Overview lectures qualitative research methods 2022-2023 at TiU

Madee Lamers

Lecture week 1 QRM

1.1
Qualitative research
- Understanding how and why
- Theory emergent (inductive)
- Words & text
- Participants’ view
- Proximity
- Process
- Unstructured / open
- Rich, deep data
- Interpretation
- Questions:
- Open questions (starting with how or what)
- Focused on understanding, developing concepts
- Dealing with complex matters for which people need many words to address
these: experiences, meaning
- Dealing with processes
Quantitative research
- Measuring how many and causality
- Theory testing (deductive)
- Variables and numbers
- Researcher’s view
- Distance
- Static
- Structured
- Hard, ‘reliable’ data
- Measuring
- Questions:
- Hypotheses or closed questions
- Focused on measuring, causality and correlation
- Dealing with subjects that can be operationalized into variables: satisfaction,
motivation
- Dealing with measuring established concepts such as ‘life satisfaction’, ‘place
attachment’, psychological strain
Research purposes
- Exploratory (contextual): explore a phenomenon (at the start of the research). What
exists?
- Quantitative: counting how many
 - Qualitative: which features
- Descriptive (contextual): addressing ‘what’ questions, what is the form or nature of what
exists? More focused than exploratory research
- Explanatory: addressing ‘why’ questions
- Quantitative: surveys and experiments, measuring, calculating correlations
between variables, building causal models
- Qualitative: studying underlying structures, mechanisms and processes to
explain certain behaviors, actions, or events
- Evaluative: appraising the effectiveness of what exists (policy implementations f.e.)
- Generative: to develop theories, strategies or actions (f.e. about the future)

1.2.1
Ontology:
- Assumptions about the nature of reality
- Ontological beliefs influence both the kind of topics you want to research and the way
you want to do research. Ontological beliefs influence epistemological beliefs, i.e. beliefs
about how we can acquire knowledge
- Two major positions in social science: objectivism and constructionism.
- Epistemology: assumptions about the nature of knowledge
- Objectivism / realism
- ‘It’s a pipe’
- → empiricism
- Constructionism / idealism
- ‘It’s not a pipe → it’s a painting of a pipe’ or ‘a painting of something we
recognize as a pipe’
- It is a representation or a construction
- → interpretivism: how people construct meaning from their experiences
Paradigm
- Paradigm = ontology + epistemology
- Paradigms:
- Realism / objectivism
- Positivism
- There is a reality that is independent. We can know it by using our
senses
- Quantitative research
- Postpositivism
- There is a reality that is independent. We can know it, but not
completely
- Ontological assumption: objectivism - there is an external,
observable reality. Social phenomena are treated as natural
phenomena: research approach borrowed from natural sciences.
- Epistemological assumption: reality can be known by using our
senses, but not completely
 - Idealism / constructionism
- Interpretivism
- (social) reality is constructed, we can (objectively?) interpret how
people attribute meaning to the world
- Interpretive forms of analysis
- Thematic analysis
- Phenomenology
- Ontological assumption: constructionism.
- Epistemological assumption: we can interpret people’s words.
- Constructionism:
- (Social) reality is constructed, we can reconstruct and deconstruct
their constructions
- Structural forms of analysis:
- Narrative analysis
- Discourse analysis
- Semiotics
- Ontological assumption: constructionism
- Epistemological assumption: researchers take part in the
construction of reality
- Critical theory
- (Social) reality is constructed, researchers are part of it as well
and have to take their responsibility
- (Participatory) Action research
- (social) reality is constructed. Researchers are part of it as well
and have to take their responsibility. People should be involved in
research (ownership)
- Creative research techniques
- This is the end of science as we know it. Turn to poem writing.
- (social) reality is constructed, and we can never really know it

1.3.1: Quality of research & quality criteria

Quality of research according to different paradigms

- One’s paradigm influences one’s beliefs on what good research is

(Post)positivism: ‘good research’ - quality criteria

- Findings are an accurate reflection of reality
- Validity (various types)
- Another researcher will be able to conduct the same research
- Replicability
- When another researcher will conduct the research, the results will be the same
- Reliability
- Preference for quantitative research → so how for qualitative research, should we adopt terms
like validity and reliability from qualitative research, or form new ones:
 - Trustworthiness
- Credibility
- Confidence in the ‘truth’ of the findings
- Transferability
- Showing that the findings have applicability in other contexts
- Dependability
- Showing that the findings are consistent and could be repeated
- Confirmability
- A degree of neutrality or the extent to which the findings of a study
are shaped by the respondents and not researcher bias,
motivation, or interest
- Techniques to establish trustworthiness in qualitative research
- Credibility
- Prolonged engagement & persistent observation
- Spending enough time and focusing on aspects relevant to the
issue being studied
- Triangulation
- Using multiple data sources in an investigation to produce
understanding (eg interviews & observations)
- Peer debriefing
- Exposing oneself to a disinterested peer (eg colleague) in a
manner paralleling an analytical session and for the purpose of
exploring aspects of the inquiry that might otherwise remaining
only implicit
- Negative case analysis
- Analysis of deviant cases may revise, broaden, and confirm the
patterns emerging from data analysis
- Referential adequacy
- Checking interpretations against data that have not been analyzed yet →
with qualitative research you don’t have to wait until all cases have been
analyzed. You can already start checking → because you can go back
and forth
- Member-checking (= respondent validation)
- Data, analytic categories, interpretations and conclusions are
tested with members of those groups from whom the data were
originally obtained
- Transferability
- Thick description
- By describing a phenomenon in sufficient detail, the reader can
begin to evaluate the extent to which the conclusions are drawn
are transferable to other times, settings, situations and people
- Dependability (like replicability)
- Inquiry audit (onderzoeks controle)
 - External audits involve having a researcher not involved in the
research process examine both the process and the product of the
research study. This is only possible if enough detail about the
process is available, and if data are stored well
- Confirmability
- Confirmability audit:
- External audits (controles) involve having a researches not
involved in the research process examine both the process and
product of the research study (in order to assess if results are
influenced by the researcher)
- Audit trail (to ensure that there is enough transparent info)
- Transparent description of the research steps taken from the start
of a research project to the development and reporting of findings
- Triangulation
- Rather than seeing triangulation as a method for validation or
verification, qualitative researchers generally use this technique to ensure
that an account is rich, robust, comprehensive and well-developed → to
ensure that you used enough different sources
- Reflexivity
- Attitude of attending systematically to the context of knowledge
construction, especially to the effect of the researcher, at every step of
the research process → researcher reflect upon bias (using the 4
mentioned above) to ensure trustworthiness
- Or should we be more concerned about the usefulness of the outcomes instead of the quality of
the research? → action research & other traditions
- If you look at constructivist perspective → you take your own role seriously →
usefulness of outcomes, or changes, are most important

-
1.3.2: quality and sampling

Generalizability (external validity) → transferability

Representative generalizability:
- Statistical generalizability: random sample from a sampling frame (all units in the
population). Also referred to as external validity
- Qualitative research → no random sample:
- Small populations
- Homogeneous population
- However you can estimate, you make inferences, describing what the population
is like
- → high estimate of representativeness
Inferential generalizability / transferability
- If you define generalizability as larger application, then you can argue that transferability
is a form of generalizability
Theoretical generalizability
- If your research contributes to developing theories, then it also has a larger relevance.
So theory building.

