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Summary of notes for Qualitative Research Exam
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This summary includes all relevant material for the Qualitative Research exam, including notes from lectures and literature provided for the course.
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Qualitative Research Exam NotesWeek 1
Qualitative Research → uses words as data, collected and analyzed in various ways
- Meaning of words
- It refers both to techniques and frameworks for conducting research or paradigm →
beliefs, assumptions shared by research community
- It is about the application of qualitative techniques within a qualitative paradigm
- It is a Big Q qualitative research - contrasted with small Q qualitative research
(techniques not within a qualitative paradigm)
● Words as data
● Meanings
● Rich data - dive deep into research;complex and contradictory accounts about the
research object
● Theory- generating - qualitative analysis first step in many research
It can aim to do one or more different things:
- ‘give voice’ to a group of people or an issue
- provide a detailed description of events or experiences
- develop theory
- interrogate the meaning in texts
- identify discourses or demonstrate the discursive features of a text
- and/or engage in social critique
Requirements for QR:
- Eyes and ears
- Interest in process and meaning
- Critical approach to life and knowledge
- Reflexivity → are you an insider or outsider (awareness of your own perspective)
- Good interactional skill
,Big Q qualitative research: the application of the qualitative methods of data collection and
analysis within a qualitative paradigm, rather than a positivist one (talking about paradigm)
- A paradigm
- Coherent set of ideas
- Full research circle is qualitative
Small Q qualitative research: the use of qualitative methods of data collection within a
positivist or essentialist paradigm; the occasional use of qualitative questions within a primarily
quantitative method of data collection (pragmatic/ practical)
- Techniques
- Some ideas
- Mixed method
- Parts of research circle are qualitative
● A qualitative research project may be conducted in a realist, positivist way, where the
values and assumptions of Big Q qualitative research are rejected.
● Qualitative methods can be used as a precursor for quantitative research
● It can be used alongside quantitative methods as part of a mixed methods design. In many
mixed method designs, the qualitative component may be subsumed within a primarily
quantitative, realist project, and it is rarely Big Q qualitative research.
● Qualitative data might be converted to a numerical representation, and analysed
quantitatively
Thematic analysis → has the theme as its unit of analysis and which looks across data from
many different sources to identify themes
,A broader cluster of features and assumptions make up a non-positivist qualitative research
paradigm
- Don’t think there is only 1 version of reality/knowledge
- Must not consider knowledge outside the context from which it was generated
Elements of a qualitative paradigm include:
- the use of qualitative data, and the analysis of words which are not reducible to numbers
- the use of more ‘naturally’ occurring data collection methods that more closely resemble
real life this develops from the idea that we cannot make sense of data in isolation from
context
- an interest in meanings rather than reports and measures of behaviour or internal
cognitions
- the use of inductive, theory-generating research
- a rejection of the natural sciences as a model of research, including the rejection of the
idea of the objective (unbiased) scientist
- the recognition that researchers bring their subjectivity – this is seen as a strength rather
than a weakness
Good research – controlled, rigorous, reliable, validated, quantitative and experimental?
Emergence of qualitative research:
- As a new development
- Simply offering complementary data collection and analysis for quantitative research
Research design:
- Goals of the study
- Theoretical framework
- Research question
- Ethics
- Method of generating and analysing data
Feminism - broad range of theoretical and political approaches which at their core assume the
rights of women.
Postculturalism - sees power as a productive force, ratherthan just as oppressive one, meaning it
creates rather than suppresses; linked to theories of Discourse and language as productive.
Postmodernism: notoriously resistant to definition (and anti-definition in itself), a worldview that
challenges the linear and ‘progressive’ model of the world promoted by modernism. Instead, it
offers an approach to society and/or knowledge that stresses the uncertainty of knowledge and
the existence of multiple truths. It theorises individual experiences as fragmented and multiple
rather than coherent and linear. It is often seen as ironic and self-aware.
, Hermeneutics: the theory and practice of interpretation.
Social constructionism: a broad theoretical framework, popular in qualitative research, which
rejects a single ultimate truth. Instead, it sees the world, and what we know of it, as produced
(constructed) through language, representation and other social processes, rather than discovered.
The terms in which the world is understood are seen related to specific socio-political, cultural,
historical contexts, and meanings are seen as socialartefacts, resulting from social interaction,
rather than some inherent truth about the nature of reality.
Phenomenology: an influential philosophy in qualitative research; it is concerned with
understanding people’s subjective experiences.
Qualitative methods sidelined in favour of quantitative
- Developing a qualitative sensibility → orientation towards research that fits with
qualitative paradigm
Skills that include qualitative sensibility:
- an interest in process and meaning, over and above cause and effect;
- a critical and questioning approach to life and knowledge – you don’t take things at face
value and simply accept the way they are, but ask questions about why they may be that
way, whose interests are served by them and how they could be different;
- the ability to reflect on, and step outside, your cultural membership, to become a cultural
commentator – so that you can see, and question, the shared values and assumptions that
make up being a member of a particular society – this involves identifying your own
assumptions, and then putting them aside so that your research is not automatically
shaped by these
- the development of a double-consciousness or an analytic ‘eye’ or ‘ear’, where you can
listen intently, and critically reflect on what is said, simultaneously (e.g. in an interview,
being able to focus both on the content of what is being said, and possible analytic ideas
within it) this helps produce much better (more complex, richer) data;
- reflexivity: critical reflection on the research process and on one’s own role as researcher,
including our various insider and outsider positions
- insider status when we share some group identity with our participants (for
example, a male researcher researching men would be an insider)
- outsider status when we do not share some group identity with our participants
(for example, a white man researching Asian men would be an outsider)
- Good interactional skills – a warm/friendly manner that puts people at ease and helps
establish ‘rapport’ and ‘trust’
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