Qualitative research Flashcards
Qualitative Research
- A variety of approaches which aim to understand the social reality of idnviiduals, groups and cultures
- Concerned with the meaning not the frequency of phenoenon
- Investigates peoples beliefs, deeply held values, their experiences of the social world and contextual circumstances: “interpretive”
- Aims to provide an in-depth, hollistic and cotext specific understanding of human behaviour. Eg, the cultures of an organisation cannot easily be quantifed or reduced to measurable variables
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Cgaracteristics of Quaitative research
- Aims to inderstand the meanings people have constructed about their world and theri experiencs - how do people make sense of their experiences
- Researchers immers ethemselves in the natural setting of the people whose thoughts and feelings they wish to explore
- Understanding is the aim in itself rather than predicting
- The product is richly descriptive - describing context and participants involved
- The researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and analysis
- Researches gather data to build concepts, understanding and hories rather than to test hypothesis
Parts of Qualitative research
- Ontology - what is out there to know
- Epistemology - what and how can we know about it
- Methodology - how can we go about acquiring that knowledge
- Method - which precise procedures can we use to acquire it
- Sources - which data can we collect and from whom
Imortance of Context in qualitative research
- Approaches people not as individual entities who existin a vacuum but explore their experiences within the wholeof their life context. H uman experience is argued to be embedded in social context
• Language itself is context-bound and depends on the
researchers’ and informants’ values and social location
(lay vs. medical language).
• Detailed replication of a piece of research is impossible
because the research relationship, history and location of
participants differ from study to study- Expectation of
situated knowledge
Trustworhiness in quaitative research
Trustworthiness or rigor of a study refers to the degree of ocnfidenc ein data, interpretation and methods used to ensure the quality of a study
- Credibility = confidence in the truth of the tudy and therefore the findings, is the most important criterion. Comarable to internal validity in quantitative research. Member check- prolonged engagement
- Dependability - stability of the data over time and over the conditions of the study. It is similar to reliability in quantitative research but with the understanding stability of conditions depends on the nature of the study.
- Transferability - extent to which findings are useful to persons in other settings is different form other aspects of research
- Confirmability - degree findings are consistent and could be repeated. This is similar to objectivity in quantitative research in tht it details of adut trail, memos, reflective logs are kept to dicus bias.
What is Bracketing
Drew (2004) - ‘the task of sorting out the qualities
that belong to the researcher’s experience of the
phenomenon’.
Gearing (2004) - ‘scientific process in which a
researcher suspends his or her presuppositions,
biases, assumptions, theories, or previous
experiences to see and describe the phenomenon’
Starks and Trinidad (2007) note that the researcher
‘must be honest and vigilant about her own
perspective, pre-existing thoughts and beliefs, and
developing hypotheses … engage in the self-
reflective process
Within grounded theory research, Creswell and
Miller (2000) note the importance of researchers’
acknowledging their beliefs and biases early in the
research process to allow readers to understand
their positions.
Some researchers may possess greater awareness
of their emotions at a given time than of their
cognitive biases; and this awareness may vary
depending on the substantive issues to be
addressed.
•Alternately, emotional reactions and past
experiences or cognitive biases of the researcher
have the potential to complicate, distort or shorten
data collection and analysis.
•Some authors encourage bracketing at the start of
the research process when the project is first
conceptualised and continuing with the process of
bracketing throughout the research (Rolls and Relf,
2006) and Ahern (1999)
Heideggers phenomenology and objectivity
- Conficting views with some Husserlian concets sih as bracketing- argued prior knwoledge and understanding influences research process including analysis
- Idea of neutral observer is problematic I fthe researcher is the main research tool, then their beliefs and experiences are not to be distanced but embraced
- Assumption is that the researcher cannot stay detached but needs to be engaged in a personal and subjective process of mutual discovery with the informants
- What matters is not nutrlaity or validity but credibility. So its about rflexivity so taking into account the researchers own position in the setting.
Social Costruction of reality
- Social order/knowledge is a result o an ongoing human production and negotiation
- Rejects a single ultimate truth, knwoledge is produced (constructed) through language, representation and other social processes
- Understandings are related to socio-political, cultural, shistorical contexts meaning
- Behaviour does not depend on the objective reality of a situation but on our subjective interpretation of reality
- Researcher can not beextracted from the data- they are active in constructing it.
Social Construct of health and illness
What counts as health and illness varies between individuals, societies, cultures and historical periods (mental illness, homosexuality, hysteria, chronic fatigue syndrome, pregnancy advice) -all vary across times and places
Illness and health behaviours are embedded within cultural meaning
Socially constructed at the experiential level
Sampling and aims in Qualitative research
- Qualitative research is based on smaller but focused injury instead of large rando samples
- It does not aim to generate a sample which is ‘representative’ of th epopulation under study in a statistical sense
- Much uses ‘purposive’ sampling, cases (which may be people, documents, institutions) bare included in the study because of their relationship to the research questions
- Aims to produce transferable (rather than generalisable) and credible/trustworthy (rather than {internaly or externally} valid) findings
Research questions in qualitative research and methdos of collecting and analysing data
- Qualitative research questions seeks to explre or describe phenomena
- Often contain words like lived eperience, personal experience, understanding, meaning and stories
- Can change and evlove as researcher cnduts study
Data collection: Interviews, focus groupa, life grids, diaries, photographs, obects, scrap boos
Data analysis = thematic analysis, pehnomenologica analysis, narrative analysis, grounded therapy approac, affective textual analysis…
Patient and public involvement (PPI) for qualitative research
•NICE approach to patient and public
involvement is based on two key principles:
•lay people, and organisations representing
their interests, have opportunities to
contribute to developing NICE guidance,
advice and quality standards, and support
their implementation
•guidance and other products have a greater
focus and relevance for the people most
directly affected by recommendations.
INVOLVE defines public involvement in
research as research being carried out ‘with’
or ‘by’ members of the public rather than ‘to’,
‘about’ or ‘for’ them
Hy are scrap books good?
- Visual - words not always enugh and visual and material objects hep people elaborate thir stories
- Recreational - Perform everyday lives, objects in scrap book have meaning
- Diary elemet - empowering, encourage reflecion, acess day to day life
- Trauma work - images and objects can express what peopel struggle to sya in words. Images help researches see the world as the participants see it.
Triangulation - photos an dinterviews together. Photo elicits more depth. Pghotos are a stimulus .
Participatory action in research (PAR)
“You cannot understand a system until you try to change it”
Distinct from other qualitative methodologies, particularly concerning the roles played by the researcher and the participants
“…a process in which ‘we’, researchers and participants, systematically work together in cycles to explore concerns, claims or issues that impact upon or disrupt people’s lives. Together we decide on the shape of the outcome, which may be a resource, a research report, a web site, a book etc
- The epistemological asusmptions undeprinning action research see knowledge creation as an ative proess. Knowledge produced is uncertain. Inolves problem-posing, not just problem solving. Motivated by guest to improve and understand world by changing it and learning. Uusally starts with problem or difficult experience sby some or all pop group/service users.
- Bottom up process
Venn diagram of:
- Participatory - collaboration through particpation. Empowerment of partiipants
- Action - chage-real life experience, evidenced in terms of different outcomes
- Research - new knowledge documented lessiosn
The action research process
- The action research process is often described a a cyclical process- an iterative cycle of research, action and reflection underpins te research process although it is not alwyas clear how this happens in practice
- Cyclical with four-inter-relateds stages: PLAN, ACT, OBSERVE EFFECT
Qualitative research overview