Sampling in qualitative research

- No hard criteria for how many cases needed, so no probability sampling
- Different types
- Purposeful / purposive sampling
- The logic and power of purposeful sampling lies in selecting information-
rich cases for study in depth. Information-rich cases are those from which
one can learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the
purpose of the research, thus the term purposeful sampling
- Snowball sampling
- When respondents are difficult to reach (drug users)
- When respondents are more aware who can provide the information the
researcher is looking for (experts referring to other experts)
- In addition, it may provide insight into social networks, which can be
useful
- Downside: valuable respondents may be missed
- Convenience sampling
- Easy-to-reach respondents
- Low quality
- How many is enough
- Is your research exploratory or explanatory? → explanatory: more strict rules with
sampling
- How large is the group of people you want to make statements about → how
homogeneous
- How many characteristics do these people have in common?
 - How do i know i have enough?
- Reaching theoretical saturation → when you have enough information, so no new
information appears
- Quantitative researchers: claims about generalizability → they can claim generalizability
because of statistical data
- Qualitative researchers: inferences about generalizability → showing that they have
thought about it enough, having reached theoretical saturation

1.4: research design and case studies

Research designs
- Experiments
- Observation, then exposure, then outcome observed. Often control group (non-
exposure)
- Manipulation of the independent variable, to observe dependent variable
- Establish causality
- Not often used within qualitative research
- Critique: not natural behavior is shown, because of the experiment (lack of
validity). And difficult to see actual impact, because very quantitative
- Cross-sectional design
- Used in sociology, eg survey / questionnaire.
- Calculate correlations
- Used to make statements about a larger population
- Observations → lose context → explanations more difficult. Why does something
happen?
- Longitudinal study
- Multiple observations over time
- Comparative design
- 2 cases/surveys/etc
- Often intercultural
- Combination of other designs
- Case study
- Used the most for qualitative research
- A case sheds light on a theoretical concept (phenomenon)→ so to develop theories
- A case study is an empirical method that
- Investigates a contemporary phenomenon (the “case”) in depth and within
its real-world context, especially when
- The boundaries between phenomenon and context may not be clearly
evident
- A case study
 - Copes with the technically distinctive situation in which there will be many
more variables of interest than data points, and as one result, and as one
result
- Benefits from the prior development and theoretical propositions to guide
design, data collection and analysis, and as another result
- Relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in
a triangulating fashion
Types of case studies
- Exploratory
- Focus on creating an overview, perhaps leading to research questions
- Descriptive
- Focus on complete description
- Explanatory
- Focus on answering ‘why’
- Evaluative
- Focus on evaluation of policy interventions
- Generative
- Focus on building theory

Types of case selection

- Cases are selected according to ‘purposeful sampling’ logic
- Typical case(s)
- The average city, consumer, or citizen
- Critical case(s)
- The case in which particular findings are least likely, if they are found in
this case, they are likely to be found in more likely cases as well
- Extreme / deviant case(s)
- To learn lessons from exceptional cases
- Maximum variation / heterogeneous sample
- To map variation or if findings are similar across very different cases, it
must be very fundamental
- Homogeneous sample
- To gain deep insight into a particular group
- Criterion based sample
- Select cases that meet a criterion
- Theory-based sample
- Select cases that are promising for theory-building
- Single case studies vs multiple (or comparative) case studies
Sampling: different levels within a case
- Levels of sampling
- Which case is the best to study your topic?
- Which site (or company, time-frame, events) is the best site to study your case?
- Which people in the site are the best respondents?
- Example: high risk leisure pursuits:
 -Topic: high risk leisure consumption
-Case: sky-diving (typical/exemplifying case)
-Site: a particular skydiving school/community
-People: broad range of participants (heterogeneous sample in order to obtain
representativeness
Typology of case studies

-
- So:
- Single case study vs multiple case study
- Holistic (single unit of analysis) vs embedded (multiple units of analysis)
- Skydiving: line between context and case not clear, and also comparison between
experienced and less experienced participants
Comparative case study
- Comparative case studies involve the analysis and synthesis of the similarities,
differences and patterns across two or more cases that share a common focus or goal in
a way that produces knowledge that is easier to generalize about causal questions: how
and why particular programmes or policies work or fail to work
 -
5 common misunderstandings of case-studies countered
- We can learn from cases, even if this knowledge doesn't meet scientific requirements of
universal laws (positivist approach to science)
- Transferability and theoretical ‘generalization’ can apply to case studies
- Strategic selection of cases also allows for hypothesis testing and theory building
- A case study as its own rigor (remember measures to safeguard quality)
- Richness of narratives showing the complexity is the main strength of case-study
research
Week 2

Week 2 qrm

4 ethical principles
- Avoiding harm (avoiding adverse consequence)
- Informed consent
- Confidentiality / privacy
- Avoid deception
According to ritchie and lewis also
- Informed consent also includes
- Staged approach
- Voluntary consent
- Avoid undue intrusion
- Enabling participation
- Protecting researchers
Dilemmas with 4 key aspects
- Long-term research or in-depth interview: people forget who you are or start to trust you
and give you more (personal) information than they wanted to
- When are situations private and as a result require consent?
- Practicality: is it possible to obtain consent? Is it possible to guarantee anonymity? Is it
possible to know and share all details of the research beforehand?
- Transparency/honesty may cause reactivity, making the research worthless
- And more….
Moral positions

-
2 positions / ethical theories
- Teleological
- Consequences of the act determines the value, a decision can be made by
simple calculations. The outcomes decide whether research can be defended
- 2 positions
- Ethical egoists (Nietzsche/Hobbes)
- Criteria for action: well-being of moral agent
- Focus of moral decision: consequences of alternative action
- Utilitarians (Mill)
 - Criteria for action: aggregate common good
- Focus of moral decision: consequences of alternative action
- Deontological
- There are universal values and rules (rights and duties) that apply to every
situation. Values lie at the basis of the decision to undertake research or not
- 2 positions
- Duty-based (Kant, Ross)
- Criteria for action: duties of behavior (eg fidelity)
- Focus of moral decision: relevant dusties in the situation
- Rights-based (Rawls)
- Criteria for action: rights of individuals (dignity, liberty)
- Focus of moral decision: relevant rights of of individuals affected
by actions

-
Interviews are the most well-known qualitative research method. They are approached in
different ways by researchers working in different paradigms
- (post)positivist: interviews are sources of information. Interviews are unproblematic
encounters in which objective information is retrieved. Efforts are made to ensure validity
and reliability
- Interpretivist / constructionist: questions whether interviews can be seen as providing
direct access to information about what people think or feel. This can be called naive.
Reasons why interviews don’t provide direct access to the right information
- Objectivity
- Interviews are not objective, people are interpreting beings and use their own
frame of reference
- Retrospection
- Interviews about the past involve retrospection. Respondents talk about the past
from a present-day perspective
- Nostalgia, not remembering accurately, rules of inference
- People change
 - People change. What is important to them today is no longer tomorrow. Life
events may lead people to adopt a different perspective
- Interaction
- Interviews are the result of interaction. The characteristics of the interviewer play
a role and will lead the respondent to having certain expectations. Also,
respondents don’t alway feel free to talk freely (relationship of trust)
- Awareness
- Asking questions makes people aware. Asking questions makes people reflect
on their opinions and motivations
- Different in practice
- People’s espoused theories are different from their theories in use. When put in a
concrete situation, people will act in a different way than they would think.
- Society
- People are social beings. How they talk not only reveals something about them,
but also about society. They will always relate to their social and cultural
framework. The interview may thereby become a tool to do research on social
conventions, rather than personal experiences
Dealing with validity
- Do interviews provide an accurate picture of what we are interested in? → does interview
measure what it intends to measure?
- Opinion 1
- We need to help people to answer correctly. Researchers can help
people to remember, by showing pictures or presenting rules. Also there
are techniques for gaining access to theories-in-use (vignette questions)
- Opinion 2
- We need to acknowledge that answers are not an accurate reflection, and
take into account the extent to which information can be trusted, and in
which way it could be distorted. Researchers may start using concepts
like trustworthiness instead of validity
- Opinion 3
- The interview as a narrative and performance. This approach
acknowledges the constructed nature of the interview, and treats each
interview as a unique performance. Language and narrative become
important elements in the analysis. The interview does not have meaning
beyond the particular context in which it is produced, and researchers
may be reluctant to use current quality criteria
Dealing with reliability
- Are our measurements consistent, do we get the same results if research is repeated?
- Opinion 1
- We need to care about reliability. The more structured the interview. The
easier it is to replicate and see whether outcomes are similar
- Opinion 2
- As replicability is not possible, measures can be taken to increase the
trustworthiness of interviews
 - Being explicit about the research process
- Thick descriptions of the interview setting in the report
- Make material accessible for other to analyze and evaluate
(dependability)
- Being aware of how your findings are affected in ways that
diminish reliability and account for in the report (reflexivity
enhances credibility and confirmability)
- Opinion 3
- Reliability is not important (constructionist)
Interview approaches
- Different paradigms result in different approaches to research and interviews. The same
interview can be read in different ways
- (Post)positivist
- Interview should provide direct access to information
- Information is waiting to be uncovered
- Researchers ask questions that require an accurate answer
- Caring about reliability and validity
- Interpretivist
- Interview provide access to subjective worlds
- Information is waiting to be discovered
- Researchers are interested in stories, which they want to interpret
- Researchers take into account that information is the result of the frame
of reference, the interaction and social norms (trustworthiness)
- Constructionist
- The performance of the story is the aim and object of the study
- Researchers analyze language aspects and the interview itself, rather
than the content of the interview

