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
