Crafting Qualitative Research

Seminar for FEB UGM

Nunung Nurul Hidayah

30 July 2020
Qualitative Inquiry
• The essence (Leavy, 2014):
– a way of understanding, explaining, describing, unravelling,
illuminating, chronicling, and documenting social life
– attention to the everyday, the mundane, the ordinary and
extraordinary of social life
– a way of learning about social reality

• Qualitative research (Denzin and Lincoln 1994:2):

• involving an interpretive, naturalistic approach to its subject matter
• study things in their natural settings,
• attempting to make sense of or interpret phenomena in terms of the
meaning people bring to them
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Qualitative Inquiry
• Inductive view of the relationship between theory and research,
whereby the former is generated out of the latter
• Epistemological position:
– described as interpretivist (in contrast to the adoption of a
natural scientific model in quantitative research)
– Stress is on the understanding of the social world through an
examination of the interpretation of the world by its
participants
• Ontological position:
– described as constructionist - which implies that social
properties are the interactions between individuals - rather than
phenomena out there and separate from those involved in its
construction
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Qualitative Inquiry
• The approach to research:
– To unpack the meaning people ascribe to activities, situations, events
or artefacts
– To build ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973) of social contexts;
relationship, connections, tensions etc.
– To try to “understand” any social phenomenon from the perspective of
the actors involved
– To understand complex phenomena that are difficult or impossible to
approach or to capture quantitatively
– To understand any phenomenon in its complexity, or one that has
been dismissed by mainstream research because of the difficulties to
study it
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 Crafting a Theorized
Solid Storylines
Research
Design

Presenting the Letting the

Research Thick Data
Journey Speak

Developing
Triangulation Theoretical
of Rich Data Contribution

Jonsen et al. (2018) 5

Where do I start?

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 The criteria of good research

• Taking on the ‘grand challenges’:

– The pursuit of bold ideas and the adoption of less conventional approaches to tackling
large/ unresolved problems
– The key is to meet a good standard for your work

• Interesting and researchable topics/questions:

– Relevance vs. Rigour: Impact to practices compared to theoretical contribution
– Research opportunity: it seems highly unlikely that anyone has the single best solution
– Impact: Who will do what differently as a result of reading my work?

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 The criteria of good research

• Dancing within the rhythm:

Connect to a stream of
literature
– Is it evident that you are joining a
conversation?
– Are you citing the main research in
the domain in the introduction?
– Have you identified clearly the
limitations of that research
– Have you stated concisely how
your work addresses the
limitations identified?

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 The criteria of good research

• Novelty: Offering
contributions
– ‘never done before’ is not
enough
– Novelty:
• changing the
conversation,
• offering a new insight,
• showing new direction:
adding new vocabulary,
• articulate concepts in
different way
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 An interpretive/inductive Approach
• No definite ‘laws’ in social science – complexity of the field
• Observation/data driven – showcasing the uniqueness of data
• Moving from data to theory – theorised storyline
• Subjective understanding/interpretation rather than ‘objective fact’ – convey meanings
• Maintain the complexity and ‘richness’ – thick data & let the data speak
• Do not seek generalisations – theoretical conceptualisation

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Qualitative Inquiry
• The process (Conger, 1998; Bryman et al, 1988; Alvesson, 1996;
Graebner, 2012):
– flexibility to follow unexpected ideas during research and explore processes
effectively;
– sensitivity to contextual factors, symbolic dimensions and social meaning;
– To build new theory/concept when prior theory is absent, underdeveloped,
or flawed
– To capture individuals’ lived experiences and interpretations
– To understand complex process issues
– To illustrate an abstract idea
– To examine narratives, discourse, or other linguistic phenomena
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Qualitative Inquiry

Qualitative researchers often have to build a case for

their research question and motivate their work
more strongly than quantitative researchers. . . .
Thus in the front end of the manuscript, the writer
has to work harder to establish the theoretical gap
and make a compelling case for why this research
question is important.

• Critical elements: research problematization, literature review,

transparent research methodology, a significant potential theoretical
contribution (impact – increasingly demanded)
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Critical: Research problematization

Research
Objectives/
Questions

Research Existing
Ideas Literature

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 Research Problematization:
Carving out a space for contribution
§ Problematization – ‘problematizes’ the established context of
contribution as being deficient in some way in order to open
up ‘opportunities for advancing knowledge (Locke and Golden-
Biddle, 1997):
• Incompleteness, claiming that existing literature was incomplete in some
way or another, and that the researcher’s own study would be able to
advance it
• Inadequate, claiming that prior literature has overlooked an important
perspective which would have had the potential to further our
understanding of the subject matter
• Incommensurate, claiming that existing literature not only neglected
certain perspectives but also misguided the way knowledge was produced
about the subject matter in question.