2.3
Semi-structured interviews

Interview types compared

- Structured interviews
- Focus: researcher’s concerns
- Fixed questions
- Little flexibility
- high(er) reliability (another researches will ask the same questions)
- Comparable information
- Semi-structured interviews (in-depth interviews)
- Focus: interviewee’s point of view
- Items instead of questions
- Flexibility
- Lower reliability (but see techniques to address this)
 - Rich information
- Open / unstructured interviews (in-depth interviews)
- Focus: interviewee’s point of view
- Prompts
- Flexibility
- Lower reliability (but see techniques to address this)
- Rich information

-
- semi-structured interviews balance the strength of comparability and richness of
information
- Comparability is more important for (post)positivist researhcers
- In a structured interview, each respondent is presented with the same set of questions.
This makes it possible to compare answers. It is much like a questionnaire, but in
contrast with a questionnaire open questions are asked in a face-to-face setting. In an
unstructured interview, respondents are invited to talk about a particular subject. Few or
no questions are prepared beforehand. The advantage is that stories will be very rich,
but stories may also be very different from one another. This type of interviewing is
useful when researchers are interested in people’s personal stories.

Preparing for semi-structured interviews (topic list)

- When preparing a semi-structured interview, make a topic list:
- List of topics that you want to address (not questions)
- Should be logically arranged, but allow for flexibility
- Running from ‘easy to answer’ to ‘difficult to answer’
- Formulated in a way that helps answering the research question
- Not too general, not too specific
- Introduction and conclusion
- Background info/contextual info (personal data, etc)
- Eg: item list for research on challenging management decisions
 -

2.4
Interview skills

What is important when doing an interview?

- Before the interview
- Addressing expectations
- Making sure the interviewee is comfortable
- Providing information and instructions
- Building rapport
- During the interview
- Engaging in the conversation
- Managing the interview, keeping the agenda in mind
- Rapport and sensitivity in dealing with emotional responses
Question types
- Mapping questions
- Descriptive questions that map the topic. Open questions about what, where and
when are easy to answer and will provide information that can be used for follow-
up questions. (eg, can you tell me how you started practicing fitness?)
- Probes
- Questions to go more in depth. It also helps to pause and allow the interviewee
to think, because people will usually try to fill up silences. Examples provide a lot
of information. (eg can you tell me more, can you give me an example, being
silent, uh-huh)
- Prompts
- Making people react to something (eg idea, opinion, what others have said) when
people do not spontaneously raise an issue that was expected by the researcher
- Vignette question: presenting interviewees with a hypothetical situation.
Interviewees are asked how they would react, or how people in general
should react. It allows to talk about sensitive topics without being too
confronting, and leads to insights on ethical rules.
Body language
- Active listening
 - Interviewers and interviewees observe each other during an interview
- Interview as an occasion for observation
- Proxemic communication
- Spatial arrangements
- Chronemic communication
- Pacing of speech, length of pauses
- Kinesic communication
- Movement of body posture
- Paralinguistic communication
- Tone, pitch, quality of voice
- Listening is evaluating answers
- Clear (room for interpretation)
- Complete (does it cover everything?)
- Relevant (for your research)
- → if not: probing
To be avoided
- Closed questions
- Leading questions
- Unclear questions: long questions; too-general questions; double-barrelled questions (“How much
do you enjoy collecting and analyzing data?” → includes more than one topic, but allows only
one answer)
- Jargon and technical terms
Personal skills (criteria of successful interviewers)
- Sensitive; clear; structuring; open; steering; balanced; gentle; remembering; critical;
interpreting; knowledgeable

2.5
Interview techniques

Enabling techniques
- People may not be able to express themselves well in an interview. Naturally, people
find it easier to talk about their activities, experiences and opinions, than to talk about
meaning, values and beliefs. In order to gain access to these deeper levels, it may be
useful to use these enabling techniques
- Vignettes
- Hypothetical situations, which makes discussions less personal. Useful if
you would expect differences between how people act, and how they say
they would act (E.g. Please indicate the likelihood that you would rehire
this person in a part-time arrangement)
- Projective techniques
- Allow probing below the surface, and uncovering feelings, beliefs and
attitudes. It is used particularly in marketing research to get to underlying
 consumer values and motivations (eg, If you had to imagine this brand as
an animal, what animal would it be?)
- Photo elicitation (uitlokking)
- Making people react on photographs, in order to retrieve memory, evoke
reactions and provide people with opportunity to show what is important
to them
- Creative methods and arts based research
- Making people create something (eg drawing, picture) to reveal
unconscious thoughts and feelings
Week 3

