Topic :Planning and Constructing designs in qualitative research

● Research Design is a plan for collecting and analyzing evidence that will

make it possible for the investigator to answer whatever questions has posed.

● In Qualitative research design, includes…

1.Abstract

2.Introduction

3.Method

4.Analysis

5.Reference

6.Appendices

⮚ 1.Abstract:

● A brief summary of the contents of a study, and it allows readers to quickly

survey the essential elements of a project.

● Single paragraph,from 150 to 250 words(APA)

● Start with the issue/problem leading to a need for the research.

● Indicate the purpose of the study.

● Next state what data will be collected to address this purpose.After

this,indicate themes or statistical results.

 ● Finish the abstract by mentioning the practical implications of the study.

State the specific audiences who will benefit from the project and why they
will benefit.

⮚ 2.Introduction:

● The deficiencies model of an introduction is an approach to writing an

introduction to a research study that builds on gaps existing in the literature.

● It includes the elements of stating the research problem, reviewing past

studies about the problem, indicating deficiencies in these studies, and

advancing the significance of the study.it is the general template.

● It consists of five parts, and a separate paragraph can be devoted to each

part, for an introduction of about two pages in length:

1. State the research problem.

2. Review studies that have addressed the problem.

3. Indicate deficiencies in the study

4. Advance the significance of the study for particular audience

5. State the purpose statement

● Research problem
● What effect did this sentence have? Would it entice a reader to read on? Was

it pitched at a level so that a wide audience could understand it? These

questions are important for opening sentences, and they are called a
narrative hook( engage participant in the study)

● Consider and write about whether there is a single problem involved in the

proposed study or multiple problems that lead to a need for the study.

● Reviewing studies

● Purpose: To justify the importance of the study and to create distinctions

between past studies and the proposed one.

● In some narrowly construed studies or in new, exploratory projects, no

literature exists to document the research problem. Also, it makes sense that
a topic is being proposed for study precisely because little research has been
conducted on it.

● Deficiencies in past literature

● Deficiencies in past literature may exist because topics not have been

explored with a particular group, sample/population; the literature may need

to be replicated or repeated to see if the same findings hold, given new
samples of people/new sites for study; or the voices of underrepresented
groups have not been heard in published literature. In any given study,
authors may mention one or more of these deficiencies.
● Deficiencies can often be found in the “suggestions for future research”

sections of journal articles, and authors can reference these ideas and
provide further justification for their proposed study.

● Proposal writers need to tell how their planned study will remedy or address

these deficiencies.

● Significance of a study

● Writers often include a specific section describing the significance of the

study for select audiences in order to convey the importance of the problem
for different groups that may profit from reading and using the study.

● In designing this section, one might include three or four reasons about how

the study helps improve practice and as to why the study will improve policy
or decision making.

● Purpose statement

● Good qualitative purpose statements contain information about the central

phenomenon explored in the study, the participants in the study, and the
research site.

● Use words such as purpose, intent, or objective to signal attention to this

statement as the central controlling idea.

● Focus on a single phenomenon (concept /idea). Narrow the study to one idea

to be explored/understood. This focus means that a purpose does not convey

 relating two/more variables or comparing two/more groups, as is typically
found in quantitative research. Instead, advance a single phenomenon,
recognizing that the study may evolve into an exploration of relationships or
comparisons among ideas. None of these related explorations could be
anticipated at the beginning.

● Use action verbs to convey how learning will take place. Action verbs and

phrases, such as, understand, develop, explore, examine the meaning of, or
discover, keep the inquiry open and convey an emerging design.

● Use neutral words and phrases—nondirectional language—such as,

exploring the “selfexpression experiences of individuals” rather than the

“successful self-expression of individuals.” Other words and phrases that
may be problematic include useful, positive, and informing—all words that
suggest an outcome that may or may not occur.

● Include words denoting the strategy of inquiry to be used in data collection,

analysis, and the process of research, such as whether the study will use an
ethnographic, grounded theory, case study, phenomenological, narrative
approach, or some other strategy.

● Mention the participants in the study, such as one or more individuals, a

group of people, or an entire organization.

● Identify the site for the research, such as homes, classrooms, organizations,

programs, or events. Describe this site in enough detail so that the reader
knows exactly where a study will take place.

● Include some language that delimits the scope of participation or research

sites in the study.

Research question and hypothesis

● In a qualitative study, inquirers state research questions, not objectives (i.e.,

specific goals for the research) or hypotheses (i.e., predictions that involve
variables and statistical tests). These research questions assume two forms:
(a) a central question and (b) associated subquestions.

● Ask one or two central research questions. The central question is a broad

question that asks for an exploration of the central phenomenon or concept

in a study.

● Ask no more than five to seven subquestions in addition to your central

questions.

● Relate the central question to the specific qualitative strategy of inquiry.

● Begin the research questions with the words what or how to convey an open

and emerging design. The word why often implies that the researcher is
trying to explain why something occurs.

● Focus on a single phenomenon or concept.

● Use these more exploratory verbs as nondirectional rather than directional

words that suggest quantitative research, such as affect, influence, impact,

determine, cause, and relate.

⮚ 3.Methods:
 ● Characteristics of Qualitative research:

● Natural setting

● Researcher as key instrument

● Multiple sources of data

● Inductive and deductive data analysis

● Participants’ meanings

● Emergent design

● Reflexivity

● The collection procedures in qualitative research involve four basic types:

● Collecting information through unstructured or semi structured observations

and interviews, documents, and visual materials, as well as establishing the

protocol for recording information.

⮚ Data analysis and interpretation:

Step 1. Organize and prepare the data for analysis. This involves transcribing
interviews, optically scanning material, typing up field notes, cataloguing all of the
visual material, and sorting and arranging the data into different types depending
on the sources of information

Step 2.Read or look at all the data. This first step provides a general sense of the
information and an opportunity to reflect on its overall meaning.

Step 3. Start coding all of the data. Coding is the process of organizing the data by
bracketing chunks (or text or image segments) and writing a word representing a
category in the margins

Step 4.Use the coding process to generate a description of the setting or people as
well as categories or themes for analysis. Description involves a detailed rendering
of information about people, places, or events in a setting. Researchers can
generate codes for this description.

Step 5. Advance how the description and themes will be represented in the
qualitative narrative.

Step 6. A final step in data analysis involves making an interpretation in qualitative

research of the findings or results. Asking, “What were the lessons learned?”
captures the essence of this idea.

Thus, interpretation in qualitative research can take many forms; be adapted for
different types of designs; and be flexible to convey personal, research-based, and
action meanings.

● Verification:

In ensuring internal validity, the following strategies will be employed:

Triangulation of data

Member checking

Peer examination

Clarification of researcher bias

After this, conclusion and implications are followed.

⮚ References

⮚ Appendices:

● Informed consent statement

● Personal data sheet

● Survey questionnaire

▪ Topic : Grounded theory, Narrative inquiry, discursive psychology

⮚ Grounded theory

Grounded theory is one of the basic approach and most prominently used
technique in qualitative research. Grounded theory refers to ‘the process generation
of theory which is based on collection of data from multiple sources’. The
approach of grounded theory was developed by Glaser and Strauss in 1960’s. The
grounded theory approach aims to collect data and interpret the data from the
textual base (for example, a collection of field notes or video recordings). After the
process of interpreting, the data base is categorized in to different variables and
then the interrelationship between these variables are analyzed and studied.

