Chapter 10

Member Checks

Ask participants to read draft descriptions to verify accuracy

Substantive Frame

Breadth and density of the material we want to collect

Qualitative Interviewing and Criminal Justice Studies

Can be the sole way of gathering data in most criminal justice studies

Negative Cases

Cases that contradict emerging themes

Rashomon Effect

Centers on telling different sides of a story

Features Shared by Qualitative Methods

Collection of qualitative data, exploratory in nature, focus on unstudied processes or unanticipated phenomena, focus on social context and interconnections between people and social phenomena, looking at events leading up to a particular event of outcome, flexible research

Main Questions

Conversational guides, open ended questions to gain a baseline for participants to elaborate more

Coding Memoing

Document how you coded data

Synchronic Framework

Does not depend on time or location of the topic

Steps in Gaining Access to Interviewees

Establishing your role as the interviewer, make formal requests and receive formal approval, use a sponsor or hang out where subjects hang out

Analysis

Expanding beyond a purely descriptive account

What does Qualitative Methods Include

Exploratory research questions, inductive reasoning/research, focus on social context and human subjectivity, meanings attached to social events by participants

Open Coding

Exploring all possible meanings before assigning conceptual definitions

Microanalysis

Going deeper into the data and challenging original frame of reference

Stability of Results

How we interpret consistency in stories

Rapport

How you connect with participants, done through informal conversations or finding something you and the respondent have in common, might need to conduct several conversations with the respondents

Interview Guide Unstructured Interviews

Include a list of topical areas that you want to cover in the conversation

Conversational Unstructured Interviews

Informal chat where conversation flows organically

Qualitative Interviewing

Interaction between an interviewer and a respondent where the interviewer has a general plan of inquiry, including topics to be covered, might not have a specific set of questions to be asked in a particular order, purposeful conversation

Focus Groups

Interviews with groups of people brought together to engage in guided discussion of some topic, used to generate hypotheses or combined with other types of data gathering such as participant observation, can show how opinions are produced expressed and exchanged in life

Audit Trail

Keeping every field note or memo

Approach to Learning (Feature of Qualitative Interviewing)

Less of a data gathering exercise, more of a process of learning about perspectives of others

Qualitative Description

Letting the data speak for themselves with minimal commentary

Branch Approach Interview Questions

Main topic with branching questions

River and Channel Interview Questions

Many streams of questioning that lead into the main channel, with some stream diverging

Qualitative Interpretation

Moving beyond what can be explained with a degree of certainty

Active Interviewing

Natural conversation and spontaneity, respondents answers determine the subsequent questions, purposefully interactive

Groupthink

Occurs when a group of people make irrational or non-optimal decisions, spurred by the urge to conform or the belief that dissent is impossible

Unstructured Schedules

Open style of interviewing, providing the most breadth, depth, and natural interaction with participants

Issues With Stigmatized Information

Participants may get upset by having to share such information, focus groups inherently cannot ensure confidentiality, still can be used to assess differences in opinions on these issues

Structured Schedules

Predetermined questions and answers sets

Probe Questions

Prompt participants to elaborate on responses by filling in more detail and depth

Critical Realism (Feature of Qualitative Interviewing)

Reality exists, but knowledge is constructed through meanings, reality exists beyond social constructions and we can learn about it through the perspective of others

Reflexivity

Refers to your subjectivity and the meaning you give to information, important to remain critically conscious of your reflexivity when conducting qualitative interview

What Does Qualitative Interviewing Rely On

Relies on open ended questions and seek to hear answers in the respondents own words, less structure, more conversational, much longer

Semi Structured Interview

Standardized questions but allows the interviewer to explore themes that emerge during the interview, researcher can probe for additional information

Structured Interviews

Standardized responses, respondents are given the same stimulus, allows for responses to be compared

Diachronic Delivery

Starts at the beginning and progress chronologically

Operations Memoing

Steps that you took in the research process

Qualitative Methods

Study of social life using unstructured, non-numerical data

Richness of Human Experience (Feature of Qualitative Interviewing)

Surveys often only give us a superficial understanding of concepts and people viewpoints

Interview Schedule

The structure of the interview, may have predetermined questions or topical areas to be discussed, creating an outline of information categories you want to obtain before you start writing

Ethical Issues in Qualitative Methods

Voluntary Participation, Subject Well-Being, Identity Disclosure, Confidentiality, Appropriate Boundaries, Researcher Safety

Analytic Memoing

Ways to explore relationships in the data

Transferability

When working with hypothesis can be transferred from one context to another

Memoing

Writing about research process