3.1
Focus groups

Focus group
- Group of people that have been brought together to talk about a particular topic. In the
1920s it was used as an instrument to design questionnaires based on these
conversations. Later, it was especially used in marketing research
- a group of people assembled to participate in a discussion about a product before it is
launched, or to provide feedback on a political campaign, television series, etc.
5 key characteristics of a focus group
- People:
- groups 5-10 people
- With certain characteristics:
- purposeful sampling which leads to homogeneity
- Focused discussion
- About 1,5-2,5 hours of interaction, guided by a moderator
- On a tightly defined topic of interest:
- Information is collected on group level, the joint construction of meaning
Note:
A group interview is not a focus group. In a group interview you analyze the individual
answers separately, in a focus group you are interested in the group interactions.
Usually, it is interesting to compare different focus groups, to see if there is consensus or
differences in opinion. (eg research in a neighborhood: one group of elderly, and one
group of younger people)
When to use focus groups
- You can use focus groups when your research questions asks for a design that fits the
need to:
- Explore range of ideas or feelings about a topic
- Understand the differences between groups
- Uncover, through group interaction, factors that influence opinions, behavior or
motivation
- Gather ideas from a group of ‘experts’
- Not deal with sensitive personal issues
- Focus groups can be used as
- A self-contained method
- Principle source of data
- A supplementary method
- Pre-test: preliminary data, construct a questionnaire, develop intervention
program
- Follow-up: discuss results, evaluate an intervention
- A multimethod study
- In combination with interviews, observations, survey, etc
Strengths and weaknesses of focus groups (compared to 1-on-1 interviews)
- Strengths
- Group data
- Insight in group opinions
- Group processes
- Information through interaction
- Joint construction of meaning
- More natural conversations
- Less influences by researcher
- Research design
- Data gathering concentrated in a few sessions
- Weaknesses
- Group data
- No individual data
- Not suitable for sensitive topics
- Group processes
- Tendency for both conformity and polarization
- Less control over conversation
- Dependent on moderator
- Research design
- Logistic difficulties
- Two hour focus groups → 50 pages transcript
Research questions in focus groups
- Some examples of research questions that can be used in focus groups
- Which issues do health care volunteers face? How do they perceive their tasks?
- Aim: to provide better support for this group
- How does the holiday choice process differ for non-internet users vs moderate or
heavy internet users
- Aim: to understand the role of online travel agencies in the choice
Sample size & recruitment in focus groups
- It is common practice to have about 3-4 focus groups per ‘category’, until you reach
saturation (no new information coming from the focus groups). When recruiting, think
about
- What do you need?
- How can you access them convince them to participate
- What is the best time and location
- Over-recruit (1-2) people, invite and follow up
Different roles in a focus group
- Researcher:
- Prepares, analyzes, and observes
- Moderator
- Facilitates the discussion
- Should be able to create a safe and inviting environment and guide the group
process, listen actively, think simultaneously, and guide discussion.
 - Should be alert for non-verbal communication, be good/clear/precise
communicator and ask for further explanation when needed
- Assistant
- Responsible for the logistics and incentives.
- Memes notes in case of failing equipment
- Participant
- Participates in the discussion
Group dynamics
- Appropriate strategies are needed during the different phases of the discussion
- Forming
- Moderator should make people feel comfortable
- Storming
- Rues are being developed, there should be guidance towards
cooperation
- Norming
- The group cooperates, the moderator should pay attention to possible
diversity
- Performing
- The group interacts, the moderator observes and listens (most productive
phase)
- Adjourning
- Closing
Different roles of participants
- Experts
- Behavior: self-appointed, others can feel intimidated
- Taks moderator: underscore that everybody is expert, ask direct questions
- Dominant talkers
- Behavior: powerful, lengthy speech, interrupts and questions others
- Task moderator: limit eye contact, body language and divert conversation
- Shy participants
- Behavior: shy but reflective, think before they speak
- Task moderator: maximize eye contact, ask direct questions
- Ramblers
- Behavior: use a lot of words to come to the point
- Task moderator: discontinue eye-contact, use silent moment to ask a new
question

3.2
Participant observation

Use participant observation because :

- People may not always be able to talk about what they think. Certain questions lend
themselves for observations.
 - There are questions for which observations can be used as the only (single) method
- How do museum visitors interact with one another?; How do people use the
different spaces in a theme park?; How do customers act in a café?
- For other questions, a combination of methods could be useful
- How do people experience an event?; what do people like most in a museum?
Observations
- Observation is a good research method. By observing people, one can see how they act
naturally. What people say they do and what people think they do is not always the
same
- Observations can be
- Structured: if you attach importance to validity and reliability (positivism)
- Open / semi-structured: will result in jotted notes that are referred to as field
notes
- Observations can provide a more accurate picture of people’s behavior. But, they are not
always more accurate than for example interviews
Observation skills
- Focus is needed: you need to know what you’re looking for. But, too much focus makes
you blind for other information
- Training is needed in order to adopt a fresh perspective (outsider’s perspective)
- The position of a professional stranger: a stranger notices more, but a researcher should
look at people in a professional way
Why participate
- Participant observation
- The researcher does not observe from the outside, but also participates. Reason
to do this:
- Conversations are possible; this can provide extra info
- Researcher can observe as a regular participant, hiding their identity and
thereby avoid reactivity
- Sometimes it is not possible to not participate
- It can be easier to share knowledge based on your own experiences, the
researcher becomes its own research object
- There are different degrees of participation

-
Covert vs overt research
- Covert research: not telling that you are observing
- Advantages:
 - People are more honest
- Easier to access, no need to ask permission
- Disadvantages
- Ethically doubtful
- Difficult access to places that do not belong to role
- Limited choice of believable roles
- Overt research: telling that you are observing
- Advantages
- Ethically right
- No need to assume the proper role
- Disadvantages
- Reactivity
- Permission for research may be denied from gatekeepers
Practicalities: gaining permission
- Do I need permission to observe?
- Gatekeeper: someone who has the authority to grant you access
- Sponsor: someone within the group you want to study who is willing to both
vouch for you and explain your presence to the other group members
-
Observation and interpretation
- For observational research to be useful, it is important that observations (whether
general, descriptive, focused or selected) are detailed and objective. Observation notes
are the data from which interpretations are made. Reports should clearly distinguish
between descriptive observations and interpretations. Only rich descriptions allow for
interpretations. In addition, context is needed
- Eg:
- Observation: Two men were talking loudly while gesticulating heavily with their
hands.
- Interpretation: Two men were arguing
Reporting
- Reports of participant observation include detailed (thick description) and clear,
unambiguous descriptions (but keep purpose in mind)
- Descriptions of observations in your report serve as ‘proof’ for the soundness of you
analysis
- Clear distinction between description and interpretation/inferences (analysis)
- Pictures or other visualizations help your reader to understand the situation

3.3
Ethnography

Ethnography
- The study and systematic recording of human cultures
- A descriptive work produced from such research
 - (Culture is also: the culture of an organization, neighborhood, cosplay fans and all other
settings where people share practices, norms and values)
- Definition: Ethnography is the study of people in naturally occurring settings or ‘fields’ by
methods of data collection which capture their social meanings and ordinary activities,
involving the researcher participating directly in the setting, if not also the activities, in
order to collect data in a systematic manner but without meaning being imposed on them
externally (Brewer, p.6)
Features of ethnography; it
- Studies ordinary activities in naturally occurring settings
- Uses unstructured and flexible methods of data collection
- Requires the researcher to be actively involved in the field or with the people under
study
- Explores the meaning which this human activity has for the people themselves and the
wider society
Ethnography versus participant observation
- Ethnography uses participant observation as its main method and uses participant
observation over an extended period of time
- Participant observation is not always ethnography
- Participant observation can be used to answer specific research questions
Ethnography vs case study
- Isn’t ethnography a form of case study?
- Its approaches can be used in case studies, but
- Case studies use cases in order to grasp a phenomenon or process, not a
culture. Cases are often not considered to be interesting in their own right
- Ethnography by definition involves participant observation, case studies do not
Origins ethnography
- Anthropology: studying ‘primitive’ societies
- Chicago school: urban ethnography
Paradigms
- Ethnography as a method has lived through all paradigm shifts
- Early ethnography is positivist-oriented(assumption that objective observation is
possible)
- Ethnography may also be meaning focused (Clifford Geertz provides a classic example)
→ interpretivist
- Ethnography may also be practiced in a constructionist way
- Ethnography may also be used in (participatory) action research
Postpositivism in ethnography: Naturalism
- Appealing to the natural sciences as a model (emphasizing validity and objectivity)
- Social world should be studied in its ‘natural state’
- Remaining true to the nature of the phenomenon under study
- Human behavior is complex, getting access to the meanings that guide their behavior
involves getting close to people so we can come to interpret the world in more or less
the same way
 - Methods that allow for this: participant observation and conversations (informal
interviews)
- Positivist, but also criticized by positivists, because it does not meet certain standards
(unstructured, researcher not detached from the research)
Criticism from a constructionist perspective
- Questioning realism implied in naturalism
- Questioning value-neutrality
Ethnography today
- Not a whole culture but:
- A subculture (Anime fans, organizational culture)
- A practice (clubbing, making news)
- A setting (festival)
- User oriented (mobile technology)
Ethnographic methods
- Participant observation
- Conversations (different interview types)
- Other types of data: documents, surveys
- Online (netnography)
Week 4 qrm