⮚ Steps

Memoing

The first objective of the researcher is to collect data in form of memos. Memos
are a form of short notes that the researcher writes and prepares. These memos act
as a source of data which is further put in other processes of analysis and
interpretation. These short notes or memos can be prepared in three ways:

a) Theoretical note

This form of note contains the details regarding how a textual data bas is related to
the existing literature of the concerned study. The note consists of about one to the
existing literature of the concerned study. The note consists of about one to five
pages, Any how, the final theory and report consists of an integration of several
such theoretical notes.

b) Field note

Field note consists of the notes prepared when the researcher actively participates
with the population/ culture or the community under study. It can be the
observations of behaviors, interactions, events or situations that occurs on the spot
and it also contains the causal notes behind such actions.

c) Code notes
The researcher or the ground theorist may also prepare notes by naming, labeling
or categorizing things, properties and events. The code notes are those notes which
discuss the codes of such labeling. These code notes further acts as a source of
formation of final reports. Further, these code notes also acts as a guide to the
ground theorists while analyzing a text or a case.

⮚ TYPES OF CODING IN GROUNDED THEORY

Ground theorists analyze and categorize events and try to identify the meaning of
the text with the help of the prepared code notes. Preparation of the code can be
done in three ways-

Selective Coding

In this type of coding out of all the available categories, the ground theorist select
one category to be the center or the major one and then tries to relate the other
categories with the selected major category. In this way, the ground theorist tries to
analyze how other categories are affecting the major category or how the major
category is having an effect on the other related categories.

Open Coding

It is the process of identifying, labeling and analyzing the phenomena found in the
text. The ground theorist on the basis of generalization categorizes names, events
or properties in to more general categories or dimensions.

Axial Coding

It is the process of relating the categories or properties (that is the codes) to each
other with the help of deductive and inductive thinking. The ground theorists try to
analyze the causal relations between these variables, that is, which of the code is
the ‘cause’ which has led to the occurrence of other codes- the ‘context’. The
grounded theorist analyses and interprets the ‘cause’ codes and the ‘context’ codes
without showing much interest on the ‘consequences’ of the phenomenon itself.

⮚ NARRATIVE INQUIRY

Narrative research is a strategy of inquiry in which the researcher studies the lives
of individuals and asks one or more individuals to provide stories about their lives.
This information is then often retold or restoried by the researcher into a narrative
chronology. In the end, the narrative combines views from the participant’s life
with those of the researcher’s life in a collaborative narrative. Narrative research
employs restorying the participants’ stories using structural devices, such as plot,
setting, activities, climax, and denouement.

⮚ Defining Features

• Narrative researchers collect stories about individuals’ lived and told experiences.
Thus, there may be a strong collaborative feature of narrative research as the story
emerges through the interaction or dialogue of the researcher and the participant(s).

• Narrative stories tell of individual experiences, and they may shed light on the
identities of individuals and how they see themselves.

• Narrative stories occur within specific places or situations. Temporality becomes

important for the researcher’s telling of the story within a place.

• Narrative stories are gathered through many different forms of data, such as
through interviews that may be the primary form of data collection but also
through observations, documents, pictures, and other sources of qualitative data.
• Narrative stories are analyzed using varied strategies. An analysis can be made
about what was said (thematically), the nature of the telling of the story
(structural), who the story directed toward (dialogic/performance), or using visual
analysis of images or interpreting images alongside words. Other options for
analysis involve foci on values, plot, significance, or character mapping and time.

• Narrative stories often are heard and shaped by the researchers into a chronology,
although may not be told that way by the participant(s).

• Narrative stories often contain turning points or specific tensions or transitions or

interruptions that are highlighted by the researchers in the telling of the stories.

⮚ Types of Narratives

Narrative researchers can select from various types of narratives for guiding the
collection of stories.

• A biographical study is a form of narrative study in which the researcher writes

and records the experiences of another person’s life.

• Autoethnography is written and recorded by the individuals who are the subject
of the study. defines Autoethnography as the idea of multiple layers of
consciousness, the vulnerable self, the coherent self, critiquing the self in social
contexts, the subversion of dominant discourses, and the evocative potential. They
contain the Personal story of the author as well as the larger cultural meaning for
the individual’s story.
• A life history portrays an individual’s entire life, while a personal experience
story is a narrative study of an individual’s personal experience found in single or
multiple episodes, private situations, or communal folklore.

• An oral history consists of gathering personal reflections of events and their

causes and effects from one individual or several individuals. Narrative studies
may have a specific contextual focus, such as stories told by teachers or children in
classrooms or the stories told about organizations.

⮚ Procedures for Conducting

Using the approach taken by Clandinin and Connelly (2000) as a general

procedural guide, the methods of conducting a narrative study do not follow a
lockstep approach but instead represent an informal collection of topics.

• Determine if the research problem or question best fits narrative research.

• Select one or more individuals who have stories or life experiences to tell, and
spend considerable time with them gathering their stories through multiples types
of information.

• Consider how the collection of the data and their recording can take different
shapes.

• Embed information about the context of these stories into data collection,
analysis, and writing.

• Analyze the participants’ stories using the process of reorganizing the stories into
some general type of framework called restorying.

• Embed a collaborative approach in the collection and telling of stories.

• Present the narrative in written form.

⮚ Challenges

• Given the procedures and the characteristics of narrative research, it is a

challenging approach to use. The researcher needs to collect extensive information
about the participant and needs to have a clear understanding of the context of the
individual’s life. It takes a keen eye to identify in the source material that gathers
the particular stories to capture the individual’s experiences.

• Active collaboration with the participant is necessary, and researchers need to

discuss the participant’s stories as well as be reflective about their own personal
and political background, which shapes how they “restory” the account.Multiple
issues arise in the collecting, analyzing,and telling of individual stories and
building awareness of this responsibility is crucial.

⮚ DISCURSIVE PSYCHOLOGY

● Discursive psychology (DP) is a form of discourse analysis that focuses on

psychological themes in talk, text, and images.

● It allows us to address questions about how people, located in particular

contexts of time and space, take up available discourses and use features of
language (sometimes referred to as linguistic devices, strategies, or
resources) to perform social actions, including how they construct versions
of reality with what possible consequences.
 ● DA approaches generally orient to language as being performative; that is,

such approaches assume that language in all its forms functions to do

something.

● DA approaches argue that the performative quality of language can be

closely studied, allowing analysts to understand how social life unfolds.

Topic : Phenomenology, Ethnography, Case study Research, Action

Research and Historical Research

PHENOMENOLOGY

– a phenomenological study describes the common meaning for several individuals

of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon.

– Phenomenologists focus on describing what all participants have in common as

they experience a phenomenon (e.g., grief is universally experienced). To say it
somewhat differently, a contexts.

– The main characteristic of the phenomenological tradition is that it is the study of

the lifeworld as we immediately experience it, pre-reflectively, rather than as we
conceptualize, theorize, categorize, or reflect on it.

– Phenomenology is now commonly considered to be one of the alternative

qualitative research methodologies to which researchers can turn. But
phenomenology is also a term that can carry quite different meanings depending on
theoretical and practical

– The term has acquired a broader meaning as phenomenology has been developed
as a human science that is employed in professional disciplines such as education,
health science.
– Phenomenology may explore the unique meanings of any human experience or
phenomenon.

