Qualitative Research

Question 1

Definition of qualitative research?

Answer 1

• research that uses words as data
• collected and analysed in a wide variety of ways
• connected with meaning and experiences of participants, seeks to understand individuals personal, social and cultural worlds as closely as possible
• typically focuses on participant-defined meanings rather than researcher-defined variables
• refers to techniques of data collection/analysis and wider framework/paradigm for conducting research

Question 2

What’s the big Q?

Answer 2

• application of qual techniques within qualitative paradigm

- reflective-interpretative-immersion of data-fluidity

Question 3

What’s the small Q?

Answer 3

-use of qual data collection and techniques, not necessarily in a qual paradigm

Question 4

What’s the biggish Q?

Answer 4

• more structured and less fluid than big Q but more flexible and in line with qual philosophy than small Q
• often used in applied research

Question 5

What does methodological triangulation refer to?

Answer 5

• mixed method approaches
• combination of several research methodologies (quan and qual)
• helps cancel out method effect and increase confidence in findings

Question 6

What are features of qualitative research?

Answer 6

• naturalistic
• concerned with meaning and experience
• focus on participant-defined meanings rather than researcher-defined
• set of interpretative practices
• methodologically diverse

Question 7

What is the positivism approach?

Answer 7

• underlies the ‘standard view of science’
• knowledge=scientific method
• goal of research is to produce ‘objective’ knowledge

Question 8

What is the deductive approach?

Answer 8

• research questions derived from pre-existing theoretical frameworks
• data tests theory
• top-down
• characteristics: emphasis on scientific principles, moves from theory to data, explain causal relationships, collects quantitative data, highly structured methodology, researcher independence, operationalisation of concepts, reductionist, generalisation

Question 9

What is the inductive approach?

Answer 9

• bottom-up
• collection of data to develop theory
• characteristics: moving from data to theory, understanding meanings humans attach to events, close understanding of research context, collection of qualitative data, flexible structure to allow changes, realisation that researcher is part of research process, less concern with need to generalise

Question 10

What are the collection techniques?

Answer 10

• interviews
• focus groups
• analysis of secondary sources (diaries, texts books, news, documents, social media, online chat groups, webpages)
• observational techniques
• participatory methods and action techniques
• stories

Question 11

What are the methodologies of qualitative analysis?

Answer 11

• interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is inductive and aims to capture and explore the meanings that participants assign to experiences. Described as methodology (informed framework for research)
• grounded theory (generate theory that’s grounded in data)
• thematic analysis
• framework analysis
• discourse and narrative analysis/critical discourse analysis (study of talk and text that views language as social practice)

Question 12

What are the similarities in qualitative approaches?

Answer 12

• concern with meaning and experience

- focus on the subjective

Question 13

What are the differences in qualitative approaches?

Answer 13

• epistemological position
• degree of reflexivity
• treatment of text
• role of the researcher
• focus of the researcher question/agenda
• analytic process

Question 14

What is thematic analysis?

Answer 14

• umbrella term for range of approaches that differ in philosophy and procedure
• 3 schools: coding reliability (small Q), codebook (biggish Q), reflective/organic (big Q)
• concerned with organising and describing data in terms of themes
• often involves going further and interpreting what these themes mean in terms of the research question

Question 15

Definition of theme?

Answer 15

• captures something important in relation to your research question
• at minimum TA describes/organises patterned responses across dataset
• at max TA interprets aspects of phenomenon
• seeks to theorise significance/meaning of what’s been identified in data and consider implications

Question 16

What is inductive thematic analysis?

Answer 16

• bottom-up
• themes strongly linked to data itself
• code data without trying to fit to researchers preconceptions (impossible to completely free from them though)

Question 17

What is theoretical thematic analysis?

Answer 17

• top-down
• analysis driven by researcher’s theoretical/analytic interest
• less of rich description and instead more of a detailed analysis of one aspect
• coding for a specific research question

Question 18

Definition of semantic level?

Answer 18

• bucket/domain summary

- refers to themes directly observable in the data

Question 19

Definition of latent level?

Answer 19

• story book/fully realised
• refers to underlying phenomenon that you infer from data
• examining underlying ideas, assumptions, ideologies that are theorised as shaping the semantic content of the data

Question 20

Definition of realist analysis?

Answer 20

-themes that categorise the nature of the social world

Question 21

Definition of constructionist analysis?

Answer 21

• theorises socio-cultural contexts and structural conditions that enable individual accounts
• themes that categorise different ways of representing the social world

Question 22

What are the phases of thematic analysis?

Answer 22

• familiarizing self with data
• generating initial codes
• searching for themes
• reviewing themes
• defining and naming themes
• producing the report