4.1

Types of data
- Primary data: Data that are collected especially for the purpose of research
- Generated
- Material that comes into existence because of the research (eg interview,
focus groups
- Naturally occurring
- Material that exists also without the interference of the researcher
- Secondary data: existing data that have been collected in a previous research project,
often by another researcher
Documents
- Many documents are being produced, by many different organizations and people (eg
government policies, magazines, websites, etc)
- When using documents, it is important to assess if they are trustworthy sources of info.
- 4 aspects that need to be kept in mind
- Authenticity
- Is it genuine and of unquestionable origin (source)? Is it original or a
copy? Is the purported author the real author? This is particularly an issue
on the internet
- Credibility
- Is it free from error and distortion (eg interpretation)? Does the
document represent the author’s true feelings and facts? Does it
maybe reflect the interest of the author? (eg fake news, internal
documents shared by an angry employee)
- Representativeness
- Is the evidence typical of its kind? There can be some issues:
- Selective survival of documents → documents can be destroyed
for example
- Not everything is documented
- Search engines on the internet act as filter
- Meaning
- Is it clear and comprehensible? Context is important; is insider
knowledge necessary to understand what is said? Is there irony
that we misunderstand?
How to use data
- Documents can be studied in different ways
- Historical / realist approach
- Documents as sources of evidence
- Interpretivist / constructionist approach
- Documents as interesting themselves, objects of study
 - Eg: looking at complaints about noise around airports, to see what people
complain about→ how do people complain; what do people expect; etc
Online research
- Technology makes it possible to collect data in new wars. Especially the internet has
influenced the way research is done. Marketing and research agencies were among the
first to make use of this medium. Now that we are dealing with covid, the use of internet
deserves more attention
- In qualitative research:
- Internet can be used as a tool to interact with people and generate data
- Interviews, focus groups
- Internet can be used as a place where observations can be made and naturally
occurring data can be collected
- So internet can be studied like any other physical place where people come together
Online focus groups
- Can be organized in 2 ways
- In real time: chat room
- Over an extended period of time:
- bulletin board (a website or web page where users can post comments
about a particular issue or topic and reply to other users' postings.)
- Online focus groups have one big advantage: you can connect people who are
geographically dispersed. Also issues:
- People who have access to internet may not be representative for population
- People possess different levels of digital skills, affecting participation (computer
literacy)
- People may act differently online than offline (online feels more anonymous)
- Group dynamics in online focus groups is different, posting challenges to the
moderator
- Online focus groups will be more superficial
- Hard to motivate people to stay connected, especially in bulletin boards
Observations and ethnography & the internet
- The internet can also be used to observe people’s behavior. It is a part of people’s lives
(forums, blogs, social media)
- Observing on the internet makes it easier to study communities that live dispersed. It
poses similar challenges as offline participant observation (eg degree of participation,
covert/overt research, gaining access), but there are a few more issues:
- Issues of representativeness
- People online may not be representative of the parent population
- People may act differently online than offline
- Identity issues, is the person who they say they are?
- Issues of privacy and anonymity
- Is the internet public, can everything be observed and reported?
- Even when nicknames are anonymized, quotes can always be traced
back
- Data issues
 - Limits of data for observational studies; where to observe
- Data management; internet is fluid, things change and disappear
- Dependence on search machines; what do search engines return and
what not?
Documents & the internet
- Many documents can be found online
- Issues
- Authenticity
- Who uploaded the document? Was it copied? Was it changed?
- Credibility
- Is the document sincere (for personal documents); accurate (factual info)
- Representativeness
- What is the entire population of documents
- Uploaded documents: what about documents that were not
uploaded
- Online documents (eg blogs): how typical is given blog
- What about algorithm of search machines
- Meaning
- Can we understand the meaning of the document? Is there enough
context of information to allow for proper interpretation of its meaning

4.3

Qualitative data analysis

- Qualitative data analysis is fundamentally different form quantitative data analysis. There
is room for unexpected findings and discoveries
- Quantitative analysis
- Calculating correlation between predefined answers to predefined questions
- Qualitative analysis
- Understanding the meaning behind people’s stories. Exact answers cannot be
foreseen
- Qualitative data analysis can be frustrating, since it yields large piles of data. It
requires instruction and training and it involves time and effort. Analysis is about
seeing deeper layers of meaning.
- Serendipity
- A happy accident: the accident of finding something good without looking for it
- Many great discoveries have been the result of serendipity, but it is good to come
prepared:
- Keeping your research question in mind when looking at the data
- Knowing the theories that are relevant to your data and findings
- Knowing the methods you can use in analyzing your data

Analyzing qualitative data

 - Data → analysis → conclusion
- Data: Categories that are meaningful to the respondent; Concrete
- Analysis: Making your data meaningful
- Conclusion: categories/patterns that are meaningful to the researchers in light of a
theory; level of abstraction
Analysis
- Breaking up research materials into pieces
- Sorting, searching for types/sequences/processes/patterns/wholes
- Assemble or reconstruct the data in a meaningful or comprehensible way
- There are different ways to cut up data, which can lead to different findings. This is not a
problem, if the data can be used to answer your research question you can assume you
did a good analysis
- Most researchers work with codes for breaking up their data. But there is a big difference
between qualitative and quantitative researchers
- Quantitative: the research is linear. The analysis only starts after all data are
collected
- Qualitative: the research is cyclical. The analysis is ongoing, and the
development of themes may first lead another round of coding before entering
the next stage. This process is called iterative
Qualitative data & paradigms
- Postpositivism
- Theory building and testing, interrater reliability, variables and quantification
- Researchers refer to categories as variables
- Origins of grounded theory
- Interpretivism
- Substantive orientation, thematic analysis
- Researchers will interpret what people say or do
- Thematic analysis, also narrative analysis
- Constructionism
- Structural orientation: analysis of language and performance
- Researchers will focus on the role of language and performance
- Narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis
Phases of analysis
- Familiarizing with data
- Transcribing, reading and re-reading the data, noting down initial ideas
- Generating initial codes
- Coding interesting features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire
data set, collating data relevant to each code
- Searching for themes
- Gathering data and collating (sorteren) codes into potential themes
- Reviewing themes
- Checking the themes in relation to the coded extracts and the entire data set,
generating a thematic ‘map’ of the analysis
- Defining and naming themes
 - Ongoing analysis to refine each theme and generate clear definitions and names
for each theme
- Producing the report
- Selection of vivid, compelling text extracts relating to the analysis to the research
question and literature, producing a scholarly report
Coding process
- From: indexing and sorting (being able to find and retrieve data)
- To: categorizing and theming (attributing meaning to the data)
Coding
- is an iterative (herhalend) process
- The ultimate goal is to get at the meaning of data
- Column 1: raw data, very descriptive
- Column 2: preliminary codes
- Column 3: final codes – very abstract
Master list or codebook
- During coding, a master list must be kept (i.e. a list of all the codes that are being used
- The master list can derive from theory: theory-driven
- The master list can be developed (and continuously revised) on the basis of the
data analysis: data-driven
- Software is available to code and to keep track of used codes. It also enables
researchers to rename codes and revises all codes automatically
Coding examples
- Grounded theory
- Keeping the data rooted in the participant’s own language
- In vivo
- Code: “No place” (about illegal immigrants)
- Descriptive coding
- To document and categorize the breadth of opinions stated by multiple
participants
- Code: “immigration issues” (about illegal immigrants)
- Values coding
- To capture and label subjective perspectives
- Code: “xenophobia”
- Note:
- Different codes can apply, this depends on research question and method
- There is no such thing as the right code. 2 opinions
- You will want to have a certain degree of agreement between researchers
about the codes (inter-rater reliability)
- You want other researchers to be able to follow your analytical path, so they can
judge if the analysis has been done properly and your conclusions are warranted
→ dependability
Different kinds of codes
- In vivo codes
- They actually are the data
 - Descriptive codes / topic codes
- Describe the data
- Axial codes
- A code for a family of codes
- Coding framework
- Pre-existing codes
- Theory-driven codes
- Codes derived from theory
Commonalities
- In the process of analysis, codes become increasingly abstract (analytical)
Patterns in qualitative data
- Similarity
- Things happen the same way
- Difference
- Things happen in predictably different ways
- Frequency
- Things happen often or seldom
- Sequence
- Things happen in a certain order
- Correspondence
- Things happen in relation to other activities or events
- Causation
- Things appear to cause other things
Memos
- When collecting and analyzing data, all sorts of ideas occur. These are recorded in
memos
Week 5
Qualitative data analysis methods

