Chapter 18: Qualitative Research General Principles

Standards for Evaluating Qualitative Studies

(1) contemporary positivist standards; (2) social constructivist standards; (3) empowerment standards

Strengths and Weaknesses of Qualitative Research

Depth of Understanding, Flexibility, Cost, Subjectivity, Generalizability

Naturalism

Emphasizes observing people in their everyday settings and reporting their stories as they tell them This started in the 1930s and 1940s with the "Chicago School" Ethnography

Deviant Case Sampling

Entails examining cases that do not fit into the regular pattern Intensity Sampling & Critical Incidents Sampling

Topics Appropriate for Qualitative Research

One of the key strengths of qualitative research is the comprehensiveness of perspective it gives the researcher Appropriate to research topics that appear to defy simple quantification The qualitative research may recognize several nuances of attitude and behavior that might escape researchers using other methods Good way to study social processes over time Thinking topics

Ethnographic Fallacy

Overgeneralization and oversimplification of the patterns observed

Quota Sample

Persons representing all different participation categories should be studied

Thinking topics

Practices: Various kinds of behavior Episodes: Variety of events Encounters: Two or more people meeting and interacting in immediate proximity with one another Roles: Analysis of the positions people occupy and the behavior associated with those positions Relationships: Kinds of behavior that are appropriate to pairs or sets of roles Groups Organizations Settlements: Smaller-scale societies Social Worlds: Ambiguous social entities with vague boundaries and populations Lifestyles or subcultures: Ways that large numbers of people adjust to life

Six commonly used strategies to enhance the rigor of qualitative studies

Prolonged Engagement, Triangulation, Debriefing and Support, Negative Case Analysis, Member Checking, Auditing

Introduction

Qualitative research is a theory-generating activity Attempt to make sense of an ongoing process that cannot be predicted in advanced

Depth of Understanding

Qualitative research is especially effective for studying subtle nuances in attitudes and behaviors and for examining social processes over time

Subjectivity

Qualitative research measurements are often very personal

Theoretical Sampling

begins by selecting new cases that seem to be similar to those that generated previously detected concepts and hypotheses. Once the researcher perceives that no new insights are being generated from the observation of similar cases, a different type of case is selected, and the same process is repeated: Additional cases similar to this new type of case are selected until no new insights are being generated Combines elements of homogenous sampling and deviant case sampling

Three threats to trustworthiness

Reactivity: Occurs when the researcher's presence in the field distorts the naturalism of the setting and consequently the things being observed there Researcher Biases: Can distort what researchers perceive or how they selectively observe Respondent Bias: Need to appear socially desirable

Cost

Relatively inexpensive Can be typically undertaken by one researcher with a notebook and pencil or with a good-quality audio or video recorder The process of conducting in-depth, probing interviews or observing behavior directly tends to take a lot more time than most data gathering methods using questionnaires or self-report scales

Intensity Sampling

Select cases that are more or less intense than usual but not so unusual that they would be cased deviant

Homogenous Sampling

Selecting participants who are very similar in experience, perspective, or outlook.

Snowball Sample

Technique that begins a sample with a few relevant participants you've identified and then expands through referrals

Generalizability

The personal nature of the observations and measurements made by the researcher can produce results that would not necessarily be replicated by another researcher The overly comprehensive nature of qualitative research can make the results less generalizable Problem of generalizability even within the specific subject matter being observed

Catalytic Authenticity and Tactical Authenticity

The researcher must evoke action by participants to effect desired change and a redistribution of power. A follow-up should obtain and report participant testimonials suggesting a change in their views about the need for change and whether the research increased their optimism about the possibility for change

Participatory Action Research

The researcher's function is to serve as a resource to those being studied—typically, disadvantaged groups—as an opportunity for them to act effectively in their own interest The disadvantaged participants define their problems, define the remedies desired, and take the lead in designing the research that will help them realize their aims Distinguished by its empowerment aims This approach began in developing nations research development, but it spread quickly to Europe and North America Vivid critique of classical social science research

Social Constructivist Approach

They view trustworthiness and these strategies more in terms of capturing multiple subjective realities than ensuring the portrayal of an objective social reality The point in member checking is to assess whether participants acknowledge that their subjective realities are being depicted as they see them Fittingness or Transferability Triangulation: Inconsistencies as a possible reflection of multiple realities

Debriefing and Support

This occurs when teams of investigators meet regularly to give each other feedback, emotional support, and ideas. They might exchange alternative perspectives and new ideas about how they are collecting data, about problems, and about meanings in the data already collected. Increases the likelihood of spotting and correcting for biases and other problems in data collection and interpretation

Maximum Variation Sampling

This strategy aims to capture the diversity of a phenomenon within a small sample to be studied intensively. By observing a phenomenon under heterogeneous conditions, we are likely to generate more useful insights about it.