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 Research Problematization:
Carving out a space for contribution
§ Problematization re-emphasized (Alvesson & Sandberg 2011, 2013)
• to try to disrupt the reproduction and continuation of an
institutionalized line of reasoning
• challenging some moderate assumptions which underlie existing
theories within a particular school of thought or intellectual
tradition
• a key element in producing new and inspiring points of departures
for theory development
• Critiques on ‘problematization approach’ rather than a more
genuine problematization - a prolongation and application of
someone else’s problematization and are not in themselves
examples of how the research question is an outcome of active
problematization

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Quasi problematization:
Work forward from a theory or a method

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Critical: Developing research question

• One issue only

• Require analysis (how, why)
• Specific, focus
• No vague words

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Developing research question

Select a topic Organizations respond to multiple rankings

Narrowing topic Auditing performance, demands for

transparency/accountability, reactivity,
reflexive behaviors
Listing potential questions Depending on which or expansion of sub-topic
above that you decided to choose or

Selecting preferred questions Example: How do organizations respond to

multiple rankings?

Refocusing questions How do organisation respond to many

measures evaluating its performance? To which
should they react? How do organisations react
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to multiple ranking templates?
Developing
research
question –
stakeholder
analysis

What is your
level of
analysis?
What would be
the RQs?

Support
NGO Government Professionals 19
Staff
Developing research
question – stakeholder
analysis

Select it as the level

of analysis &
focus/angle of
research

How do public sector practitioners

respond to the competing
pressures/demands of various
stakeholders in implementing public
accountability?
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Critical: synthesising the literature

Themes of
discussions/
findings
identified

How would your study

contribute to the existing
literature?
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Qualitative Inquiry
• Qualitative researchers offer
detailed accounts of their data
sources and analysis
• Communicating the journey
from initiating the project to
submitting the manuscript:
ü Gives meaning to the
accounts of the data and
emergent theory
ü Signaling the quality of the
research exercise
ü Showing the credibility of
the researcher, the
trustworthiness of the data
and the emergent theorizing
ü A detailed and personal and
clearly reflects their
nonlinear journey
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Qualitative Research Data

Research Data Collection

Strategies Methods Analysis

Ethnography Interviews
Data induction
Action Research Participant observation
Data display
Case Study Focus groups

Grounded Theory Diaries Drawing and

verifying
+ Secondary data conclusions

+ +

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What is qualitative data analysis?
• A range of processes and procedures to transform the qualitative data that have been
collected, into some form of explanation, understanding or interpretation of the
people and situations we are investigating.
– Consists of identifying, coding, and categorising patterns or themes found in the
data.
– QDA is usually based on an interpretative epistemology. The idea is to examine the
meaningful and symbolic content of qualitative data.
– The clarify and applicability of the findings heavily depend on the analytic abilities
of the researcher.

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Features of qualitative data analysis
• Analysis is circular and non-linear.
• Iterative and progressive.
• Close interaction with the data.
• Data collection and analysis is simultaneous.
• Level of analysis varies.
• Uses inflection i.e. “this was good”.
• Can be sorted in many ways – try out different theoretical lens
• Qualitative data by itself has meaning, i.e. “opportunity”.

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Theory and Crafting Research Contribution
• Theorised storyline
- appealing storytelling with a touch of emotion,
- impeccable conceptualization,
- rhetorically built and argued,
- engaging the reader’s reflection

• Theoretical bricolage - presentation of theory in a coherent, plausible, and

practical manner,
• Theories can be narratives/framed/visualised
- narratives as a strong sense-making power,
- virtual conversation/co-construction with the reader
- visually framed theoretical contributions (integrated frameworks, process models,
figures, maps, etc)

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 Qualitative Inquiry
• Qualitative works reserve the biggest
punch for the back end:
v A strong Discussion Section: summarize
the findings and ultimately delineate the
theoretical and practical implications
v Integrate data and theory: convey the
connections between the analyzed data,
the emergent theory, and the literatures
at which the contribution is aimed
v High interdependence of the anchoring
theory, data analysis, and theoretical
contribution
v The back end emphasizes the uniqueness
and importance of the work.
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Your role as a qualitative scholar
• A continuing strive to become subjective thinkers
- appealing storytelling with a touch of emotion,
- impeccable conceptualization,
- rhetorically built and argued,
- engaging the reader’s reflection

• Armed yourself with contemporary pragmatism and craftsman’s

integrity
• We must be read!
- persuasive writing, appealing the reader
- capable of writing relevant knowledge
- practices of convincing

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