For example, it may study what it is like to have a conversation, how students
experience difficulty in learning something, how pain is experienced in childbirth,
what it is like to experience obsessive compulsions, how young people begin to
experience secrecy and inwardness, and so forth psychology, and law.

TYPES

-- such as transcendental, existential, hermeneutic, linguistic, and ethical

phenomenology.

Transcendental phenomenology may be identified with the pathbreaking work of

Edmund Husserl and his interpreters.

It describes the way that knowledge comes into being in consciousness and
clarifies the assumptions upon which all human understandings are grounded.

Existential phenomenology is often associated with Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul

Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir.

Hermeneutic phenomenology is linked especially with Hans-Georg Gadamer and

with Paul Ricoeur.

Some basic terms of hermeneutic phenomenology are interpretation, textual

meaning, dialogue, preunderstanding, and tradition.

Phenomenology becomes hermeneutical when its method is taken to be

interpretive.

STEPS TO CONDUCT PHENOMENOLOGY RESEARCH

We use psychologist Moustakas’s (1994) approach because it has systematic steps
in the data analysis procedure and guidelines for assembling the textual and
structural descriptions.

– Determine if the research problem is best examined by using a

phenomenological approach.

– Identify a phenomenon of interest to study, and describe it.

Examples of a phenomenon include emotional states such as anger and social

constructs such as professionalism.

– Distinguish and specify the broad philosophical assumptions of

phenomenology.

For example, one could write about the combination of objective reality and
individual experiences.

– Collect data from the individuals who have experienced the phenomenon by
using in-depth and multiple interviews.

Generate themes from the analysis of significant statements.

Develop textural and structural descriptions. The significant statements and
themes are then used to write a description of what the participants
experienced.

– Report the “essence” of the phenomenon by using a composite description.

From the structural and textural descriptions, the researcher then writes a
composite description that presents the “essence” of the phenomenon, called
the essential, invariant structure.

– Present the understanding of the essence of the experience in written form.

CHALLENGES

A phenomenology provides a deep understanding of a phenomenon as experienced

by several individuals

Phenomenology can involve a streamlined form of data collection by including

only single or multiple interviews with participants.

phenomenology requires at least some understanding of the broader philosophical

assumptions, and researchers should identify these assumptions in their studies.
These philosophical ideas are abstract concepts and not easily seen in a written
phenomenological study.

A final challenge for phenomenological researchers is how (or for many if) a
newer approach, fits within phenomenology.

ETHNOGRAPHY

– Ethnography is a qualitative design in which the researcher describes and

interprets the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviors, beliefs, and
language of a culture-sharing group

– Ethnography involves extended observations of the group, most often through

participant observation, in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day lives
of the people and observes and interviews the group participants.

--Ethnographers study the meaning of the behavior, the language, and the
interaction among members of the culture-sharing group.

FEATURES

– Ethnographies focus on developing a complex, complete description of the

culture of a group
– In an ethnography, the researcher looks for patterns of the group’s mental
activities, such as their ideas and beliefs expressed through language, or material
activities, such as how they behave within the group as expressed through their
actions observed by the researcher.

– Theory plays an important role in focusing the researcher’s attention when

conducting an ethnography. For example, ethnographer starts with a theory—a
broad explanation as to what they hope to find.

--Using the theory and looking for patterns of a culture-sharing group involves
engaging in extensive fieldwork, collecting data primarily through interviews,
observations, symbols, artifacts, and many diverse sources of data.

-- In an analysis of this data, the researcher relies on the participants views as an

insider emic perspective.

This analysis results in an understanding of how the culture-sharing group works—

how it functions, the group’s way of life.

TYPES

– There are many forms of ethnography, such as a confessional ethnography,

life history, autoethnography, feminist ethnography, ethnographic novels as
well as the visual ethnography found in photography, video, and electronic
media.

– Two popular forms of ethnography are : Realist ethnography and Critical

Ethnography

REALIST ETHNOGRAPHY
● The realist ethnography is a traditional approach used by cultural

anthropologists.

● It is an objective account of the situation, typically written in the third-person

point of view and reporting objectively on the information learned from

participants at a site.

● In this ethnographic approach, the realist ethnographer narrates the study in a

third-person dispassionate voice and reports on what is observed or heard from

participants.

● The ethnographer produces the participants’ views through closely edited

quotations and has the final word on how the culture is to be interpreted and
presented.

CRITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY

Critical ethnography is a type of ethnographic research in which the authors

advocate for the emancipation of groups marginalized in society.

Researchers typically are politically minded individuals who seek, through

their research, to speak out against inequality and domination.

A critical ethnographer will study issues of power, empowerment,

inequality, inequity, dominance, repression, hegemony, and victimization.
 For example, critical ethnographers might study schools that provide
privileges to certain types of students, or counseling practices that serve to
overlook the needs of underrepresented groups.

STEPS TO CONDUCT ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

– Determine if ethnography is the most appropriate design for studying the

research problem.

Ethnography is appropriate if the needs are to describe how a cultural group works
and to explore the beliefs, language, behaviors, and issues facing the group, such as
power, resistance, and dominance.

– Identify and locate a culture-sharing group to study.

Typically, this group is one whose members have been together for an extended
period of time so that their shared language, patterns of behavior, and attitudes
have merged into discernable patterns.

– Select cultural themes, issues, or theories to study about the group.

These themes, issues, and theories provide an orienting framework for the study of
the culture-sharing group. It also informs the analysis of the culture-sharing group.

– Determine which type of ethnography to use to study cultural concepts.

Perhaps how the group works needs to be described, or a critical ethnography can
expose issues such as power, hegemony, and advocacy for certain groups.

– Gather information in the context or setting where the group works or lives.
Gathering the types of information typically needed in an ethnography involves
going to the research site, respecting the daily lives of individuals at the site, and
collecting a wide variety of materials.

– Generate an overall cultural interpretation of the group from the analysis of

patterns across many sources of data.

The researcher begins by compiling a detailed description of the culture-sharing

group, focusing on a single event, on several activities, or on the group over a
prolonged period of time.

– Present the patterns of the culture-sharing group in written or performance

formats.

This is often accomplished by describing a working set of rules or generalizations

as to how the culture-sharing group functions. This may also be referred to as a
holistic cultural portrait.

CHALLENGES

– The researcher needs to have an understanding of cultural anthropology, the

meaning of a social–cultural system, and the concepts typically explored by those
studying cultures.

– The time to collect data is extensive, involving prolonged time in the field. In
much ethnography, the narratives are written in a literary, almost storytelling
approach, an approach that may limit the audience for the work and may be
challenging for authors accustomed to traditional approaches to scientific writing.
– Sensitivity to the needs of individuals being studied is especially important, and
the researcher must access and report his or her impact in conducting the study on
the people and the places being explored.

CASE STUDY RESEARCH

— Case study research is defined as a qualitative approach in which the

investigator explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple
bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection.

– Data collection involves multiple sources of information (e.g., observations,

interviews, audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and reports a case
description and case themes.

FEATURES

– Case study research begins with the identification of a specific case that will be
described and analyzed. Examples of a case for study are an individual, a
community, a decision process, or an event. A single case can be selected or
multiple cases identified so that they can be compared. Typically, case study
researchers study current, real-life cases that are in progress so that they can gather
accurate information not lost by time.

