Sardanña (2011) Fundamentals of Qualitative ResearchⅠ

• Qualitative research offers a practical introduction to its fundamentals from a particular perspective.
• It includes an eclectic collection of approaches and methods used in several social science disciplines.
• The book first gives an overview, progresses to commonly used data collection methods, discusses matters of research design and data analysis.
• Finally, recommendations writing/dissemination of reports, and resources for further learning.

Qualitative Research: Definition

• The term is an umbrella for various methods used to study natural social life.
• Data collected and analyzed is primarily nonquantitative, consisting of textual materials and visual materials.
• Goals depend on the project: documentation, understandings, evaluation, artistic renderings or critique.
• It is conducted within multiple disciplines like education, sociology, health care etc.
• There are multiple genres, elements, and styles, and is grounded in the non-fictional realm of social reality.

Genres of Qualitative Research

• A literary genre is a type of literature with distinct purpose, structure, content, length, or format.
• In qualitative research genre criteria are the particular approach to inquiry, and the study's presentation.
• It is not an exhaustive list, but a compilation of the most common genres researchers use.
• Some genres are not discrete and can be combined.

Ethnography

• It is the observation and documentation of social life to render an account of a group's culture.
• It refers to both long-term fieldwork and the final written product.
• Originally used by anthropologists, ethnography is now multidisciplinary and used to explore cultures.

Understanding Culture

• Culture defined as knowledge that is learned and shared for behavior and interpreting experience
• Culture is social knowledge, not unique to an individual
• People are not blind followers of norms, but interpret and alter cultural knowledge, develop versions of culture and staying in touch with social expectations.
• Culture is not a "thing” but an individual and social evolutionary process
• Culture is knowledge, language, values, customs, and material objects passed from person to person and from one generation to the next.
• Society is a large social grouping in the same geographic territory under the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations.
• Society composed of people whereas culture is composed of ideas, behavior, and material possessions.
• Society and culture are interdependent, cannot exist without the other.
• Culture is like a toolkit that permits people to get things done.
• Culture can be considered as the software, the coding systems for doing meaning and executing sequences of work.
• Human physiological and cognitive hardware make sense and take action with others in daily life by structuring the everyday practices of being human.
• Ethnography's aim is researching the default conditions and their "software updates" of a people's ways of living.

Grounded Theory

• It involves meticulously analyzing qualitative data to understand human processes and construct theory grounded in the data or "from the ground up."

• Originators in the 1960s Anselm L. Strauss and Barney G. Glaser studied illness and dying in the 1960s.

• It has been reenvisioned by writers such as Juliet Corbin, Adele E. Clarke, and Kathy Charmaz.

• It constitutes an analytic process of comparing small data units collected from interviews.

• Series of cumulative coding cycles helps achieve abstraction and a range of dimensions to the emergent categories’ properties.

• Classic theory works toward achieving a core category which conceptually represents the study

• Core category becomes the foundation for generating a theory about observed processes.

• Charmaz studied how chronic illness affects the body/self, identifying "adapting" as a core category with physical impairment.

• "Adapting" implies actions people take to solve a problem through analysis of interview transcripts coded to construct actions participants:

• Altering life and self to accommodate losses and reunify body and self.

• Acknowledging impairment and altering life and self in socially and personally acceptable ways.

• Bodily limits and social circumstances force adapting to loss and shades into acceptance, accommodating the experience of illness

• It is a multistage genre, but utilized in thousands of studies across disciplines since its introduction.

Phenomenology

• It is studying a phenomenon’s essence and essentials to determine what it is.
• Its roots lie in early hermeneutic analysis and interpreting texts for core meanings.
• Today focuses on concepts, events, or the lived experiences of humans, from grocery shopping to getting married.
• Motherhood: a phenomenon, essential element is a parent.
• Purpose isn't to examine lives of mothers, but synthesize commonalities of their experiences and perceptions
• Essential elements: motherhood as "caretaking responsibility" and as "protector of one's child."
• Some studies take a phenomenological approach to achieve intimate awareness and deep understanding of human experiences.
• Researchers reveal what goes through one's mind and document these experiences.
• There are no specific data gathering methods: instead, the primary task involves reflection on the data to capture the experience's essence.

