Research Design Examples

Chapter 14: Qualitative Research

This set of notes and key points from the chapter is to teach and inform the reader of the basic ideas involved in educational qualitative research.

Qualitative Research
Educational qualitative research is research relying on collected qualitative (i.e. non-numerical data) designed to explore or discover areas of interest. Since the data is often comprised of words, pictures, interviews, etc., this type of research follows a distinctly different path than does quantitative, numerically driven research. The findings are usually presented in narrative form with the results being induced through observation of real events.
Steps in a typical qualitative research study
In a qualitative research paradigm, 8 steps are identified and often depicted cyclically as shown below

Often researchers do not go in step-by-step order since new questions may arise from the fluid nature of the data gathering process, findings suggest other directions, or topics have to be further narrowed to conduct the research. However, most qualitative research eventually uses all of the steps and will generally fall into four major categories: Phenomenology, Ethnography, Case Study and Grounded Theory. The remainder if this writing strives to summarize the salient points of each category of qualitative research.

Phenomenology


The foundational question phenomenological research seeks to answer is: What is the meaning, structure, and essence of the lived experience of a phenomenon by an individual or group of individuals? The purpose is obtain a view into the participant's "life world" and understand their meanings constructed from "lived experiences".

Terms used in Phenomenology that could use definition: life world - an individual's inner world of immediate experience
bracket - to suspend preconceptions or learned feelings about a phenomenon

Phenomenologists generally assume there is some sort of commonality in human experience, and they seek to understand this commonality. Observers are asked to try and bracket their observations to allow for the most objective results. An example of commonality might be in the case of a death of a loved one, grief and sorrow are probably elements of common experience.

Data Collection, Analysis and Report Writing

Data is collected from several individuals and depicts their experience of some phenomenon (e.g. death of a loved one). Interviews with the participants, open-ended questionnaires, documents and observations of behavior might all comprise the data. In data analysis, the researcher looks for significant statements that relate to the phenomenon being studied. This analysis generates a statements list that can be examined for themes. The Final Report is a narrative report that describes the participants in the study and the methods used to gather data. A description of the experience and the general findings gleaned from the data suggest how experiencing a given phenomenon has affected the participant. Commentary and discussion on the findings are also included ion the narrative. The goal is write a narrative that will make readers understand what it might be like to experience that phenomenon themselves, a "vicarious experience".

Ethnography


Ethnography provides for the discovery and comprehensive description of the culture of a group of people. "Culture" here is defined as the system of shared beliefs, shared values, practices, perspectives, folk knowledge, language, norms, rituals and material artifacts that a group uses to understand their world and relate to others.
Shared beliefs: conventions or statements the group holds to be true.
Shared values: culturally-defined standards about what is right and wrong (good or bad).
Norms: written and unwritten rules of behavior.

Examples of ethnographic research might be the group dynamics on a field trip or experiences of African-American students in special education classes.
Types of Ethnographic Research

Ethnology

Ethnology is a comparative study of cultural groups where the goal is to uncover general patterns of a cultural group. For example, how does perception of school change through grades K-12?. Extensive field surveys of the culture's norms, values and beliefs helps shed light on how that culture may respond to and interpret a set of questions.

Ethnohistory

Ethnohistory is research that studies the cultural past of a people. Often ethnohistory is a building block of an ethnographic study and the two are often intertwined. Studying a culture's past can help the researcher to interpret data in the present and answer questions as to why responses and interviews generated the data they did.

Data Collection, Analysis, and Report Writing

Data collection in ethnographic research involves extensive fieldwork: observing behaviors over time, talking to people, observing their documents and artifacts, learning their ways. A good researcher will avoid ethnocentrism. that is, the judging of a culture through conventions and standards of the researcher's culture. Two distinct, not exclusive, perspectives permeate the ethnographers data collection. These are what are called emic perspective and etic perspective.

Emic perspective: The insider's perspective or "getting into the heads" of the group members. Therefore, emic terms are those terms used by the study culture. For a high school those terms descibing social groups on campus might be "nerds", "jocks", "stoners', etc. The goal for all emic perspective research is to avoid going native, that is to get so wrapped up in the culture of study that objectivity is lost.

Etic perspective: To use external scientific views that researchers use to answer etic terms (those that social scientists use) that are not part of the culture. The researcher can use etic terms to communicate findings to other researchers less familiar with the culture of study, but needs to be aware that not all external words can accurately or vividly describe the culture in ways that emic terms can.

Overall, a blend of both emic and etic perspectives can approach holism (the idea that the whole of a group's dynamics is greater than the sum of its parts). For example, the sum of members in a band is wholly different and removed from the music they play together.

Case Study Research


Case study research provides a detailed account of one or more "cases" of interest. A case can be defined as a "bounded system", a discreet activity. Examples of cases might be specific students, a Head Start program, use of a new textbook, etc. Researchers strive to find how the "case" relates to the larger context of society, and what can be learned from a thorough examination of it.