– The key to the case identification is that it is bounded, meaning that it can be
defined or described within certain parameters- specific place where the case is
located and timeframe in which the case is studied.

– The intent of conducting the case study -

 A qualitative case study can be composed to illustrate a unique case, a case
that has unusual interest in and of itself and needs to be described and
detailed. This is called an intrinsic case

The intent of the case study may be to understand a specific issue, problem,
or concern (e.g., teenage pregnancy) and a case or cases selected to best
understand the problem. This is called an instrumental case

-- A hallmark of a good qualitative case study is that it presents an in depth

understanding of the case.

TYPES

– The types of qualitative case studies are distinguished based on the case
studying one individual, several individuals, a group, an entire program, or an
activity.

– They may also be distinguished in terms of the intent of the case analysis.
Three variations exist in terms of intent: the single instrumental case study,
the collective or multiple case study, and the intrinsic case study.

– In a collective case study (or multiple case study), the one issue or concern is
again selected, but the inquirer selects multiple case studies to illustrate the issue.

– In a single instrumental case study, the researcher focuses on an issue or

concern and then selects one bounded case to illustrate this issue.

STEPS TO CONDUCT A CASE STUDY RESEARCH

CHALLENGES

– The researcher must identify the case- The case selected may be broad in scope
(e.g., the Boy Scout organization) or narrow in scope (e.g., a decisionmaking
process at a specific college).

– The case study researcher must decide which bounded system to study-
recognizing that several might be possible candidates for this selection and
realizing that either the case itself or an issue, which a case or cases are selected to
illustrate, is worthy of study.

– The researcher must consider whether to study a single case or multiple cases. As
the use of multiple case studies increases, it is important to consider three issues:
resource limitations, case selection, and cross-case analysis.

ACTION RESEARCH

– Action research is a flexible research methodology uniquely suited to researching

and supporting change.
– It integrates social research with exploratory action to promote development.

– Action research involves fluid and overlapping cycles of investigation, action

planning, piloting of new practices, and evaluation of outcomes, incorporating at
all stages the collection and analysis of data and the generation of knowledge.

– The outcomes of action research are both practical and theoretical: The
knowledge it generates has a direct and ongoing impact on changing practice for
participants and on a wider audience through its publications.

– This entry describes the origins of action research and its use in a variety of
fields throughout the world.

– The first person to use the term action research was probably Kurt Lewin.

STEPS TO CONDUCT ACTION RESEARCH

HISTORICAL RESEARCH
– A historical research design is of particular relevance to research about
contemporary social and cultural issues, as it enhances an understanding of the
present.

For example - studying a contemporary social issue, such as drug abuse or

terrorism, or the history of an individual person or of a concept, such as freedom,
historical research provides the critical contextual link of the past to the present.

– Historical research involves some type of conceptual idea, theme, or person in

history.

– It also explores issues in the evaluation and analysis of such data and briefly
reviews the impact of technology on historical research.

TYPES

– Oral history is a biographical approach in which the researcher gathers personal

recollections of events from a living individual through audio and videotape
recordings.

– Autobiography narrative is an account of a person’s life that has been written

or recorded by the individuals themselves.

– Life history is a biographical writing in the form of an extensive record of a

person’s life, as told to the researcher. The life history of a person involves a living
individual.

– Case study is a type of historical research that sheds light on a phenomenon

through an in-depth examination of a single case exemplar of a phenomenon.
STEPS TO CONDUCT HISTORICAL RESEARCH

– Identification of a researchable phenomenon-

It includes reading relevant literature, listening to present ideas about the

phenomena, and even more important, reflecting on the researcher’s interest.

– Developing hypotheses or research questions and identifying a theoretical

perspective to guide the data collection process and interpretation of results-

A theoretical framework can provide a guide for the historical study, both in data
collection and analysis.

– Data exploration and collection stage-

It can be the most time- and labor intensive part of the research process depending
on the subject and accessibility of data sources.

– Fact-checking, evaluation of the validity and reliability of data, and the

analysis of evidence from each source -

The researcher evaluates the data, including the analysis and meaning of missing
data, and forms generalizations.

– The writing of the report -

The findings are described along with their interpretation and which provides
detailed supportive evidence in defense of the conclusions

Topic : Emergent qualitative methods : case studies, Longitudinal studies,

comparative studies, Retrospective studies.
● Emergent design refers to the ability to adapt to new ideas, concepts, or

findings that arise while conducting qualitative research.

● In contrast to more structured approaches, an emergent design welcomes

unanticipated (unexpected) information, often adding to the richness of the

data.

● The research process for qualitative researchers is emergent. This means that

the initial plan for research cannot be tightly prescribed, and that all phases
of the process may change or shift after the researchers enter the field and
begin to collect data.

⮚ Case study

● Case study is defined as a qualitative approach in which the investigator

explores a real-life,contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple

bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, indepth data collection
involving multiple sources of information (e.g., observations, interviews,
audiovisual material, and documents and reports), and reports a case
description and case theme.

● The case study involves an in-depth, intensive and sharply focused

exploration of such an occurrence.

● Purpose: To understand the important aspects of the life cycle of the unit or

knowing about social reality.

● A case can be of an individual, a situation, an incident, an accident, an

organization, a city, a group of people, a community, a patient, a school, an

 intervention, even a nation state or an empire.It examines social unit (unit
may be a person, a family, a community, a social group, a social institution
or a nation).

● Yin (1998) has listed six types of data with which researchers of case study

must be aware.

a) Archival record : Archival records are usually quantitative data that include
survey, questionnaire, records of organizations etc.

b) Documents : includes materials like school records, health records etc.

c) Direct observation : when the researcher visits the case study site, and prepares
some field notes based upon observation.

d) Participant observation: It is observation of the field situation by the researcher

who becomes a participant in the situation being observed.

e) Interview : In case studies, interviews are open ended in nature.

f) Physical artifacts: This is used in physical anthropological studies of earlier

times.

● Stake (1994) has distinguished between the following three types of case

studies:

1) Intrinsic case study: It is defined as a case study where the study is undertaken
because the researcher prefers a better understanding of the case of personal
interest is selected for study.

2) Instrumental case study: It refers to a case study where a particular case is

examined to give insight into an issue, or to refine a theory.
3) collective case study: It refers to a case study where the instrumental case study
is extended to cover several cases as well as to learn more about the general
condition. The researcher is interested in comparing multiple cases in a single
research study.

⮚ Longitudinal studies

● In a longitudinal study, the data are collected at two or more points in time.

● It involves choosing a group of participants and approaching them

repeatedly at selected time intervals to note changes that occur over time in
the specified characteristics.

● In longitudinal studies, the study population is visited a number of times at

regular intervals, usually over a long period.

● This strategy is rarely used at least explicitly in qualitative research.

● Example 1: Identical twins Consider a study conducted to understand the

similarities or differences between identical twins who are brought up

together versus identical twins who were not.In this case, researchers would
want to observe these participants from childhood to adulthood, to
understand how growing up in different environments influences traits,
habits, and personality.

● The great strength of a longitudinal study- being able to document changes

of view or action.Through repeated collection cycles, where the initial state

of a process of change can be recorded without any influence from its final
state- cannot therefore be fully realized.
 ● The major problem in applying longitudinal studies is that they generally

require a considerable Organizational expenditure and extended resources

( time…etc).

