Chapter 14 - Qualitative Research Flashcards
Emergent Design
evolves as a researcher make ongoing decisions based on what they have already learned
-reflection of the researcher’s desire to have the inquiry based on the realities and viewpoints of those under study
Characteristics of Qualitative Research Design
- Flexible, elastic → adjust during data collection
- Involves merging together various data collection strategies (ex. triangulation)
- Almost always non-experimental
- Intent is to thoroughly describe or explain (holistic)
- Researchers may be intensely involved and can last a lengthy period of time
- Real-world, naturalistic settings
- Cross-sectional or longitudinal
Qualitative Design Features: Intervention, Control, and Blinding
- almost always experimental (but may be embedding in an experiment)
- rarely control any aspect of their study, no IV or DV
- blinding rarely used
Qualitative Design Features: Comparisons
- don’t usually make comparisons because the intent is to explain/describe a phenomenon
- yet patterns may illuminate comparisons and analyzing often compares different categories in study
Qualitative Design Features: Research Settings
- real world, natural settings
- many locations to study variety of phenomena in various settings
Qualitative Design Features: Timeframes
- cross-sectional or longitudinal
- usually retrospective
Qualitative Design Features: Causality
- qualitative research can seek causality and inevitable reveal patterns and processes suggesting causal interpretations
- must continue to systematically test these inquiries
Ethnography (Definition and types)
involves the description and interpretation of a culture and cultural behavior
Field Work-process by when the ethnographer comes to understand a culture
Macroethnography- broadly defined culture
Microethnography- narrowly defined culture (focused), fine-grained studies of small units in a group or culture
Ethnography (purpose)
learn from (rather than study) members of a cultural group and understand their worldview
Ethnography (assumption)
every human group eventually evolves a culture that guides the members’ view of the world and the way they structure their experiences
Ethnography (perspectives)
- Emic Perspective – refers to the way members of the culture regard their world, “insiders view”, local language/concepts/means of expression that are used to name and characterize their experiences
→used to reveal tactic knowledge (information about a culture that is so deeply embedded in cultural experience that members don’t talk about it and may not be consciously aware of it - Etic Perspective – “outsiders view”, the words and concepts outsiders to the culture use to refer to the same phenomena
Ethnography (method of data collection)
-Seek to collect three types of information:
1. cultural behavior
2. cultural artifacts
3. cultural speech
→use various data sources such as observations, in-depth interviews, records, and other types of physical evidence (ex. photographs, diaries)
- Participant Observation: make observations of the culture under study while participating in it’s activities
- Key Informants: help ethnographers to understand/interpret the events and activities being observed
Ethnography (product)
- labor intensive and time consuming, involves a cetain level of intimacy with the cultural group
- rich and holistic description fo the culture = product
- interpret culture, describing normative behavior/social patterns
- foster understanding of beaviors affecting health and illness
Ethnonursing Research
the study/analysis of the local or indigenous people’s viewpoint, beliefs, and practices about nursing care behavior and the processes of designated cultures
Autoethnography/insider research
scrutiny of groups or cultures to which the researcher belongs to
Advantages: ease of access, candid data because of pre-established trust
Drawback: bias on certain issues, valued data may be overlooked
Phenomology (definition)
an approach to understanding and exploring people’s everyday life experiences
→ critical truths about reality are grounded in people’s lived experiences
Phenomology (purpose)
what is the essence of this phenomenon as experienced by these people and what does it mean?
Phenomology (assumption)
there is an ESSENCE that can be understood, essence makes a culture what it is, would not be the same without it
-view human existence as meaningful/interesting because of people’s consciousness of that existence
Phenomology (aspects of experience)
- Lived space/spatiality
- Lived body/corporeality
- Lived time/temporality
- Lived human relation/relationality
Phenomology (data source)
- main source is in-depth interviews → strive to gain entance into the informants world
- 10 or fewer participants
Descriptive Phenomology
What do we know as persons? → describe human experience
-describe things as people experience them (hearing, feeling, remembering, believing, deciding, evaluating)
Four steps:
- Bracketing- identifying/holding in abeyance preconceived beliefs/opinion about the phenomenon under study
- Intuiting- remaining open to the meanings attributed to the phenomenon by those who have experienced it
- Analysis
- Description
Interpretive Phenomology
What is being? – interpreting (not just describing) human experience
Hermeneutics = “understanding”, basic characteristic of human existence
-Hermeneutics Circle: understanding the whole of a text by it’s parts and it’s parts in terms of the whole
Goal: enter another’s world and discover the wisdom/understandings found there
-no bracketing, just open approach
Phenomology (product)
- gather data, but also experience the phenomenon for themselves
- describe this in key themes
Grounded Theory (definition)
symbolic interaction, focusing on the manner in which people make sense of social interactions
-tries to account for people’s actions from the perspective of those involved
Grounded Theory (purpose)
seek to understand people’s actions by first discovering the main concern/problem, and then the behavior designed to address it
Core variable: the manner in which people resolve the main concern
→basic social process (BSP): explains how people resolve it
Grounded Theory (data source)
- the problem and process used to solve it emerge from the data and are discovered during the study
- research, data collection, data analysis, and participant sampling occur simultaneously
- constant comparison: used to develop and refine theoretically relevant concepts/categories
- in-depth interviews and participant observation are most common
- sample of 20-30 people
Constructivist Grounded Theory
grounded theory is viewed as an interpretation, data collected and analyzed are acknowledged to be constructed from shared experiences/relationships between researcher and participants
Historical Research
systematic collection and critical evaluation of data relating to past occurrences
- relies mostly on qualitative (narrative) data, but may use statistical analysis quantitative data
- discovering new knowledge, not summarizing old knowledge
- data usually in form of written records, diaries, letters, newspapers, medical/legal documents, etc
- usually interpretive – what and why it happened
Case Studies
in-depth investigations of a single entity or small number of entities (ex. individual, family, institution, community, or other social unit)
- analyze/understand issues that are important to the history/circumstances of the entity under study
- The CASE is central (vs. phenomenon) → focus on why and individual thinks/behaves the way they did
- detailed study over extended period of time – observe present state + past events
Strength = small number of entities Weakness = closeness leads to bias, low objectivity, hard to be generalizable
Narrative Analysis
focuses on story as the object of inquiry to understand how individuals make sense of events in their lives
-analyzing stories opens up FORMS of telling about experience (more than just content)
Descriptive Qualitative Studies
do not fit into the normal categories, tend to be eclectic in their designs/methods and are based on general premises of constructivist inquiry
Critical Theory
critique of society and envisioning new possibilities
- action oriented → aim to make people aware of contradictions and disparities in their beliefs and social practices and become inspired to CHANGE them
- enlightened self-knowledge and social/political change
1. analyze problem
2. triangulation/multiple perspectives
Critical Ethnography
focuses on raising consciousness on the hope of effecting social change, well suited for help promotion research (enable people to take control over their own situation)
Feminist Research
focus on gender domination and discrimination within patriarchal societies
- establish relationships and conduct research that is transformative
- seek to understand how gender and a gendered social order have shaped women’s lives and their consciousness → facilitate change to end women’s unequal social position
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
recognition that the production of knowledge can be political and used to exert power
-work with vulnerable communities
Goal: produce knowledge AND action, empowerment, and consciousness-raising as well, make improvements through education and sociopolitical action
Design: facilitate collaboration and dialogue to motivate, increase self-esteem, and generate community solidarity
→interview, observation, story-telling, drawing, skits, etc (explore lives and recognize their own strengths