Thematic analysis
- A method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns (themes) within data. It
minimally organizes and describes your data in (rich) detail. However, frequently it goes
further than this, and interprets various aspects of the research topic
- Qualitative data analysis method or generic ‘allround method’
- Closely associated with phenomenology (=study of lived experience)
- Allround: applied with different paradigmatic orientations
Postpositivism & thematic analysis
- Data concerns: concerns for accuracy, reliability, controlling for researcher bias or
subjectivity
- Accuracy of the participant’s account: “Each participant received a copy of her interview
transcript by mail and was invited to correct, elaborate upon, or modify her comments to
make the transcript a more complete and accurate account of her experience.”
- Implies that there is a singular truth of participant’s experiences that research seeks to
uncover
- Themes are often implicitly conceptualized as buried treasure: entities that pre-exist the
analysis that the researcher merely uncovers or discovers in their data
- Research = process of discovery
Implications thematic qualitative data analysis
- Overriding concern with accuracy and reliability of coding, and minimizing researcher
bias or subjectivity
- Structured codebooks or coding frames; which are then applied to the data
- Themes that are determined prior to, or early on in, data analysis (i.e. theory driven or
deductive)
- Coding understood as a process of allocating the data to the correct pre-determined
theme
- Multiple coders working independently to code the same data
- Measures of the level ‘agreement’ (or inter-coder reliability = inter-rater reliability)
between coders
- Consensus coding: coders agreeing the final data coding
Critical questions thematic analysis
- Theory-driven codes missing out on important info, coding may remain superficial or
captures only the most obvious themes
- Is 100% coding agreement possible → may depend on the types of data and of codes used, easier
to agree on ‘rejected for a job’ than ‘anxiety to start a new job’
- Depth and complexity of understanding may be sacrificed for reliability and accuracy

Constructionism & thematic analysis

- Qualitative research is more than collecting and analyzing words or images as data, it’s
about embracing a philosophy or set of values about how we do research, about the role
of a researcher in research and what counts as meaningful knowledge
 - Themes are not just there, but generated as a result of a researcher’s interpretative
framework, prior training, skill, assumption, etc
- Subjectivity is a resource for research, not a problem to be managed
- Understandings of the world generated by research are always shaped by the
researcher and situated in particular contexts
- Understandings are always partial, and that’s okay

Steps in thematic analysis

- Familiarizing with data
- Transcribing, reading and re-reading the data, noting down initial ideas
- Generating initial codes
- Coding interesting features of the data in a systematic fashion across the entire
data set, collating data relevant to each code
- Searching for themes
- Gathering data and collating (sorteren) codes into potential themes
- Reviewing themes
- Checking the themes in relation to the coded extracts and the entire data set,
generating a thematic ‘map’ of the analysis
- Defining and naming themes
- Ongoing analysis to refine each theme and generate clear definitions and names
for each theme
- Producing the report
- Selection of vivid, compelling text extracts relating to the analysis to the research
question and literature, producing a scholarly report
Semantic vs latent codes
- Semantic codes
- Capture the surface meaning of data; the meaning that are intentionally
communicated
- Latent codes
- Capture the assumptions underpinning the surface meanings, or use pre-existing
theories and concepts to interpret the data
What is a theme
- A theme is a pattern that captures something significant or interesting about the data
and/or research questions. There are no hard and fast rules about what makes a theme.
- A theme is characterized by its significance
- Themes as topic summaries
- A theme can be anything
- Developed early on and guide coding
- Developed later and represent the outcome of coding

Framework analysis
- Development in 1990s
- Thematic orientation (eg substantive)
- Developing thematic framework (data-driven or theory-driven)
 - Reduces data through summarization and synthesis, but keeps link to the data
- Summaries are combined in a matrix → quick and easy comparison
- Type of people (or cases) are linked to themes to develop explanations
- Framework analysis will only work with comparable data, similar themes have to be
addressed in the interviews
- Nvivo can be used. Other analysis types (narrative analysis, discourse analysis and
visual semiotics) follow later
Steps in framework analysis
- Familiarization
- Identifying a thematic framework
- Key themes, often inductive, but also predefined (based on literature, or purpose
of research as desired by a company that has requested the research)
- Indexing
- Select the fragments that belong to a theme
- Charting / summarizing
- Summaries are added to a matrix for sake of comparison within cases and across
themes
- Mapping and interpretation
- Description
- Create typologies (case based)
- Create categories (theme based)
- Mapping linkages
- Develop explanations
Critical points framework analysis
- It will only work with comparable data: similar themes have to be addressed in the
interviews. Semi-structured interviews lend themselves well for this type of analysis
- Risk of too much data reduction
- Risk of quantification
- Often pretends not to operate in a particular paradigm, but is this possible? (researchers
will always want to claim quality, but what is quality?)

When / why use grounded theory

- Blue sky or black box topics
- Phenomena we haven’t studied before or we don’t quite understand yet
- Aim: construct new theory
- Theory building < - - > theory testing
Origins of grounded theory (GT)
- 1960s: sociology in the US
- Rich tradition in qualitative ethnographic and case studies, but losing ground
during positivist turn to quantitative research in sociology
- The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research
- Glaser & strauss contribution
- Revolutionary message: systematic qualitative research can construct abstract
theoretical explanations of social processes
 - Moving qualitative inquiry (onderzoek) beyond descriptive studies into the realm
of explanatory theoretical frameworks
- Positivism (glaser)
- Empiricism, rigorous codified methods
- → systematic coding of data in GT
- Pragmatism & field research (strauss)
- Humans are active agents
- Social and subjective meanings are created via language and action
- → symbolic interactionism: theoretical foundation of GT
Symbolic interactionism
- Human action depends on meaning (our interpretations of things)
- Different people assign different meanings to things
- The meaning of something can change: via interaction and events
- = dynamic relationship between action, meaning and events
- Social processes, language and symbols play a crucial role in forming and sharing our
meanings and actions
→ grounded theory studies human action and social processes via language and symbols (qualitatively)