Two stages of sampling

To what extent are the total situations available for observation representative of the more general class of phenomena you wish to describe and explain? Are your actual observations within those total situations representative of all possible observations?

Flexibility

You may modify your research design at any time

Purposive Sampling

You select a sample of observations that you believe will yield the most comprehensive understanding of your subject of study based on the intuitive feel for the subject that comes from extended observation and reflection (All of the below involve this type of sampling) Quota Sample, Snowball Sample, Deviant Case Sampling, Maximum Variation Sampling, Homogenous Sampling, theoretical sampling

Contemporary Positivist Standards

the key issue in evaluating the rigor of qualitative research is trustworthiness Three threats to trustworthiness Six commonly used strategies to enhance the rigor of qualitative studies

Fittingness or Transferability

§ whether the qualitative research report provides enough detail about the study contexts and participants to enable readers in other situations to judge whether the findings seem likely to apply to the context or population with which they are concerned

Ethnography

A study that focuses on detailed and accurate description rather than explanation Based on telling "their" stories the way they "really are", not the way the researcher understands them

Case Studies

An ideographic examination of a single individual, family, group, organization, community, or society Its chief purpose is description Distinguished by their exclusive focus on a particular case and their use of a full variety of evidence regarding that case Can form the basis for the development of more general, nomothetic theories The rationale for using this method is the availability of a special case that seems to merit intensive investigation Of special interest to practitioners is the trend toward using a mixed-methods case study approach that combines qualitative and quantitative methods while using single-case designs to evaluate one's own practice effectiveness. Intensive qualitative (clinical) interviewing of the client, as well as the client's significant others, can help identify what other important changes in the client's social environment may have coincided with changes in the quantitative data on the target behavior Client Logs

Grounded Theory

Begins with observations and looks for patterns, themes, or common categories the openness of the grounded theory approach allows a greater latitude for the discovery of the unexpected, some regularity (or disparity) totally unanticipated by the concepts that might make up a particular theory or hypothesis As researchers detect patterns in their inductive observations, they develop concepts and working hypotheses based on those patterns. Then they seek out more cases and conduct more observations and compare those observations against the concepts and hypotheses developed from the earlier observations Their selection of new cases is guided by theoretical sampling concepts Theoretical Sampling Parallels between grounded theory and social workers in direct practice start where client is at, understand case within wider environmental context, combine induction and deduction techniques, avoid imposition of preconceived ideas on cases, rely heavily on open-ended interviewing, process of notes and process recordings similar, and observations conducted in natural setting

Research Ethics in Qualitative Research

By bringing researchers into direct and often intimate contact with their participants seems to raise these concerns dramatically Required to be approved by IRBs like quantitative studies

Empowerment Standards

Catalytic Authenticity and Tactical Authenticity

Prolonged Engagement

It assumes that a long and trusting relationship with the researcher gives respondents less opportunity to deceive and makes them less inclined to withhold information or to lie Going Native

Client Logs

Journals that clients keep of events that are relevant to their problems Can be utilized to record quantitative data about target behaviors as well as qualitative information about critical incidents Can be useful in recording extraneous events that occur during the baseline and intervention phases of a single-case evaluation when quantitative outcome data are being collected

Qualitative Sampling Methods

Nonprobability techniques are much more common The population and the units of analysis in the qualitative research project may be somewhat ambiguous Qualitative researchers observe only a portion of what happens, then what they do observe is a de facto sample of all the possible observations that might have been made Purposive Sampling Two stages of sampling

Member Checking

Occurs when researchers ask the participants in their research to confirm or disconfirm the accuracy of the research observations and interpretations

Negative Case Analysis

Occurs when researchers show they have searched thoroughly for disconfirming evidence - looking for deviant cases that do not fit the researcher's interpretation

Critical Incidents Sampling

One in which something of special importance seemed to happen - something either positive or negative - that might offer valuable new insights about how we can improve practice

Going Native

lengthy engagement can lead to bias if the researchers over identify with their respondents and lose their objective, analytic stance or their own sense of identity

Prominent Qualitative Research Paradigms

naturalism, grounded theory, participatory action research, case studies

Triangulation

occurs when researchers seek corroboration between two or more sources for their data and interpretations. Five types have the data analyzed by colleagues who hold contrasting theoretical orientations use more than one qualitative method to collect and analyze data use multiple observers to collect the data and multiple coders to classify the collected observations use more than one data source (such as observation) interdisciplinary triangulation, in which a team of researchers from different fields collaborate

Auditing

occurs when the researcher leaves a paper trail of field notes, transcripts of interviews, journals, and memos documenting decisions made along the way, and so on. This enables an impartial and qualitatively adept investigator who is not part of the study to scrutinize what was done in order to determine if efforts to control for biases and reactivity were thorough, if the procedures used were justifiable, and if the interpretations fit the data that were collected