Lecture 1 - Flirting with Meaning - Aims, uses and ethical issues in Qualitative Research Flashcards
(reading pg 1-9):
Define qualitative research.
(reading pg 1-9):
Qualitative research is characterised by its aims, which relate to understanding some aspect of social life, and its methods which (in general) generate words, rather than numbers, as data for analysis.
(reading pg 1-9):
List 3 common criticisms of qualitative research.
(reading pg 1-9):
- Samples are small and not necessarily representative of the broader population, so it is difficult to know how far we can generalise the results; the
- Findings lack rigour;
- It is difficult to tell how far the findings are biased by the researcher’s own opinions.
(reading pg 1-9):
Give 3 examples of topics that qualitative methodologies can address.
(reading pg 1-9):
- People’s experiences of health needs, health care, accessing care and keeping healthy.
- Understanding different perspectives, such as those of professionals and patients.
- How experiences, attitudes and life circumstances affect health needs and behaviours.
(reading pg 1-9):
INFO DUMP -
Qualitative methods generally aim to understand the experiences and attitudes of patients, the community or health care worker. These methods aim to answer questions about the ‘what’, ‘how’ or ‘why’ of a phenomenon rather than ‘how many’ or ‘how much’, which are answered by quantitative methods.
(reading pg 1-9):
(reading pg 1-9):
Read the case study of qualitative methods on page 3 in the red box.
(reading pg 1-9):
(reading pg 1-9):
What are the 4 principles of Tom Beauchamp and Jim Childress (1983), when considering ethics.
(reading pg 1-9):
- Autonomy; respect the rights of the individual
- Beneficience; doing good
- Non-maleficience; not doing harm
- Justice; particularly equity
Consider carefully the context in which you will be working, the aim of your research and how sensitive the topic might be. Might the questions that you will be asking be traumatising or might they make your respondent(s) uncomfortable/fearful of consequences?
Remember that asking a person to talk about experiences that were frightening, humiliating and painful can cause or increase anxiety. It may not only create distress during an interview, but may also emerge after. It is therefore very important that you take care in how you ask a question and where you choose to ask questions.
(reading pg 1-9):
Within qualitative methods, should participants always give consent?
(reading pg 1-9):
Everyone who participates in your study should have freely consented to participation, without being coerced or unfairly pressurised. This means they should be well-informed about what participation entails, and reassured that declining will not affect any services they receive. While written consent may in some situations frighten the individuals you are talking to, you should at the very least obtain verbal consent.
(reading pg 1-9):
Within qualitative methods, should researchers always ensure confidentiality of participants?
(reading pg 1-9):
It is not always easy or even possible to measure the dangers of a certain context to a given population, let alone to individuals. It is therefore essential to protect the identity of the person from whom you gather information. If collected, the identity of the participants must be protected at all times and not be left
lying around in notebooks or un-protected computer files.
(reading pg 1-9):
Read page 8, about the research protocol.
(reading pg 1-9):
(reading pg 1-9):
In qualitative work, are sample sizes typically small or large?
(reading pg 1-9):
Sample sizes are typically small in qualitative work. One way of identifying how many people you need is to keep interviewing until, in analysis, nothing new comes from the data – a point called ‘saturation’.
(reading pg 1-9):
Describe the purpose of intensity sampling.
And give an example.
(reading pg 1-9):
PURPOSE:
To provide rich information from a few select cases that manifest the phenomenon intensely but are not extreme cases
EXAMPLE:
Interviewing survivors of date rape to learn more about how coerced sex affects women’s sexuality
(reading pg 1-9):
Describe the purpose of deviant case sampling.
And give an example.
(reading pg 1-9):
PURPOSE:
To learn from highly unusual manifestations of the phenomenon in question
EXAMPLE:
Interviewing men who do not beat their wives in a culture where wife abuse is culturally
accepted
(reading pg 1-9):
Describe the purpose of purposeful sampling.
And give an example.
(reading pg 1-9):
PURPOSE:
To illustrate characteristics of particular subgroups of interest; to facilitate comparisons.
EXAMPLE:
Interviewing different types of service provider (police, social workers, doctors, clergy) to com- pare their attitudes toward and treatment of abuse victims
(reading pg 1-9):
Describe the purpose of snowball or chain sampling.
(locate one or two key indi- viduals, and then ask them to name other likely informants)
And give an example.
(reading pg 1-9):
PURPOSE:
To facilitate the identification of hard-to-find cases
EXAMPLE:
Finding commercial sex workers to interview about experiences of childhood sexual abuse by getting cases referred through friendship networks
(reading pg 1-9):
Describe the purpose of maximum variation sampling.
(purposely select a wide range of variation on dimensions of interest)
And give an example.
(reading pg 1-9):
PURPOSE:
To document diverse variations; can help to identify common patterns that cut across variations
EXAMPLE:
Researching variations in norms about the accepti- bility of wife beating by conducting focus groups: young urban women, old urban women, young rural men, old rural men, women who have been abused, women who have not experienced abuse