● The main contribution of longitudinal studies to general methodological

discussion is that they are the most consistent way of analyzing

developments and process in their course.

● In order to fit longitudinal studies into research process-

✓ Sampling should be purposeful and then selection should be maintained in the

process.

✓ Observation and ethnography include an implicit longitudinal approach, but can

also be applied repeatedly.

✔ Interviews using interview schedules can be applied repeatedly more easily

than focus groups or Narrative interviews.

● Limitations – In research for a thesis or in very briefly funded projects,

longitudinal designs can Only be applied in parts, since such a design needs
enough time between the moments of data collection for making
development and change visible.

⮚ Comparative studies

● In a comparative study, you will not observe the case as a whole and in its

complexity, but rather a multiplicity of cases with regard to particular

excerpts.
 ● Comparative studies involves the process of analysing differences and/or

similarities between two or more groups.

Example: To be able to show cultural differences in the views of health among

Portuguese and German women. Selected interview partners from both cultures.
They had to lead similar lives in as many respects as possible (big-city life,
comparable professions, income, and level of education) under at least very similar
conditions in order to be able to relate differences to the comparative dimension of
"culture".

⮚ Retrospective studies

● Investigate a phenomenon, situation or problem or issue that has happened

in the past.

● Usually conducted either on the basis of the data available for that period or

on the basis of respondents recall of the situation.

● Biographical research is a good example of retrospective studies. Data are

often collected with the help of narrative methods.

● Design questions in relation to retrospective research involve the selection

of informants who will be meaningful for the process to be investigated.

● It also involve justifying the boundaries of time to be investigated,

checking the research questions, deciding which (historical) sources or

documents should be used in addition to interview.
 ● One danger in any retrospective research is that the current situation in

which an event is recounted, tends to overlap or influences the assessment of

the past event.

● Examples

A historical analysis of migratory movements in Eastern Europe between1915 and

1945.

Evaluate the impact of diabetes on in hospital mortality in patients with covid-19

positive.

Topic :ONLINE QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

● Qualitative research has been affected by contemporary digital and

technological revolutions. Computers are used to analyse qualitative data;

tape recorders, mini-disc recorders, and MP3 recorders are used for
recording interviews and focus groups. You can use the Internet to find the
literature and to publish your results.

● Beyond the area of research, the Internet has become a part of everyday life

for many people. Many people have Internet access at home and many
professional activities and routines have integrated the use of the Internet.
Finally, the number of people using e-mail as a form of communication is
growing continually across social groups. Nevertheless, we should not forget
that not everyone has access to the Internet or wants to have access to it.
 ● Given the widespread use of this medium, it is no surprise that the Internet

has been discovered as an object of research and also as a tool to use for
research.

Preconditions of Qualitative Online Research.

● First, you should be able to use a computer in a more comprehensive way.

● Should have some experience using computers, software and applications.

Also, should have regular access to the Internet, should be familiar with the
different forms of online communication like e-mail, chatrooms, mailing
lists, social networking sites, and blogs.

● For doing an online study we should consider whether your research is an

issue that you can best or only study by using qualitative online research.

● The prospective participants of the study should have access to the Internet

and they should be accessible via the Internet.

● Another precondition is that you should know about the methods of

qualitative research independent from their online use before you transfer
them to Internet research.

METHODS
ONLINE INTERVIEWING

● If you do your research while living in the country side or if your

interviewees are spread across the country or even several countries,

● this can be more difficult to organize and to finance. This may reduce your

sample from relevant to accessible people. Finally, there may be some

people who feel uneasy spontaneously answering a series of questions over
an hour or two, which may lead them to reject participation in your research.
All these practical reasons, sometimes technical but maybe systematic,
might lead you to do interviews online if the target groups of your study are
likely to be reached by e-mail or the Internet.

● Online interviewing can be organized in a synchronous form, which means

that you get in touch with your participant in a chatroom where you can
directly exchange questions and answers while you are both online at the
same time.

● Online interviews can also be organized in an asynchronous form, which

means that you send your questions to the participants and they send their
answers back after some time and you are not necessarily online at the same
time -Mostly done in the form of e-mail exchanges.

● In an online interview, you could try to do the same by sending a set of

questions to participants and asking them to send back the answers. But this
comes closer to the situation of sending out a questionnaire in a survey than
to the situation of a semi-structured interview.

● Some authors suggest that you design the collection of data more

interactively by sending one or two questions, which will be answered by

the participants. After that you can spend the next (one or two) questions
asking for answers and so on. Thus, the online interview is a series of e-mail
exchanges.
● Address people whose e-mail address you already have or whose e-mail

address you are able to retrieve.

● Use snowballing techniques

● In some cases, you will know no more about them or have to rely on the

information they give you about their gender, age, location, and so on. This
may raise questions of reliability of such demographic information and lead
to problems of contextualizing the statements in the later interview.

● In online interviewing you have to prepare instructions in written form, and

they have to be clear and detailed, so that the participant knows what to do.
The instructions should not be too long in order to avoid confusion and
neglect on the side of the interviewee.

● It is necessary to build up a rapport with the interviewees, even if the

communication may be asynchronous and responses come with some delay

(even days).

● Face-to-face communication (and interviewing) may be more spontaneous

than online communication, but the latter allows the participants to reflect on
their answers more than the former.
LIMITATIONS

● Online interviewing is a kind of simulation of real-world interviewing and

spontaneity of verbal exchange is replaced by the reflexivity of written

exchanges.
 ● Non -verbal or paralinguistic elements of communication are difficult to

transport and integrate.

● The application of this approach is limited to people ready and willing to use

computer-mediated communication or this kind of technology and

communication in general.
ONLINE FOCUS GROUPS

● Synchronous (or real-time) and asynchronous (non-real-time) groups.

● The synchronous online focus group requires that all participants are online

at the same time and may take part in a chatroom or by using specific
conferencing software.

● Asynchronous means that all participants need to have this software on their

computers or that you should provide it to your participants who are

supposed to load it onto their computers.

● Asynchronous focus groups do not require that all participants are online at

the same time (and this prevents the problems of co-ordinating this
precondition).

● As in an e-mail interview, people can take their time to respond to entries by

the other participants (or to your questions or stimulus). The interventions by

every participant will be addressed to a conference site and stored in a folder
to which all participants have access.
● This type of focus group has its advantages when people from different time

zones participate or when people vary in their speed of typing or responding,

which might produce differences in the chance to articulate in the group.

● As a beginning, it is important to create a welcome message, which invites

the participants, explains the procedures and what is expected from the
participants, what the rules of communication among the participants should
be like (e.g., please be polite to everyone ..."), and so on.

● The researcher should—as with any focus group—create a permissive

environment.

● For the recruitment of participants, you can basically use the same sources as

for an online interview, snowballing, or looking in existing chatrooms or

discussion groups for possible participants.

● The number of participants in real-time focus groups should be limited

because too many participants might make the discussion in the group too
fast and superficial, whereas you can manage this problem more easily in
asynchronous groups.