Grounded theory definition

- Systematic (yet flexible) guidelines
- For collecting and analyzing qualitative data
- To construct theories from the data themselves
- On human actions and social processes
- Inductively (theory-building): ‘grounded in data’ (not based on existing knowledge)
Different approaches to Grounded Theory
- Depending on research paradigm
- Ontology → epistemology → methodology: assumptions behind the methods used
- Classic grounded theory (Glaser)
- Neutral researcher & emerging theories
- Positivist
- Reformulated grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin)
- Generated theory is verified in the data. Researcher is not neutral, but follows
systematic coding phases to ensure rigorous data-analysis
- Post-positivist
- Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz)
- Theory is constructed in interaction between researcher and participant
- Interpretivist
Sampling and data collection & GT
- Simultaneous data collection and data-analysis
- Theoretical sampling: continued sampling is based on the emergent theory
- Often larger samples (theory building requires some iterations (herhalingen), but quantity
is not a criterion itself
- Rich data: revealing participants’ view, feelings, intention and actions as well as the
contexts and structures of their lives
 - Sampling until theoretical saturation
Saturation in qualitative research
- Thematic / descriptive saturation
- Data are collected until no more patterns or themes are emerging from the data
- Theoretical saturation
- The point at which gathering more data about a theoretical category reveals no
new properties nor yield any any further theoretical insights about the emerging
grounded theory
Data analysis
- Coding
- = bridge between collecting data and developing an emergent theory to explain
these data
- = the process of defining what data are about (what’s happening, what does it
mean)
- = categorizing segments of data with short name
- New concepts (eg not ‘leadership’)
- Active codes (eg ‘taking the lead’)
- In Vivo codes: use participants terms as codes to uncover their meaning and understand
their actions (eg ‘feeling bossy’)
Coding phases
- Open coding
- Line-by-line coding: staying close to the date
- ‘Grounded’ in the data, not based on what you already know
- Break the raw data (eg transcript) up into snippets
- Codes connect snippets together; capture concisely what they are about
- Axial coding
- Look for connections between codes
- Creating (higher-order) categories and subcategories (or ‘axes’)
- Purpose: sort, synthesize and organize large amounts of data and reassemble
codes of the previous open coding pages in new ways (around axes)
- Selective coding
- Looking for connections between (sub)categories
- Connecting different categories → patterns → theories
- ‘Core category’ captures the essence of the theory: other categories are
organized around it
Method of constant comparison
- Coding phases (open, axial and selective) follow an iterative (back-and-forth) process:
- Comparing data from different individuals
- Comparing data from individuals to their own data at different points in their
narratives
- Comparing incidents with other incidents
- Comparing categories with other categories
Memo-writing
- Bridge between coding and writing down the results
 - Intermediate step between data-collection and writing the research paper (a good
antidote for a writer’s block)
- Memos help to develop theory
- Reflect the researcher’s thinking process
- Can involve diagramming → visual model of the GT
Aim / result: a grounded theory
- A (tentative → voorlopig) conceptual model grounded in data
- Often a visual representation (diagram) of the new theory is provided

Summary: characteristics of grounded theory

- Data collection and analysis run simultaneously
- Theoretical sampling: continued sampling is based on the emergent theory
- Rich narrative data (often – but not exclusively – interviews of lived experience)
- Analyzing human actions and social processes (cf. symbolic interactionism)
- Using comparative methods in each step of data-analysis: new data are constantly
compared to emerging concepts
- Memo-writing is used to elaborate categories and developing theory; stimulate
researcher’s reflexivity
- Developing new conceptual categories via an inductive and iterative process
- Goal: theory development (new/innovative).
- Aim of grounded theory = construct new theory GROUNDED in (rich narrative) data
Week 6 qrm

Narrative analysis
- Coding is often the central exercise in qualitative analysis. But through coding, data may
become fragmented and decontextualized. You might lose some important details.
Researchers began to emphasize the importance of stories
- → narrative / linguistic turn
- We need to understand the context in which stories are produced. Narrative analysis
focuses on both form and content
- Means to make sense to others or to oneself. Questions about audience become
important
- Focuses on the ways in which people make and use stories to interpret the world
- Enables study of lived experiences (phenomenology)
- Importance of context
- Research with narrative (focus on content) vs research on narrative (focus on
language)
Kinds of narrative analysis
- Thematic
- With topics → eg how topics change within narrative of AA members after becoming a
member
- Structural
- How the story is told, different stories can be structured the same.
- There are 6 elements of stories
- Abstract: summarizes the story to come
- Orientation: introduces
- Complicating action: main body leading up to climax
- Evaluation: clauses state what is interesting or unusual about story
- Resolution: tells what happens next
- Code: provides a short summary of what happened
- Interactional
- How the story is produced or co-created by the speaker and listener (patient
narratives for diagnosis)
- Performative
- How the narrative is a performance, and achieves something (eg explaining
Narrative analysis & ontology and epistemology
- Narrative analysis is not interested in whether stories are true or not. Stories are always
constructions, but as constructions, they are constitutive of reality as well as of identity.
As one particular researcher stated: we live storied lives. In that sense, stories are true,
because they make up our world

Discourse analysis
- A mode of organizing knowledge, ideas or experiences that is rooted in language and its
concrete contexts (such as history or institutions)
 - Narrative analysis and discourse analysis assume that language influences our perception of
reality. But, whereas most narrative analysis focuses on personal meanings, discourse analysts
also see language as a social practice in which power relations are important → social good &
political

Narra Discour
tive se

Social
perso good
nal
Political

- Social good
- Anything that brings benefits to people. It is influenced by language (eg refugee
vs expat)
- Critical discourse analysis
- Looks what is behind the text, assuming that the author or speaker wants to
achieve something. It is usually analysys (decoding) of existing text. Researchers
look for elements in the text that manipulate the audience (language used to
exercise power). They look at:
- Manipulating numbers and percentages: eg most people
- Modality (level of certainty): is there any
- Connotations (positive or negative): eg power grab
- Presuppositions (statements that are presented as the truth): eg this is
how depression feels
- Audience incorporation: eg what can we learn
- Metaphors: eg home gets violent under lockdown in europe
- Agency: eg farm workers to be flown in from eastern europe
Perspectives on discourse analysis
- Historical dimension
- How the discourse came to being
- The ethnographic dimension
- How it produces particular social activities within a community of practice
- The sociological dimension
- How it legitimizes (includes) certain social practices, or excludes others
- Psychological dimension
- How it constructs identity
- The critical theory dimension
- How discourses may produce their own resistance
- Eg: give land back to nature, leave animals alone
- Historical: How did this idea develop?
- Ethnographic: How does it influence access?
 - Sociological: How does it legitimize treatment of these animals?
- Psychological: How do people involved understand themselves?
- Critical: How does the discourse evoke counter discourses?
Critique on discourse analysis
- Critics say that discourse analysis is just somebody’s interpretation. However
- There are accepted approaches to perform different types of analysis
- Approach can be explained (sample, steps in analysis), so that reader can follow
and come to same conclusions
- Context of the documents should be taken into account (compare, thick
description)
- Other researchers may come to the same conclusion (intersubjectivity increases
trustworthiness). Indeed, the number of possible interpretations is rather limited
- → remember quality criteria for qualitative research
- Credibility, dependability, transferability, confirmability

Semiotics
- The study of signs (textual as well as visual)
- Semioticians believe people see the world through signs
- The meaning of signs is created by people and does not exist separately from
them and the life of their social/cultural community
- Semiotic systems provide people with a variety of resources for making meaning
- Visual semiotics is concerned with the analysis of images: what is being said and done with
images and visual forms of communication? → eg product advertisement, posters
- You need to look for
- Representational metafunction
- What is the picture about?
- Narrative
- Viewers are invited to create a story about what is
represented in the picture because there are actors of
motion
- action/reactional
- Conceptional
- Without vectors (drijfkracht)
- Interpersonal metafunction
- How does the picture engage the viewer?
- Demand/offer: does the person in the image look directly at you?
Or is the image looking away
- Distant / intimate: how much can we see from the person
- Horizontal angle: frontal angle creates stronger involvement
- Vertical angle: persons in the image looking up or down on each
other and the viewer creates power differences
- Compositional metafunction
 - How do the representational and interpersonal metafunctions relate to
each other and integrate into a meaningful whole
- Place of elements
- Left: associated with given/known
- Right: associated with knew/solution
- Top: associated with ideal
- Bottom: associated with real
- Salience: size, sharpness, contrast
- Modality: how ‘real’ does the image seem (color=more real)

6.1.2

Quantitative or qualitative methods?

