RMB, Qualitative Data Collection, WEEK 9 Flashcards
Interviews
- Where researcher asks the participant a number of questions + aim to find out as much as possible about the participants’ experiences and meanings
Interviews have been referred to as: - “Puzzle combining intellectual and social skills” (Mason 2018)
- “Conversations with a purpose” (Burgess, 1984, p. 102)
-“Knowledge is situated and contextual, and therefore the job of the interview is to ensure that the relevant context are brought into focus so that situated knowledge can be produced.” (Mason, 2018, p. 110) ? - Relevant context is brought by the interviewer asking certain questions or mentioning certain topics which the interviewee then provides knowledge for
Types of Interviews
- Structured: rigid format + is administered like a questionnaire but verbally > may not be as useful in exploring experiences of the participant compared to other methods
- Semi-structured: Not as rigid as ^ > more flexible for the participant and researcher as they can each add question or information which is not directly related > typically there is a guide of questions which are followed but can explore others too.
- Loosely structured: Include fewer specific questions + topics > more useful in focus groups or when other activities are being used too > the questions are not the only way of getting responses here
- Unstructured: No structure in terms of questions, they are asked in terms of whatever the researcher wants to ask > debate as to whether we can really be unstructured as the investigator would have their own intentions + ideas > not really unstructured?
Focus Groups
- Aims to find out as much as possible about the participants’ understandings and meanings, with more than one participant > Individuals come together to discuss a topic
Involves sharing of experiences, ideas, views etc > typically between 3-6 participants (Barbour & Kitzinger, 1999)
Why use focus groups?
Focus group contextualise collective understandings and sense-making (Barbour, 2007) > helps give context to understanding collective ideas + understanding
- Useful in considering peoples’ shared understandings (Kitzinger & Barbour, 1999)
- Sensitive to points of consensus and disparity > some people may feel the need to agree with others + not disclose real ideas
Researcher’s role in focus groups (in-person)
Effort from the researcher: you must act as a facilitator for your participants:
- Ensure the topic is followed
- Focus group schedule used- like interview schedule, list of questions topics and prompts for discussion
- Lead discussion- but more them than you (just lead if they need direction or encouragement)
- Needs attention to interaction in ‘the room’
- Acknowledge agreements and disagreements
- Ensure people are respected and heard
Online focus groups vs in-person focus groups
The format may be different, but the content seems relatively stable between F2F and online Focus Groups (Woodyatt et al., 2016)
Asynchronous Online Focus Groups (not happening at the same times)
+ more time to think about responses
- there could be technological issues associated with them
Synchronous Focus Groups (happens at the same time)
+ technology can provide different types of environments for participants to engage with
- requires a good, and consistent bandwidth, and reliant on individual schedules
Groups in the “virtual world”
+ avatars may lead to greater engagement and co-creation activities
- assumes a certain level of skill/ability is needed
Prompt methods
-Prompting participants with certain things to create discussion
- E.g. Use videos/vignettes/activities/audio to start discussions on a given topic
-Efficacious way in which to encourage discussion and debate (Braun & Clarke, 2013)
- Good for ‘sensitive’ topics (Wellings et al., 2000)
- Discussion becomes participant-led (Speer, 2008) > less concern over researcher bias (ppts won’t act favourably to the researcher if participants drive discussion and not the researcher)
- E.g. Gavin (2004) > Focus groups watched either Beverley Hills 90210, or Sex, Girls, and Kiss Curls > Discuss understandings of ‘official’ safe sex advice and common sense understandings of the practices. Participants drew on several genre-related discursive devices to create a distance between their lived understandings of AIDS/safe sex and contradictory television representations (p. 104)
E.g. Heath, Gavin & Rodham (in prep) > Focus Groups watched ‘A World of Pain – Meera Syal on Self Harm’. Discuss self-harm generally and through drawing comparisons between their own experiences, understandings and sense-making. The participants constructed themselves as having a special, and unrivalled relationship with the person self-harming, which was characterised by secret-sharing, and secret-keeping
Story completion
- type of projective test > is where ambiguous stimuli are presented (e.g. incomplete story/sentence) + individual tells story or explanation concerning the stimulus > indicative of their personality + views
- Allows for participant creativity when completing the story stem
- Tap into ways of understanding through overcoming awareness of participants own emotions and barriers of admission (Clarke, Braun, & Wooles, 2015) > do not need to ask participant for details which include their own conscious awareness but the story allows for inference of what they may think
- Can explore a range of assumptions of a given phenomenon (Braun & Clarke, 2013)
- Useful for exploring socially sensitive, ambiguous, and contentious issues (Clarke, Braun, & Wooles, 2015) > Theoretically flexible
Qualitative surveys
• Predetermined, open-ended questions
• There is scope to combine this qualitative data with quantitative responses, purely qualitative surveys are less common
• Less reliant on researcher craft-skills > does not require creativity of the researcher
• Participants can have more control, and consideration over their responses
• Slightly more scope for possible anonymisation in recruitment
• Can suit broad and specific topics of interest
• Usually suits realist, critical realist, or essentialist perspectives
-However, no interaction with subject, nuances of emotion or environment lost
Solicited Diaries
• Diary writing within pre-defined guidelines, intended for research purposes > only record certain things that researcher needs
• Can be more stringent, e.g. travel practices/food consumption
• (Partial) access to thoughts/feelings of the participants
• More participant control-can be useful for sensitive subjects > may feel more comfortable discussing sensitive things if it is on paper
• Can feel cathartic (giving psychological relief by releasing expression of strong emotion) for the participants-giving voice.
- Can be done by writing, through apps, can include photos.
Media data
- E.g. newspapers, magazines, tv, films, and reader comments
- Ubiquitous (found everywhere) and easily accessible
- Highlights common messages about populations/issues > general ideas found
- Taps into our mediated lives, practices, and beliefs
- Pervasive and accessible (but not necessarily easy) > Need to focus on sampling strategy and justification for use
Online data
- Can (sometimes) use pre-existing ‘naturalistic’ data from online sources in qualitative research E.g. forums, blogs, social media, etc.
- Data ‘harvesting’ = using existing forums, chats, blogs, tweets etc. and analysing that text
- Use existing external cites to host purposive research > e.g. new thread on a forum like Reddit specific to the topic
- Pros and cons- the data is naturalistic, but may not be fit for purpose
- ETHICS: important concern > Is it personal or public data? Can you make some recognisable by quoting them? Should you ask moderator/administrator/owner permission? READ the terms and conditions- not all websites allow researchers to use them