● Compared to face-to-face focus groups, you can manage the issue of

participant or group dynamics more easily in (especially asynchronous)

online groups, but it can also become a problem. Shy participants may
hesitate to intervene when they are unsure of the procedure or the issue, but
the researcher has more options to intervene and work on this problem than
in normal focus groups.
 ● The greater anonymity in online focus groups that is produced by the use of

usernames, nicknames, and the like may facilitate topical disclosures of

participants in the discussion more than in focus groups, in general.

● Finally, it is important that you choose a topic for the discussion that is

relevant for the group and participants in your study, so that it is attractive
for them to join the group and the discussion. Or, the other way around, it is
important that you find groups for whom your topic is relevant in order to
have fruitful discussions and interesting data.
LIMITATIONS

● Online focus groups can be affected by external influences on the

participants who take part in their everyday context. This may lead to
dropouts or distractions and influences on the data and their quality. This is
difficult to control for the researcher.

● Technical problems in the online connection of one or more participants may

also disturb the discussion and influence the quality of the data.

● Besides the technical problems this may cause, many people may hesitate to

receive and install software for the purpose of taking part in a study.

● Finally, again, the application of this approach is limited to people ready and

willing to use computer-mediated communication or this kind of technology

and communication in general.

VIRTUAL ETHNOGRAPHY
● You can study the Internet as a form of milieu or culture in which people

develop specific forms of communication or, sometimes, specific identities.

● Both suggest a transfer of ethnographic methods to Internet research and to

studying the ways of communication and self-presentation in the Internet:

● "Reaching understandings of participants' sense of self and of the meanings

they give to their online participation requires spending time with

participants to observe what they do online as well as what they say they
do"(Kendall 1999).

● For example, this led Kendall in her study of a multiple users group first to

observe and note the communication going on in this group and after a while
to become an active participant in the group to develop a better
understanding of what was going on there. This is similar to how
ethnographers become participants and observers in real-world communities
and cultures.The difference is that virtual ethnography is located in a
technical environment instead of a natural environment.

● There are many links between cyberspace and "real life,"which should be

taken into account. In this way, the Internet is a culture and a cultural
product at the same time. Mediated communication can be spatially and
temporally dislocated.

● You do not have to be at the same time or space to observe what is going on

among members of a virtual group. You can engage in a lot of other things
and then come back to your computer where your e-mails or entries in a
discussion group are waiting for you and you can access them from
computers anywhere in the world.
 ● Virtual ethnography is never holistic but always partial. You should give up

the idea of studying "pre-existing, isolable and describable informants

locales and cultures"; instead, we find knowledge based on "ideals of
strategic relevance rather than faithful representations of objective realities"

● According to Marotzki (2003), several structural features of virtual

communities can be studied in online ethnography: the rules and socio-

graphic structures of a community and its communicative, informational,
presentational, and participative structures.
LIMITATIONS

● To develop a comprehensive ethnography of the virtual, it would be

necessary to include the links to real-world activities-in front of the screen or

in the social life beyond computer use.

● To find a way from virtual communities to the real life of the participants is,

rather difficult. Therefore, virtual ethnography remains much more partial

and limited than are other forms of ethnography.
ANALYSING INTERNET DOCUMENTS

● The web is full of material like personal and institutional home pages,

documents, and files you can download from these pages, online journals,
advertisements, and the like. If your research question asks for such
documents to be analysed you will find an endless multitude of sites, often
with links among them or to other specific sites.

● Web pages are a form of communication and self-presentation for

individuals and organizations.

● Analysing Internet documents is a way of transferring document analysis to

the realm of the virtual. Depending on the concrete research question, the
analytic tools of qualitative research can be selected and applied, but may
have to be adapted.

● Sampling should be oriented on theoretical or purposeful sampling.

● Web pages are good examples to study and show the social construction of

reality and specific issues.

● Many web pages are permanently updated, changed, disappear, and reappear

on the web, which is why it is necessary to always mention the date you
accessed a page when referring to it as a source.

● Concerning the starting point and sampling of web pages, can start with any

page that seems interesting for your research and then decide which one(s)
to include next in your sample according to the insights or unsolved
questions after analysing the first one.

LIMITATIONS

● To analyse a home page in order to make statements about the owner and

creator (whether a person or institution) can be a tricky business.

● They are often changing and disappearing from the internet

● They have a different structure from texts and include different forms of data

(images, sounds, text, links, and so on) at the same time.

Limits and Perspectives of Qualitative Online Research

● Using the internet for the study makes many things easier.

● Can reach distant people with your interview without traveling

● Saves time and money for transcription

● Can access existing groups interested in a topic

● Can maintain the anonymity of your participants more easily

● Can access all sorts of documents right from your desk and computer

● Exchanging e-mails is different from asking questions and receiving answers

face to face.

● The many people accessible on the web do not necessarily wait to

● become part of your study.

● Web sites disappear or change and so on.

● Mann and Stewart (2000) present an ethical framework for Internet research

in greater detail. This framework refers to issues such as:

● You should collect data only for one specific and legitimate purpose and that

they should be guarded against any form of misuse, loss, disclosure,

unauthorized access, and similar risks.
 ● People should know about which personal data are stored and used and

should have access to them.

● Informed consent in interviewing but also in ethnographic studies should be

obtained, which can be difficult if your target group is not clearly defined
and your contact is based on e-mail addresses and nicknames

● Anonymity of the participants should be guaranteed and maintained during

the research and in using the material.

● People should know that a researcher records their chats.

● There are several forms of '"netiquettes"for the different areas of internet

use, and researchers should know them and act according to them
o If these ethical issues are taken into account, if the technical problems
can be managed in a sufficient way, and if there is a good reason to
use the Internet for your research project, it can be fruitful and helpful.
The academic interest in the Internet as a culture and as a cultural
product will lead to more development on the methodological level.

Topic : Interview, observation, Focus group discussion, Survey, working with

documents

⮚ INTERVIEW

Interview is considered to be a social interaction based on a conversation ■ The

interview can be described as attempts to understand the world from the
subjectspoint of view, to unfold the meaning of their experience, to uncover their
Lived world.
Who is interviewed and what questions are asked depends on the purpose for the
study and Research questions guiding the study.

■ How the interactions take place depends on the choice of interview type of
which there is great variety.

✓ An interviewee and interviewer being physically located in the same talking

face-to-face Using technology, or talking over the phone.

✓ An alternative to talking is to interact in writing using text messaging or an

online chat function.

✓ Focus groups are advantageous when the interaction among interviewees will
likely yield the best Information, when interviewees are similar and cooperative
with each other, when time to collect Information is limited, and when individuals
interviewed one-on-one may be hesitant to provide Information.

THE PROCEDURES FOR PREPARING AND CONDUCTING

INTERVIEWS ARE AS FOLLOWS……..

■ Determine the research questions that will be answered by interviews. These

questions are open-ended, general, and focused on understanding your central
phenomenon in the study.

■ Identify interviewees who can best answer these questions based on one of the
purposeful sampling procedures mentioned in the preceding discussion.

■ Distinguish the type of interview by determining what mode is practical and

what interactions will net the most useful information to answer research
questions.
■ Collect data using adequate recording procedures when conducting one-on-one
or focus group interviews such as the use of lapel microphones or headsets. using
more than one recording device placed at different locations in a group
environment can also be done.

■ Design and use an interview protocol, or interview guide

Use approximately five to seven open-ended questions and ample space between
the questions to write responses to the interviewees comments. Refine the
interview questions and the procedures through pilot testing. The pilot cases are
selected on the basis of convenience, access, and geographic proximity.