- Advantage of generalizability to population vs advantage of insight and understanding
- Or both?
Desirability of mixed methods
- The epistemological position:
- Incompatible epistemological (and ontological) principles of quantitative and
qualitative research. Research is embedded in ontological/epistemological
beliefs. Quantitative and qualitative research are different paradigms
- The technical (pragmatic) position)
- Quantitative and qualitative research strategies can be combined. There are
relative strengths and weaknesses of each for data collection and analysis.
- Not the paradigm is leading, but the research question
- Especially in practically oriented research (eg marketing)
- But, research interests and questions are often related to particular paradigms
Why to use mixed methods
- Quantitative research: often focus on average effects, correlation, and general patterns.
But, misses out on conceptualization, process understanding and diverse causes or
effects
- Qualitative research: focus on explaining few cases, necessary and sufficient conditions
and the possible importance of understanding the misfit. But, misses out on statistical
effects, generalization to the many and overall systematic models
- → mixed methods uses the strengths of each research approach. In general, mixed methods is
applied:
- To substantiate and validate the results of a single method
- To broaden the scope when using qualitative methods
- To deepen the scope when using quantitative methods
- To reach an added value that exceeds the sum of using quantitative and
qualitative methods unawarely
How to use mixed methods
- 3 different ways in which quantitative and qualitative methods can be used together:
- Triangulation: multiple methods to corroborate (bevestigen/ondersteunen) data
 - Data triangulation: time, space and persons
- Investigator triangulation: multiple researchers
- Theory triangulation: using more than one theoretical scheme in the
interpretation of the phenomenon
- Methodological triangulation: using more than one method to gather data
on the same topic, such as interviews, observations, questionnaires, and
documents
- Facilitation: one research strategy facilitates another one (sequential)
- Qualitative facilitates quantitative. First explore, then measure
(exploratory)
- Providing hypotheses, emerging theory that needs to be tested
- Aiding measurement
- Eg, using qualitative research for developing questionnaire
- Quantitative is followed by qualitative. First measure, then understand
(explanatory)
- Identifying appropriate participants to be selected for interviews
- Identifying which quantitative data needs explanation
- Complementary: different strategies to cover different aspects of the research
project
- Note: using multiple methods is not the same as using a mixed methods approach
Disadvantages of mixed methods
- Researcher need to be very skilled in different research traditions
- Researchers need to be skilled in designing and carrying out mixed methods studies
- What to do with conflicting results?
- Methodological purist would contend that you can only work in one paradigm
- Mixed methods is more expensive
- Mixed methods is more time consuming
6.3

Conventional and non-conventional research

- Conventional research
- Primarily for the sake of knowledge, knowledge for the benefit of society, meeting
strict(er) quality criteria.
- Some researchers came to believe that research should contribute to society in a more
direct way
- Non-conventional research
- Different view on knowledge and on relationship between knowledge and society,
different quality criteria
- Action research / participatory research
- To the benefit of society, research should empower people, and people
should be involved in research and outcomes (decide about the important
questions, actively participate in data collection, ‘co-creation’)
- Focus on positive change
Action research
- The differences between action research, participatory research and participatory action
research:
- Research can be participatory, without being focused on action
- A researcher can ask citizens to make pictures of their neighborhood in
order to understand feelings of safety. The focus is on gaining knowledge,
not change
- In action research,
- The research process is often organized around a particular intervention.
A plan is made together and carried out together. Participants then
observe how the plan works and reflect on it. Reflection will lead to fine
tuning the plans and the process may start again
Participatory action research
- Community-oriented, solving community problems, empowerment of specific groups
- For organizations: organizational change/innovation.development
- Health, education
 Action
Participatory
- Change - real
- Collaboration life experience
through - Evidence in
participation terms of
- different
Empowerment outcomes
Research
of participants
- new
knowledge
-
documented
lessons

Methods in action research

- Often non-conventional research methods. Usually, more creative, arts-based
- Accessible / comprehensible
- Transformative through reflection
- Eg, asking teenagers to make pictures from their neighborhood, leading to more insight
in their experiences
Critical questions
- Is this still scientific research
- What is scientific research
- How should the quality of participatory action research be judged
- Is ‘usefulness’ enough
- Do local communities always have a better understanding of their situation?
- What about biases and people influencing one another
Week 7

Reporting qualitative research

qualitative research report

- Introduction
- Literature review/theoretical framework
- Results
- Discussion / conclusion
Guidelines on reporting qualitative research
- COREQ (Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research)
- 32-item checklist that can help researchers to report important aspects of the
research team, study methods, context of the study, findings, analysis and
interpretations. It’s partic useful for qualitative research in which interviews and/or
focus groups were conducted
- The SRQR (Standards for reporting qualitative research)
- A standard for reporting qualitative research, based on a review of different
guidelines. It aims to improve the transparency of qualitative research and assist
authors during manuscript preparation
- The ENTREQ (Enhancing transparency in reporting the synthesis of qualitative
research)
- Helps researchers to report a synthesis of findings from multiple qualitative
studies. The ENTREQ covers multiples stages herein: searching and selecting
qualitative research, quality appraisal and methods for synthesizing qualitative
findings.
Aspects of qualitative research that merit (verdienen) attention
- Authorial voice
 - (post)positivism: objectivity is possible, and research reports are an accurate and
neutral reflection of ‘reality’. Passive tense, author is ‘absent’ from the text.
However, this does not make the text more objective
- Interpretivism / constructionism: acknowledging the role of the researcher. Author
is present, use of first person allowed
- Constructionism: if ‘reality’ is a construction, and the research(er) is part of this
reality, then so is the research report. Research reports do not reflect a reality:
they create a reality
- Reality is created in many different ways (example of playing with numbers,
rhetorics)
- (note: ritchie & lewis distinguish between realist, confessionalist and
impressionist tales. In realist reports, the researcher appears to be absent)
- Use of first person
- The acknowledgement that reports are never neutral, and that the
researchers always play a role, results in adopting the first person in
reporting qualitative research. Sometimes using the first person is even
preferred:
- Assertiveness: to emphasize agency → to point out how valuable your
project is to your discipline
- Clarity: to avoid awkward constructions and vagueness
- Positioning yourself in the essay: to explain how your research or
ideas build on or depart from the work of others
- Personal aspects / anecdotes: to build your rapport and reflect on
yourself as a researcher
- Audit trail & thick description
- Being detailed about the methods, methodological choices are explained (what
was done, why was it done, how was it done, why was it done this way)
increases the possibility to judge whether this was good research
- Being detailed about the context of the data allows for drawing wider inferences
- See also quality criteria from week 1 (confirmability, dependability, transferability
- Avoiding quantification
- Qualitative research should focus on qualities, not quantities
- Description of the sample is useful, but only for gaining insight into the sample
(how many men, women, etc)
- Eg:
- Not helpful: many respondents said that…
- Helpful: respondents gave the following reasons
- Evidential base: acknowledging diversity
- Avoid elite bias:
- Overweighting data from articulate, well-informed, usually high status
participants and underrepresenting data from less articulate lower status
ones
- Avoid holistic fallacy
- Interpreting events as more patterned and congruent then they really are
 - → attention for deviant cases
- Importance of ‘unpatterns’ in qualitative data
- The outlier is your friend, it tests the generality, but also protects you
against self-selecting biases and may help you build a better explanation
- Check the meaning of outliers, use extreme cases, follow up surprises,
look for negative evidence
- The evidential base: using quotations
- Sufficient data need to be presented to allow readers to assess whether or not
the interpretation is supported by the data (dependability)
- Quotations are essential: they help to show the reader your analysis, illustrate
your findings, convey the kind of language used by your interviewees
- Judicious (verstandig) use of quotations from interviews
- Not too many
- Context info is useful
- Quotations need to be discussed: what interesting is happening? How are these
and similar quotes analyzed? → juxtaposition (nevenschikking/naast elkaar)
- Eg, introducing quote → presenting the quote → commenting on the quote
- Description vs interpretation / analytical writing
- Description is necessary for showing evidential base
- Description is already a form of interpretation (because choices are made about
what to describe and how)
- But: explicit interpretations/explanations are needed
- Eg:
- Only descriptive: Job satisfaction was a dominant theme with elderly
respondents. Younger respondents more often emphasized....
- Analytical: I found that job satisfaction was a dominant theme with elderly
respondents. Younger respondents more often emphasized.... This
difference can be explained by..... Social capital also plays a role...
- Interpretation depends on the quality of data