explains the multilayered context of a life.

• The writer, using an interpretive approach, needs to be able to bring himself or herself into the narrative.

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PhenomenologyA phenomenological study may be challenging to use because:

• The researcher requires a solid grounding in the philosophical precepts of phenomenology.

• The participants in the study need to be carefully chosen to be individuals who have experienced the phenomenon

• Bracketing personal experiences by the researcher may be difficult.

• The researcher needs to decide how and in what way his or her personal experiences will be introduced into the study.

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Grounded Theory

• 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.

• 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. These are prescribed categories of information in the theory.

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Ethnography

• The researcher needs to have 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. This is but one issue in the complex array of fieldwork issues facing ethnographers who venture into an unfamiliar cultural group or system.

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Case Study

• The researcher must identify his or her case. He or she must decide what bounded system to study, recognizing that several might be possible candidates for this selection and realizing that either the case itself or an issue, for 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 greater the lack of depth in any single case. When a researchers chooses multiple cases, the issue becomes "How many?"- Typically, however, the researcher chooses no more than four cases. What motivates the researcher to consider a large number of cases is the idea of generalizability, a term that holds little meaning for most qualitative researchers.

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Qualitative Methods of Data Collection

Lye et al. (1997) suggest that in order to provide rich explanations, the research method must not attempt to ignore or simplify the complexities of the context that control the phenomena under investigation, but should instead, clarify them. Thus, qualitative data collected in close proximity to a specific context are more suitable because they can be a source of well grounded explanations of processes occurring in their local context (Miles and Huberman, 1994).

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Qualitative Methods of Data Collection

• People’s words and actions represent the data of qualitative inquiry and this requires methods that allow the researcher to capture language and behaviour. The key ways of capturing these are:

• Observation – both participant and direct • In-depth interviews • Group Interviews • The collection of relevant documents • Photographs and Video Tapes

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Data Collection: Various Types

• Critical Ethnography• Discourse analysis versus critical discourse• Content Analysis• Oral Histories• Documents • Oral histories • Interviews • Focus groups• Field notes • Ethnography • Auto-ethnography• Participant observation

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The Interview

• The interview is one of the major sources of data collection, and it is also one of the most difficult ones to get right. In qualitative research the interview is a form of discourse.

• According to Mischler (1986) its particular features reflect the distinctive structure and aims of interviewing, namely, that it is discourse shaped and organized by asking and answering questions.

• An interview is a joint product of what interviewees and interviewers talk about together and how they talk with each other. The record of an interview that we researchers make and then use in our work of analysis and interpretation is a representation of that talk.

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Characteristics of Good Qualitative Research • We use a tradition of inquiry. This means that the researcher identifies,

studies, and employs one or more traditions of inquiry. • We begin with a single focus. The project starts with a single idea/ • Problem that the researcher seeks to understand, not a causal relationship

of variables or a comparison of groups. Although relationships might evolve or comparisons might be made these emerge late in the study after we describe a single idea

• The study includes detailed methods, a rigorous approach to data collection, data analysis, and report writing. This means, too, that the researcher verifies the accuracy of the account using one of the many procedures for verification.

• We write persuasively so that the reader experiences "being there." • We analyze data using multiple levels of abstraction. Often, writers present

their studies in stages (e.g., the multiple themes that can be combined into larger themes or perspectives) or layer their analyses from the particular to the general reflecting all the complexities that exist in real life. The best qualitative studies engage the reader.

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Strength of Qualitative Research

The strength of qualitative research is that it is known as the ‘best strategy for discovery, exploring a new area, developing hypotheses’ (Miles and Huberman, 1994, p.10). However, the goal of qualitative research is not to produce generalisations, but rather in-depth understandings and knowledge of particular phenomena (Leininger, 1994).

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Qualitative inquiry is for the researcher who is willing to do the following:

• Commit to extensive time in the field. The investigator spends many hours in the field, collects extensive data, and labors over field issues of trying to gain access, rapport, and an "insider" perspective.

• engage in the complex, time-consuming process of data analysis – the ambitious task of sorting through large amounts of data and reducing them to a few themes or categories. For a multidisciplinary team of qualitative researchers, this task can be shared; for most researchers, it is a lonely, isolated time of struggling with the data. The task is challenging, especially because the database consists of complex texts and images.

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Cont…

• Write long passages, because the evidence must substantiate claims and the writer needs to show multiple perspectives. The incorporation of quotes to provide participants' perspectives also lengthens the study.

• Participate in a form of social and human science research that does not have firm guidelines or specific procedures and is evolving and changing constantly. This complicates telling others how one plans to conduct a study and how others might judge it when the study is done.

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Cont…

• If an individual is willing to engage in qualitative inquiry, then the person needs to determine whether a strong rationale exists for choosing a qualitative approach, and there are compelling reasons to undertake a qualitative study .

In this respect Cresswell (1994) offers the following advice:1. Select a qualitative study because of the nature of the research

question. In a qualitative study, the research question often starts with a how or a what so that initial forays into the topic describe what is going on. This is in contrast to quantitative questions that ask why and look for a comparison of groups (e.g., Is Group 1 better at something than Group 2) or a relationship between variables, with the intent of establishing an association, relationship, or cause and effect (e.g., Did Variable explain what happened in Variable Y)

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Cont…2. Choose a qualitative, study because the topic needs to be explored.

'By this, I mean that variables cannot be easily identified, theories are not available to explain behavior of participants or their population of study, and theories need to be developed.

3. Use a qualitative study because of the need to present a detailed view of the topic. The side angle lens of the distant panoramic shot will not suffice to present answers to the problem, or the close-up view does not exist.

4. Choose a qualitative approach in order to study individuals in their natural setting. This involves going out to the setting or field of study, gaining access, and gathering material. If participants are removed from their setting, it leads to contrived findings that are out of context.

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Cont…5. Select a qualitative approach because of interest in

writing in a literary style; the writer brings himself or herself into the study, the personal pronoun "I" is used, or perhaps the writer engages a storytelling form of narration.

6. Employ a qualitative study because of sufficient time and resources to spend on extensive data collection in the field and detailed data analysis of "text" information.

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Cont…

7. Select a qualitative approach because audiences are receptive to qualitative research. This audience might be a graduate adviser or committee, a discipline inclusive of multiple research methodologies, or publication outlets with editors receptive to qualitative approaches.

8. Employ a qualitative approach to emphasize the researcher's role as an active learner who can tell the story from the participants' view rather than as an "expert" who passes judgment on participants.

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Criticisms of qualitative research

• Qualitative research has been criticized and regarded with suspicion and hostility, within the nursing profession and elsewhere, because its general characteristics remain poorly understood and consequently its potential remains underdeveloped (Adelman, Kemmis, & Jenkins, 1980; Sandelowski, 1986).

• A familiar criticism of qualitative methodology questions the value of its dependence on small samples which is believed to render it incapable of generalizing conclusions (Hamel, Dufour, & Fortin, 1993; Yin, 1984, 1993, 1994;).

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Criticisms of qualitative research Cont…

• Those researchers forcefully argue for the value of every single study providing that parameters are guided by the goals of the study, and have met the established objectives. Yin (1989) asserts that general applicability will result from the set of methodological qualities of the study, and the rigor with which the study is constructed.

• Attention to such rigor may serve to offset some of the criticisms of qualitative research as a 'soft approach' utilizing subjective procedures that provides corresponding weak explanations (Morse, 1989).