■ Locate a distraction-free place for conducting the interview. Find,.

■ Obtain consent from the interviewee to participate. At the beginning of the

interview, review the purpose of the study, the amount of time that will be needed
to complete the interview, their right to withdraw from the study, and plans for
using the results from the interview.

■ As an interviewer, follow good interview procedures. Stay within the study

boundaries you have reviewed, use the protocol to guide your questions, complete
the interview within the time specified, be respectful and courteous, and offer few
questions and advice.

⮚ OBSERVATION.

It is the act of noting a phenomenon in the field setting through the five senses of
the observer, often with a note-taking instrument, and recording it for scientific
purposes .

■ The observations are based on the research purpose and questions.

■ The extent to which the observer is engaged in terms of participating and
observing is usually distinguished into four observation types:

✓ Complete participant. The researcher is fully engaged with the people he or she
is observing. This may help him or her establish greater rapport with the people
being observed .

✓ Participant as observer. The researcher is participating in the activity at the site.

This may help the researcher gain insider views and subjective data. However, it
may be distracting for the researcher to record data when he or she is integrated
into the activity .

✔ Nonparticipant or observer as participant. The researcher is an outsider of

the group under study, watching and taking field notes from a distance. He
or she can record data without direct involvement with activity or people

✓ Complete observer. The researcher is neither seen nor noticed by the people
under study.

■ As a good qualitative observer, they may change their role during an

observation, such as starting as a nonparticipant and then moving into the
participant role, or vice versa.

■ The approach of changing ones role from that of an outsider to that of an insider
through the course of the ethnographic study is well documented in field research .

■ Observing in a setting is a special skill that requires addressing issues such as

the potential deception of the people being interviewed, impression management.

⮚ FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION

● A focus group is a qualitative method of data collection involving an

interview led by a moderator with a group of individuals with a shared

experience, known opinion or any other sociodemographic variable brought
together to explore the facets of any issue.

● The size of the group is approximately 6-10 individuals and the interview is

generally conducted for duration of 2-3 hours.

● Focus Group Discussion can be called as collective conversations with a

purposeas it makes interaction possible between the members. The primary

aim of focus group discussion is to describe and understand the meanings of
a specific issue from the perspective of the participants of the group.

● It allows its members to construct their social reality as it stimulates

discussion among people and bring to surface responses that otherwise

might lay dormant.

● It is particularly useful for understanding opinions and attitudes of society

on controversial and taboo topics. Such discussions may enable participants

to clarify their own views with regards to any pertinent issue by the virtue of
engaging with others.

● It brings in light the commonalities and differences in the members of the

group that is why it proves useful for exploratory researches and pilot study.
It can also be used for investigation more developed research work.

● The questions asked tend to be open-ended which sparks a trail of discussion

among members, thus creating a situation similar to everyday reality

 minimizing the artificiality inherent in one on one interview. The discussion
is generally audio taped.

STEPS IN CONDUCTING THE FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSION

Before the focus group discussion begins, the facilitator should obtain the socio-
demographic information of the participants such as their age, gender, occupation,
education and other pertinent information. The type of information to be gathered
depends on the FGD topic Once this is done, this sequence of steps is carried out:

1) A brief introduction is given in which the purpose and scope of the

discussion are explained to the participants.

2) Participants are asked to introduce themselves to the group.

3)The discussion is structured around the key themes using the probe questions
prepared in advance.

4) It is important to ensure that all the participants take an active part in the
discussion, which can be accomplished using variety of tactics.

Advantages of Focus Group Discussions:

• Being in a social group situation leads to higher levels of motivation than in

isolated scenarios of interview or filling up of questionnaire. • Membership in a
group on and of itself can be empowering as it gives voice to the participants.

• It is more economical compared to the qualitative interview, as multiple

participants are interviewed simultaneously. H

• It allows for interaction and formation of reality for the participants. Group
processes allows members to explore others point of view and clarify their own.
• It not only stimulates the present reality of the participants but also aids them to
recall past events and formulate future opinions and attitudes.

• Its flexibility as a method has contributed to its growing popularity. FGD can be
used alone as a qualitative data collection tool or in combination with other
quantitative techniques. They can be used in psychology laboratories or in the
field; to study social world or as an attempt to change it in social action research.

• The advent of the Internet technology has greatly facilitated the conduction of
Focus Groups. Virtual Focus Groups have become popular.

Limitation

● Focus groups dont represent the typical beliefs, attitudes, ideas, or opinions

of the usual population as they do not utilize random sampling techniques

for data collection.

● They are expensive in terms of time and energy to organize, run and analyze

the data. It requires a lot of effort in organizing for a group of strangers to

assemble at a particular location on same time.

● Very few issues can be tackled in a session and hence only limited number

questions can be addressed.

● Note taking proves problematic due to the constant shift in the group

dynamics
 ● As the role of researcher is minimized with respect to the direction of

discourse and the twists and turns can hardly be predicted, the data collected
is comparatively less rigorous than a directed laboratory experiment.

● Compared to qualitative interview the data obtained from FGD is shallower.

Social desirability might play a higher role in group scenario leading to

suppression of honest opinion be the members.

● Moderator Bias: intentional or inadvertent biases from the side of the

moderator can greatly impact the participants responses. Personal biases of

the moderator may even influence the participant to reach certain
assumptions or conclusions about an idea or product.

⮚ Survey

A survey design provides a quantitative or numeric description of trends, attitudes,

or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population. In other
words, survey is set of questions or statements given to people in order to measure
their attitude, beliefs, values or tendencies to it.

The survey researcher is primarily interested in assessing the characteristics of

whole population. And thus survey research can be defined as a technique whereby
the researcher studies the whole population with respect to certain sociological and
psychological variables. When a researcher takes sample from population for
studying the relative incidence, distribution and relationship of psychological and
social variables, the survey is termed as Sample survey.
Survey research depends on three important factors. As survey research deals with
the characteristics, attitudes and behaviors of individuals called a sample, direct
contact with those persons must be established by the survey researcher.

The success of survey depends upon the willingness and the cooperativeness of the
sample selected for the study.

The sample selected for survey research must be willing to give the desired
information. In case they are not willing and do not cooperate with the survey
researcher, he should drop the plan in favor of some other technique. Survey
research requires that the researcher be a trained personnel. He must have
manipulative skill and research insight. He must possess social intelligence so that
he may deal with people effectively and be able to extract the desired information
from the sample.

Depending upon the ways of collecting data , survey research can be classified as

1. Personal interview 2.Mail questionnaire 3.Panel technique 4.Telephone

survey
1). Personal Interview

● Also known as survey interview, in which a direct conversation

between the interviewer and respondent is held with a view to elicit

some information from the latter.

● According to Cannel and Kahn, there are three necessary conditions

for successful personal interview.

● 1. Accessibility 2. cognition 3. Motivation

●
 2). Mail Questionnaire

● It is one of the common method used in educational and sociological

researches. The questionnaire consists of several items designed to elicit the

required information is prepared and mailed to the respondent with the
request to return it after answering all the items.

● The mail questionnaire appears to be a direct means for obtaining

information from every respondent.

3)Panel technique

● In this, re interview is the design which is used and the same sample is

interviewed more than once.