Types of Case Study Research

Intrinsic Case Study

Interest is in describing and understanding a specific case. In-depth research leads to great understanding of a specific case, but may not be valuable for generalization. The intrinsic case study is used to investigate specific sets of circumstances in a closed system, where they results may or may not be easily applied to society at large. This is the most common type of case study research since it can often be done with minimal cost or without extensive field research by one individual.

Instrumental Case Study

Instrumental case studies are those that use case studies to answer a larger question: How and why does a phenomenon operate as it does? Often this design is used to generalize and extend findings of individual, discreet case studies. the focus is less on individual cases an more on how these cases fit into a larger pattern. For example, how does the use of drugs among teenagers lead to self-esteem issues? though individual cases elicit various data sets, a more general question may be answered by the examination of a set of cases from different places and times.

Collective Case Study

Collective case studies are used when more than one case study of a similar type is used to look for commonality and trends. This design is more likely to sacrifice the depth typical of individual case studies in favor of breadth. An example might be the examination of how learning is affected when teachers choose to utilize a certain type of technology in the classroom. The researcher would look for trends common to all the cases and see if generalizations can be made regarding the question they seek to answer.

Case Study Data Collection, Analysis, and Report Writing

Data collection in case studies often takes the form of open-ended questionnaires, in-depth interviews and participant observation. Data collected should be restricted to that which is vital to investigating the research question, not all data obtained. It is the role of the data analyst to decide which information is pertinent to the question and which, though interesting and question-begging is ancillary. The analyst reports and presents the data on each "issue" of the investigation. the final report is a rich narrative that is holistic in its description of the case. Cross-case studies attempt to find commonality among multiple cases and the findings are presented in a manner that retains the focus of the research question, yet include nuances particular to the component cases studied. All contextual information is conveyed so as to paint the most accurate picture possible. Every attempt should be made to reconstruct the participant's realities and portray all viewpoints.

Grounded Theory


The foundational question for grounded theory is: What theory or explanation emerges from an analysis of the data? Grounded theory is a methodology for developing theories that are grounded in collected, analyzed data. This approach to research came about as a response to the feeling among sociologists that the discipline had stagnated due to reliance on "older theories". The primary concern is that the grounded theory is based upon concepts generated directly from the data collected in a research study. This model uses the inductive or "bottom-up" approach where observations and data produce the theory.

Characteristics of Grounded Theory

Grounded theory possesses four important characteristics: fit, understanding, generality and control. The theory should correspond closely (fit). The grounded theory must be understandable to a wide variety of people, researchers and non-researchers alike, so others may one day use or build off it. The theory should have generality, which is not to be so specific that it only applies to one set of people. Lastly, a good theory should have control (the anticipation and identification of controllable variables).

Data Collection, Analysis, and Report Writing.

Data collection and analysis often happen concurrently in grounded theory research. Often data takes the form of open-ended interviews, but almost any type of data collection can be used in grounded theory. The important feature is that the theory must always remain grounded in the data obtained. Analysis should make use of the constant-comparative method, which is a continuous interplay and comparison of researcher questions, data, and the developing theory. Researchers need theoretical sensitivity (an eye on what kind of data is needed for the theory and what aspects of the data are most important). The theoretically-sensitive researcher continually learns by observing research participants and examining/analyzing the data.
The approach to data analysis is unique to grounded theory, where four distinct stages are commonly observed.
The raw data is first analyzed by open coding which is an initial analysis stage aimed at naming and organizing discreet elements in the data (labeling). This is often seen as "finding the concepts" contained in the data. Axial coding is the second step where the concepts identified in open coding are placed in more abstract or general categories. The categories are then organized and relationships between the categories are identified. Selective coding is the final stage of analysis where the researcher fleshes out the main idea of the theory and "writes the story". An examination of previously published literature at this this may also help to broaden the theory at this stage. Through a thorough working of the above three stages theoretical saturation is eventually reached where no new information can de obtained from the data. The final report narrative states the research question first, who was selected for the study and why, and the methods used to collect the data. The last and largest section of the report is reserved for reporting the results, which contain extensive information and insights learned from the study.

Summary
Phenomenology, ethnography, cases study and grounded theory are the most prominent approaches used in qualitative research. The search for over-arching themes helps guide researchers as to which model fits best to answer their questions. Phenomenologists are interested in investigating how the experiencing of a phenomenon affects the behavior, motivations, and feelings of the participant. Ethnography seeks to describe a culture and how it might impact the research participant. Cases study research examines individual, discreet cases to learn what larger outcomes may result from the treatment phenomenon, change, or other action. Grounded theories are generated from extensive data collection and are arrived at inductively, that is from the ground up (from specific to general). All of the above methods lead the researcher to answers to questions they may pose where quantitative, experimental research may be impossible, unethical or otherwise inappropriate.

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