Lesson 14: Four writing strategies

Question 1

What are the four elements that all qualitative research reports, regardless of approach have?

Answer 1

All qualitative research reports, regardless of approach, contain these four elements:

1. reflexivity and representation,
2. audience,
3. encoding, and
4. quotes

Question 2

What is the difference between qualitative researchers today than before?

Answer 2

Qualitative researchers today are much more self-disclosing about their qualitative writings than they were a few years ago.

Question 3

How does Ronald Pelias (2011) describe reflexive qualitative researchers?

Answer 3

Ronald Pelias (2011) describes reflexive writers as “ethically and politically self-aware, makethemselves part of their own inquiry”.

Question 4

What qualities are no longer acceptable when one must be a qualitative researcher today?

Answer 4

No longer is it acceptable to be the omniscient, distanced qualitative writer.

Question 5

How we write reflects what exactly?

Answer 5

How we write is a reflection of our own interpretation based on the cultural, social, gender, class, and personal politics that we bring to research.

Question 6

What does the best writing acknowledge, according to Richardson (1994)?

Answer 6

According to Richardson (1994), the best writing acknowledges its own “undecidability”forthrightly, that all writing has “subtexts” that “situate” or “position” the material within a particular historical and local specific time and place. In this perspective, no writing has “privileged status” (p. 518) or is superior over other writings. Indeed, writings are co-constructions, representations of interactive processes between researchers and the researched (Gilgun, 2005).

Question 7

What is contradictory to qualitative research according to Czarniawska (2004) and Gilgun (2005)?

Answer 7

Czarniawska (2004) and Gilgun (2005) make the point that this silence is contradictory to qualitative research that seeks to hear all voices and perspectives.

Question 8

Who does the writing have an impact on?

Answer 8

The writing has an impact on the reader.

Question 9

What is the role of the reader in the qualitative research?

Answer 9

The reader also makes an interpretation of the account and may form an entirely different interpretation than the author or the participants.

Question 10

What are the questions that qualitative researchers should consider in their writings when it comes to reflexivity and representation?

Answer 10

1. Should I write about what people say or recognize that sometimes they cannot remember or choose notto remember?
2. What are my political reflexivities that need to come into my report?
3. Has my writing connected the voices and stories of individuals back to the set of historic, structural, and economic relations in which they are situated?
4. How far should I go in theorizing the words of participants?
5. Have I considered how my words could be used for progressive, conservative, and repressive social policies?
6. Have I backed into the passive voice and decoupled my responsibility from my interpretation?
7. To what extent has my analysis (and writing) offered an alternative to common sense or the dominant discourse?

Question 11

What do qualitative researchers need to do in their writings?

Answer 11

Qualitative researchers need to “position” themselves in their writings.

Question 12

What is the concept of reflexivity?

Answer 12

The concept of reflexivity is when the writer engages in self-understanding about the biases, values, and experiences that he or she brings to a qualitative research study.

Question 13

What are the two parts of reflexivity?

Answer 13

1. The researcher first talks about his or her experiences with the phenomenon being explored. This involves relaying past experiences through work, schooling, family dynamics, and so forth.
2. The second part is to discuss how these past experiences shape the researcher’s interpretation of the phenomenon. This is a second important ingredient that is often overlooked or often left out because the process is challenging and the lack of guiding resources (van Manen, 2014).

Question 14

What is suggested to add when adding reflexivity in qualitative writing?

Answer 14

We suggest writing reflexive comments about what is being experienced as the study progresses—these might be observations during data collection or hunches about what the findings might indicate or reactions from participants during the study. These comments could be easily captured and retrieved using memo functions in qualitative software programs.

Question 15

What is the heart of a reflexive study?

Answer 15

Reviewing and then discussing how biases, values, and experiences impact emerging understandings is actually the heart of being reflexive in a study.

Question 16

Why is reviewing and then discussing how biases, values, and experiences impact emerging understandings the heart of being reflexive in a study?

Answer 16

It is because it is important that the researcher not only detail his or her experiences with the phenomenon but also be self-conscious about how these experiences may potentially have shaped the findings, the conclusions, and the interpretations drawn in a study.

Question 17

What cannot be considered as separate from the author, the study participants, or the readers?

Answer 17

The act of writing a qualitative text cannot be considered separate from the author, the study participants, or the readers.

Question 18

What does the placement of reflexive comments need?

Answer 18

The placement of reflexive comments in a study also needs some consideration.

Question 19

Where can a reflexive comment be positioned in?

Answer 19

The reflexive comments may be positioned in one or more positions in a qualitative study.

Question 20

What are the possible placements to put a reflexive comment in?

Answer 20

Among the most popular placements involve the opening (or closing) passage of the study, a methods discussion in which the writer talks about his or her role in the study, and personal comments threaded throughout the study.

Question 21

What is not odd to begin with in a phenomenology?

Answer 21

It is not unusual to begin with a personal statement in a phenomenology whereby the authors disclose their backgrounds (see Brown, Sorrell, McClaren, & Creswell, 2006).

Question 22

What can a case study open and end in?

Answer 22

A case study may open with apersonal vignette (see Stake, 1995) or end with an epilogue (see Asmussen & Creswell, 1995).

Question 23

Where can the researchers put their positions in an ethnographic study?

Answer 23

The researcher may talk about his or her “position” in the introduction, the methods, and the findings or themes as is often the case in an ethnographic study (e.g., see Mac an Ghaill & Haywood, 2015; Appendix E).