Case Study

• It focuses on a single unit of analysis, serves as a manageable project for novices and learn methods of fieldwork.
• Its purpose isn't to argue how the case represents comparable individuals or sites.
• The case itself is valued as a unit for in-depth examination, unlike studies researching settings to gather broad perspectives.
• Criticism regarding "studying just one of anything," is countered with "All you can!"
• The study's generalizability relies on researcher logic and reader inferences about broader populations or issues.

Case Selection

• Chosen deliberately for its uniqueness, presenting a rich opportunity for focused study
• Chosen strategically, representing the most typical of its kind
• Chosen simply for convenience.
• Diverse participants offer diverse experiences and perspectives.
• Studies might examine multiple cases for comparison and contrast, placing all in context.

Content Analysis

• Content analysis involves systematically examining texts, visuals, media and/or material culture to analyze prominent manifest and latent meanings.
• Manifest meaning defines what it is, is surface and apparent
• Latent meaning defines what it suggests, connotative and subtextual.
• Some analyses are quantitative and qualitative because statistical frequency is an importance measure of salient themes.

Mixed Methods Research

• It combines qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis.
• It assumes paradigms can work in concert to corroborate findings, or to reveal complementary/contradictory outcomes.
• Participants complete a survey rating their attitudes with quantitative survey responses. Then a sample is expansion by using a qualitative approach

Narrative Inquiry

• It encompasses multiple approaches that transform data into literary story formats, referred to as "creative nonfiction."
• Humans tend to structure knowledge as stories with narrative forms of cognition.
• Uses story line and plotting to make sense of experiences
• Inquiry recrafts accounts into artistic forms.

Poetic Inquiry

• Poetic inquiry is the transformation of qualitative data into the expression of qualitative experience through poetic structures.
• With literary poetry, poetic inquiry takes various forms through extracted verbatim words and phrases.

Arts-Based Research

• It applies performing and visual arts media and methods to collect and often represent/present its findings.
• Those in the arts industries have researched and interviewed key people for their products.
• Artistic expression can collect participant data
• The arts are epistemological processes to get to ways of knowing through personal inquiry and aesthetic expression.
• Art forms give insightful meaning when words alone are insufficient.

Autoethnography

• It is the reflexive, cultural reporting of self through narrative
• Genre integrates the study of culture that one is a part of, relational and inward experiences.
• The author incorporates the 'I' but analyzes themselves.

Evaluation Research

• It examines people, programs, organizations, and/or policies to assess quality, merit, and effectiveness
• It is customized, employs qualitative and quantitative approaches
• Generally a contracted enterprise
• Best studies involve immediate stakeholders as part of the process
• Researcher assesses the values at work in projects, recommends for improvement.

Action Research

• Action research is conducted with the expressed purpose of observing not just lives of people being researched, but reflecting on one for better practice
• Participants' lives/social environments are examined critically.
• Diagnostics are conducted to discern problems/issues.
• Solutions and empowerment strategies are made to initiate and sustain change.

Investigative Journalism

• Journalists and qualitative researchers use similar methods to gather data.
• Journalists target general public audiences and are not bound by standards of academia, though rigorous.
• This genre uncovers social life and reveals injustices of current interest to the general public and policymakers.

Critical Inquiry

• Critical inquiry is a social and political mission guided by Canella & Perez as a hybrid: researcher, cultural worker, investigative journalist, communicator. It analyzes issues that research and reveal social injustices, and focuses on achieving emancipatory goals.

Same Topic, Different Genres

• Same can be investigated through one or more of the genres mentioned.
• Selection attributes about approaching and shaping writing that is appropriate for the broad topic.

Elements of Qualitative Research

The Researcher(s)

• Motivated by interests, conduct a study to investigate aspects of social life.
• The principal investigator initiates, plans, facilitates, and oversees the project.
• Researcher is the instrument of the endeavor and is ethical.
• Researcher's autobiography and identity (values, beliefs, gender) influence their research.

