Qualitative Research Flashcards
List the 6 phases of Thematic Analysis?
- Familiarizing yourself with your data
- Generating initial codes
- Searching for themes
- Reviewing themes
- Defining and naming themes
- Producing the report
Describe and Compare Diary Studies?
Involve asking participants to keep a diary in which they record their feelings, activities, and experiences. Participants can write down their experiences or use devices to record themselves/their
experiences
ADVANTAGES:
- The data provided allow an insight into
events and experiences ‘as they happen’
- Allows insight into how events progressed over time
DISADVANTAGES:
- Keeping a diary may alter the daily experiences and routines you want to
investigate
- There is no way of ensuring that participants follow instructions closely
around diarizing
Describe and Compare Focus Groups?
An interview’ that is conducted with a small group of people-6 to 10 is usually enough.
ADVANTAGES:
- Allow for naturalistic interaction –
conversation style
- Offers a researcher
the opportunity to gather information in
a situation where participants are
interacting with one another.
DISADVANTAGES:
- Focus groups produce a large amount of data
- Transcription and analysis may be time-consuming
- Challenges around scheduling time and place
List and Explain the characteristics of a qualitative research method?
-
Natural setting: Collecting data at the site where participants experience the issue or
problem you want to study - Researcher as key instrument: Qualitative researchers collect data themselves in various ways including examining documents, observing behaviours, and interviewing participants
- Multiple sources of data: Qualitative researchers use multiple sources of data such as interviews, observations, and documents
- Inductive data analysis: Qualitative researchers build their themes, patterns, and categories from the ‘bottom up’
- Participants’ meanings: Qualitative researchers focus on learning the meaning that participants hold about the problem or issue – not their own meaning
-
Emergent design: The qualitative research process is emergent, flexible and evolving –
open to changes in the field - Theoretical lens: Qualitative researchers often use a lens to view their studies
-
Holistic account: Qualitative researchers try to develop a complex picture of the problem
under study - Commitment to research:
- Researchers spend extensive time in the field collecting data
- Engage in a complex, and time-consuming process of data
analysis - Involves writing long passages to substantiate claims
Things to consider in an interview?
Before the data collection
- Preparing your research questions –
skilled (e.g. managing silence/discomfort)
- Selecting participants
- The interview schedule
- Piloting the interview
During interview
- Building rapport with participants
- Setting up and starting the recording
device
After interview
- Transcription
- Reflexivity
Describe and Compare Web- Based Data?
- Use of web-based data from various internet sources
- Other web-based techniques include online interviews
: Direct messaging
: Live Skype/Zoom/MS Teams/WhatsApp
calls
ADVANTAGES
- Web-based data is often rich in detail and can be focused on a specific topic
- The internet allows people to speak freely and truthfully
DISADVANTAGES:
- Anonymity may allow people to lie about their experiences
- Make accessible a wealth of data that researchers need to filter through
- Views reflected are only those of internet users
Ethical considerations in web-based research:
- Limits opportunities for seeking consent
Define Interviews and the Types of Interviews?
- Involves the researcher asking
questions, listening, and analyzing the responses. - It is a process of gathering information for research using verbal interaction
Types
- Structured
- Unstructured
- Semi-structured - involves the
preparation of a small number
of questions relating to the
issue a researcher wants to
study
Describe and Compare Observations?
Involves observing people without interacting with them, in their natural
setting. Usually used in Ethnographic
studies
ADVANTAGES:
- Allows researcher to see experiences ‘as they are lived’ and unfold in their natural setting.
DISADVANTAGES:
- People may behave differently to the way they normally would because they know they are being watched.
- This method also require researchers
to immerse themselves in the field for an extensive period.
Identify the advantages of thematic analysis?
- Flexibility
- Relatively easy and quick method to learn and do.
- Accessible to researchers with little or no experience of qualitative research.
- Results are generally accessible to educated general public.
- Useful method for working within participatory research paradigm, with participants as collaborators.
- Can usefully summarize key features of a large body of data, and/or offer a ‘thick description’ of the data set.
- Can highlight similarities and differences across the data set.
Describe and Compare Media and Text Sources?
Involves the use of textual data that already exists
- Newspapers, documents, stories, magazines, letters, reports etc.
Requires an understanding of the context under which the material was created
ADVANTAGES:
- Reduces the need to collect new data as materials already exist
- No possibility that the researcher will
influence the data
DISADVANTAGES:
- The vast amount of media texts and
sources and their ease of access may lead to the temptation to use them even when unnecessary or inappropriate
- Only very specific research questions can be researched using these methods alone
Identify the characteristics of a good qualitative study?
- Researcher employs rigorous data collection procedures
- Researcher frames the study within the assumptions and characteristics of the qualitative approach to research
- Researcher uses a recognized approach to research
- The study includes detailed methods and a rigorous approach to data collection, analysis, and write-up
- Researcher analyses data using multiple levels of abstraction
- The researcher writes persuasively so that the reader experiences ‘being there’
- The qualitative research in a good study is ethical
Name the steps of a research process?
- Identifying an issue or problem to study
- Reading about the problem/issue/topic
- Provides background understanding
- Informs research questions
- Helps to identify research gaps
(methodological/contextual/theoretical) - Asking open-ended questions about the issue
- Collecting different forms of data
- E.g. interviews, observations, documents,
audiovisual materials - Organising and analysing data
- Presenting data based on participants’ views as well as
our own interpretations - Engaging in a process called reflexivity
- The presentation of findings includes quotations as evidence of the claims we make of participants’ views
- Researchers need to pay attention to ethical considerations throughout the research process
- Some standard ethical considerations include:
- Voluntary participation
- Informed consent
- Non-maleficence
- Anonymity and confidentiality
- Giving back to participants for their time and effort
- Make available any forms of support that participants may need
- Adhere to ethical requirements on the
reporting of criminal activity and forms of abuse - The aim is to present accurate accounts of participants’
views - Research is assessed for quality by various bodies
Explain why we use qualitative research?
- When a phenomenon needs to be explored
- When we need a complex, detailed understanding of an issue
- When we want to empower individuals to share their stories, hear their voices, and
minimise power relationships in the research - When we want to write in a literary, flexible style that conveys peoples’ stories.
- When we want to understand the context or settings in which participants experience a
particular issue - As a follow-up on quantitative research to explain linkages in causal theories and models
- To develop theories when partial or inadequate theories exist for particular phenomena
- When quantitative measures and statistical analysis do not fit the problem
Desribe the ethical considerations in web-based research?
Ethical considerations in web-based research:
- Limits opportunities for seeking consent
You need to consider whether;
- the information is available on a
public domain/forum/ chat group
- the information is in a private chat
group/forum
- it is possible to contact those who posted and seek consent
Identify the three types of qualitative analysis?
- Thematic Analysis
- Narrative Analysis
- Discourse Analysis
