Resume Understanding Qualitative Research And Ethnomothedology Qualitative mehods in

social research.
This book is about methods, but it does not offer a methodology. The meaning of social
research may seem obvious, but a few words are in order, to frame the ways in which it will be
used in later discussions. I will use 'research' to refer to all kinds of knowledge production that
involve the inspection of empirical evidence. 'Social research', then, collects research
endeavours that focus on 'the social', that is, phenomena that are related to people living
together, whether these are conceptualized as structures, processes, perspectives, procedures,
experiences or whatever. science cannot be usefully differentiated from other inquisitive
activities by claims to an exclusive relationship to some specific principles or methods. It is,
rather, distinguishable as a particular way of investigative life by its general purpose and
approach. Its aim, to paraphrase some notions developed by Charles Ragin (1994), is to
contribute to an ongoing dialogue of ideas and evidence concerning some 'reality'. demarcation
of 'science' from other kinds of inquiry should not be seen, and treated, as a sharp 'break', but
rather as a series of less sharp barriers (or barricades!) which allow practitioners of scientific
inquiry to 'take their time', to think, to read and re-read, to collect data, to (re-)consider the
evidence, etc. In other words, science requires some protection from the hectic nature and the
haste of practical lives and interests, of politics, media attention and the market, if it is to be
able to work on its mission. Types of social research. Ragin (1994:. 33 arrd passim)
distinguishes three main types of social research, based on their general objectives and specific
research strategies: qualitative, comparative and quantitative research. Qualitative research is
primarily used to study what he calls 'similarity', i.e. general traits, in a small number of cases
in which many aspects are taken into account. Quantitative research, finally, investigates
covariation in large data sets, that is, a relatively small number of features are studied across a
large number of cases. So the focus is on 'variables and relationships between variables in an
attempt to identify common patterns of covariation'. Qualitative versus quantitative. The
defining feature of quantitative research, that its results can be summarized in numbers most
often arranged in tables, is absent, or at least not dominant, in qualitative research. In other
words, while the results of quantitative research can be presented in numerical form, those of
qualitative research require verbal expressions, and often quite extensive ones. The crucial
feature of qualitative research, then, is to 'work up' one's research materials, to search for hidden
meanings, non-obvious features, multiple interpretations, implied connotations, unheard
voices. While quantitative research is focused on summary characterizations and statistical
explanations, qualitative research offers complex descriptions and tries to explicate webs of
meaning. Styles of qualitative social research. Interview studies, the most popular style of
doing qualitative social research, is to interview a number of individuals in a way that is less
restrictive and standardized than the one used for quantitative research. Doing interviews has
a number of obvious practical advantages. The researcher is able to collect a large amount of
on-target information with a minimal investment in terms of time and social effort. One does
not have to wait until a phenomenon of interest emerges naturally; one can work to have it
created on the spot, so to speak. Doing an interview study is for many if not most qualitative
researchers the obvious way of designing their projects. Using documents, Different styles of
qualitative research involve examining documents of various types. One can study 'natural'
documents produced as part of an established social practice, such as employee records,
newspaper reports, cartoons, music scores, family photos, artwork, home videos, email
messages. I use the term 'document' to refer to a preserved record of text, image, sound, or a
combination of these. Ethnography, A small proportion of qualitative researchers are
committed to closely observing the actual 'natural' situations in which people live their lives,
trying to minimize the impact of their presence on the actions of their subjects. This will involve
a variety of data collection techniques, including first studying the language, and then making
natural observations, asking for explanations, gathering kinship information. Another label for
this style of research is 'participant observation', while many practitioners call it 'fieldwork'.
Perhaps the most demanding way of conducting qualitative research. It takes a lot of time, the
capacity to interact with various people, the management of ambiguous roles, and sometimes
discomfort. physical or even dangerous, but also offers a variety of possibilities and very
interesting challenges. The analytic status of research materials, Pertti Alasuutari has made a
useful distinction concerning the ways in which qualitative researchers conceive the analytic
function of the evidence they collect. When questionnaires or interviews are used, these are
mostly considered from what he calls 'a factist perspective' (Alasuutari, 1995: 47). So, for
instance, when analysing an interview, the focus may be on properties of the actual interaction,
like the evasion of questions or the ways stories are told. In a related vein, a number of writers
on the value and use of interview data have remarked that one can treat interview materials in
principle either as a 'resource' or as a 'topic'. In the first case, one uses interview statements to
gain information about certain events or about the respondent, while in the second case one is
interested in processes of interaction, meaning construction or descriptive practices as they are
'visible' in the interview itself. Theoretical objects, A closely related issue concerns the
theoretical conception of the phenomenon that is the object of interest of the research project.
Sometimes the researcher begins his project with a clearly defined theoretical object, saying
'identity' in one of its many meanings. However, in many other cases, the object and its
theoretical features are not very clearly defined at the outset but are 'allowed to emerge' in the
research process. What may be problematic, however, is that quite often there is no clear and
consistent theoretical object defined or even implied in each phase of a project. In those cases,
the notion of common sense replaces active thinking about what one is doing. Some major
points. My reflections can be summarized in the following points: 1. Doing research, or more
generally doing scientific work takes time, one needs time to collect evidence, read the relevant
literature, think through one's argumentation, and compose a convincing report. 2. Some
aspects of the process of social research can be caught using Ragin's metaphor of a dialogue of
ideas and evidence leading to a representation of social life. 3. Qualitative styles of social
research involve the close study of a limited set of evidence, taking many different aspects into
account; quite often this study is oriented to formulate common features or to the development
of a typology. 4. Based on the kinds of evidence used, three styles of qualitative research have
been distinguished: the most popular one uses interviews to produce the required evidence,
research into historical processes mostly relies on documents, while ethnographers use a variety
of data-producing methods, including especially 'natural observation". 5. Considering a
researcher's perspective on his or her data, such as interviews or documents, a contrast has been
given, following Alasuutari, between a factist and a specimen perspective; in the first case the
data are used to study a reality to which they refer, while in the second they are taken 'on their
own', as interviews, documents, or whatever. 6. In both perspectives, however, the researcher
uses an implied or explicit conception of his or her ultimate topic, an analytic or formal object,
that can be distinguished from the material object being studied. 7. What is evident in all of
these features is that research involves taking information about social life out of its original
context to rework it in a different one; in one way or another information is made to travel in a
preservable format from one place to another, from an ephemeral state to a more permanent
one.