Epistemology

• Theory of knowledge construction based on the researcher's worldview.
• Contemporary research adheres to positivism as factual information that is validly documented.
• Most qualitative researchers adopt postmodern perspective: no absolute truth because it is contingent on contest and multiple perspectives.
• Knowledge is constructed, goal is insight about social life.
• Gender, age, ethnicity frame observations.
• There are no neutral lenses for qualitative researcher.

The Contextual Legacy

• Research is situated in context, with current projects building on previous research.
• Methodologists give recommended ways to conduct fieldwork, collect, and analyze data.
• Use available literature that shapes current studies and knowledge.

The Purpose

• Purpose gives study meaning, motivation, and direction.
• Includes the rationale, topic, research questions, and anticipated outcomes.
• Conceptual framework: epistemological, theoretical, and methodological approach, can evolve as the research proceeds.

Participants and/or Materials

• Studies observe and interview humans, some rely on documents.
• People involved are called participants/coresearchers; voluntary engagement and support is necessary for ethical conduct.

Ethics

• Researchers don't have free reign: moral and legal codes regarding ethical treatment
• Principle: "But first, do not harm,"
• Depending on affiliation with institutions proposals reviewed to guarantee safe design and ethical conduct, subject to review by established boards
• Heightened attunement is needed to minimize discomfort.

Duration

• Projects are bound by time. Data collection can last from days to decades.
• Time spent in the field varies and depends on funding, permissions etc.

The Field Site and/or Repository

• Research happens in rooms, buildings, natural outdoor settings, shaping humans.
• There are sites to meet with and interview people
• Cyberspace not just a construct; includes transfers, methods and sites foe display.

Data and Their Collection

• The Latin root of datum means "something given"
• Researchers collect and investigates gives us data.
• Corpus refers to the total body of data, a living entity to analyze.
• Barney G. Glaser: “All is data,”
• Anything that informs a study has contributions to understanding a phenomenon.

Analytic Approaches

• Researchers sort through collected data to bring order.
• Humans are pattern-making beings, applied to data analysis
• Patterns are constructed by reorganizing and grouping data into themes though holistic, interpretive, and artistic genres can change this
• There are recommended ways for constructing meaning
• Organize and make sense of information, using literary devices.

Representation and Presentation

• Summary of a research study in appropriate form such as a dissertation, journal article etc.
• The medium selected should be the best way to represent the story of the project.
• Technical features: abstract, headings, endnotes/footnotes/references and visual summary devices (table, charts etc.)

Styles of Qualitative Research

• Style results from writer or artist's chosen combination of genre/elements, forming a distinctive whole.
• Styles refer to the varied tones for its reportage and writing.
• Genre: methodological whys, elements: whos, whats, whens, and wheres.

Tales of the Field

• Broadly classified types of ethnographic writing, comparable to literary styles.
• Realist tale: third person, objective voice with intellectual style
• Confessional tale: researcher's first-person, intimate account
• Impressionist tale: uses language's power for writing about dramatic moments
• Critical tales: focus on political/social ramifications
• Formal tales: emphasize theory derived from analysis
• Literary tales: emphasize writer portraying participants as “characters"
• Jointly told tales: collaborative in which the researcher and researched share narrative space.

Description, Analysis, and Interpretation

• Three dimensions identified by Harry F. Wolcott, function as styles.
• First dimension: description
• Second dimension: analysis
• Thirddimension: interpretation.
• Description presents a "factual" account of fieldwork answering "What is going on here?"
• Analysis presents systematic expansion beyond description , identifying relationships to explain how things work
• Interpretation reaches out for "understanding or explanation" beyond, relating observations to theory or researcher's experiences.

Closure

• Qualitative research has a variety of genres, etc.
• Investigative methods: eclectic, heuristic, and holistic.
• Emphasis is on the researcher as human instrument building skills and empathy.