● Purpose of survey is wide and extensive, multiple interviews are taken with

the same sample.

● Advantages includes panel technique helps investigator to know how the

various factors bring changes through time in the attitudes of sample being
studied and when the same sample is interviewed twice it becomes more
sensitive and accurate measure of change than when two different sample
from different population are tested.
4). Telephone interview

● In this, the respondent is interviewed by the investigator on telephone.

The investigator calls the respondent on telephone asks questions and

record answers.
 ● There are some computer assisted technologies developed for making

telephone survey more smooth. Two such techniques are Computer

Assisted Telephone Interviewing(CATI) and Interactive Voice Response
(IVR). This type of survey has the advantage of being quick and speedy
in collecting information about the respondents.

⮚ Working with documents

● Documents are standardized artifacts, in so far as they typically occur in

Particular formats-, as notes, case reports, contracts, drafts, death

certificates, remarks, diaries, statistics, annual reports, certificates,
judgements, letters or expert opinions.

● When you decide to do an analysis of documents, you should take two

distinctions Into account: either you can use solicited documents for your
research (e.g., ask People to write diaries for the next 12 months and then
analyze and compare these Documents), or you can use unsolicited
documents (e.g., the diaries people have Written as part of an everyday
routine)

● 12 types of documents, which are constituted by A combination of two

dimensions: the authorship (who produced the document) And the access to
the documents.

● The authorship can be divided into personal and Official documents and the

latter again into private and state documents. Accessibility is the classifying
term for all of these documents.

● Scott distinguishes Four alternatives.

 1) The access can be closed (e.g., the medical records of a general Practitioner
are not accessible to third persons).
2) The access can be restricted (e.g., Juridical records are only accessible to
specific professional groups like lawyers in A trial).
3) The access can be open archival, which means that everyone can access The
documents but (only) in a specific archive.
4) And the access can be open published; then the documents are published and
accessible to any interested party. How do this fit in to research The
background of much research focusing on documents is often
ethnomethodology and researchers analyse documents as communicative
devices rather than as containers of contents. Depending on the specific
research questions, All the methods of coding and categorizing can be
applied as well As conversation analytic approach.

● Limitation

As a stand-alone method, analysing sometimes it gives limited approach to

experiences and processes. However, documents Can be a very instructive addition
to interviews or observations.

The major problem In analyzing documents is how to conceptualize the relations

between explicit Content, implicit meaning, and the context of functions, and use
of the documents and how to take these relations into account in the interpretation
of the Documents.

⮚ Audio visual material

● Audio Visual Materials (AVMs) are those things can be understood by

observing visual aspect of anything. AVMs are non-book materials like

 tapes, slides, films which are renewed and recent to rather then read as
books.

● Broadly Audio Visual Materials are three types.

1) Auditory Materials: Auditory means of or relating to the hearing. This

include: Recordings, Tele-lecture ,Radio , Sound, Films , Telephone, etc.
2) Visual Materials: Visual Materials are those materials which we see and can
be understood by observing the visual aspect of any object. They include:
Projected materials- slide, film-strips, film, Illustrated books , Picture etc..
3) Audio Visual Materials: Audio Visual Materials are the combination of
Auditory and visual materials. This may includes: Television ,Film, Motion
Picture, Video tapes , Printed materials with recorded sound

● Steps of collecting data

1) determine what material can provide information to answer research

questions and how that material might augment existing forms of data,
such as interviews and observations
2) identify the visual materials available and obtain permission to use it
3) check the accuracy and authenticity of the visual material if you do not
record it yourself

4) collect data and organize it

● Advantages

• Can easily relate materials because they are so pervasive in our society •
Materials provides an opportunity for the participants to share directly their
perceptions of reality • Images such as videotapes and films provides extensive
data about real life as people visualize and relate it Disadvantages

• Difficult to analyze rich information • Researcher may influence the data collecte
In selecting the material researcher impose their meaning of the phenomenon ,
rather than participants views

Topic :Data collection methods:Oral history, Life history, Conversations,

Narrative Analysis, Cooperative Inquiry, Critical document analysis

⮚ Oral history

● Oral history interviewing is a viable qualitative research orientation for

many qualitative researchers in various disciplines.

● Oral history is the collection of stories, statements and reminiscences of a

person or persons who have firsthand knowledge of any number of

experiences. It offers qualitative researchers a way to capture the lived
experiences of participants.

● The techniques of oral history are those of the qualitative researcher,

including interviews, document analysis, photographs and video

● By using current technology and working in a transdisciplinary context, oral

history may now be more readily accessible and available to a wider

population thus moving toward social justice
● Oral history is a unique, qualitative method of interview. Oral history

follows an inductive and open-ended interview model.

● This interview format involves a process of storytelling: the researcher

guides a process where each participant narrates his or her story.

● The data are generated in a collaborative exchange, in which the researcher

and research participant are co-creators in the knowledge-building process.

⮚ Life History

● Life history method is a method which takes into accounts an individuals

entire life experiences.Life history methods consist of the personal narratives

that unfold the history of one persons experiences.

● It is a personal account of their life , in their own words and using their own

personal time lines. Accordingly, they tend to be selective, contingent upon

remembered events that are amenable to being told, be they fact or fiction.

● Thus the history of one persons development that captures the

personfeelings, views, and perspectives help us to understand a culture. The

life history is a description of how a person enters a group and become
socialized into it.

● Life history approach has two purposes:

first is to provide deep understanding of the nature and Meaning of

individual or mutually related lives is the general function and second is to
analyze a particular life for some specific reason in the specific function.
 ● Some skills that are required in life history researcher

1)A good listener

2)A good talker
3)Possess good social skill
4)Possess good persuasion skill
It has various weaknesses of this approach , such as it is time consuming, issue of
varifiability .

⮚ Conversation Analysis

● Conversation Analysis is the study of the talk; it is the approach to the study

of the natural conversation carried out in a particular manner.

● It is a naturalistic, observation-based science of actual (verbal and non-

verbal) behavior, which uses audio and video recordings of naturally

occurring interactions, meetings, therapy sessions and telephone calls , as
the basic form of data

● Harvey Sacks (1935-1975), the American Sociologist, is considered to be

the pioneer in the field of conversation analysis.

Basic Concepts
1)Turn Taking and Turn Construction Units (TCUs)
A turn refers to a turn to speakor turn- at- talk. That is, a turn is persons
conversation before a different person takes over the conversation. The
primary focus of conversation analysis is on adjacent turns inorder to
understand how the second turn is designedto fit with thev previous turn.
2)Adjacency Pairs
 Adjacency pairs are based on the notion that many turns are actually pairs-
the two turns are by different speakers, they come next to each other in the
basic form and the two turns belong to the same type.
3)Repairs
In conversation analysis, the analyst looks for evidence of repeated
patternswhich are the result of the participantseffort to progress the
conversation. One such pattern is repairs
A few examples where conversation analysis is used are therapy sessions, medical
consultations, ,press conferences, interviews of various kinds, help-line talk,
computer talk, interaction in the airline cockpit, classroom interaction and
politicianstalk etc..

● Disadvantages

✔ Time-consuming: Transcription of data is time-consuming and it is therefore

difficult to analyze a large body of data.

✔ Analyzing visual data is difficult: It can be difficult for a researcher using

visual data to analyse and interpret.

⮚ Narrative Analysis

● According to narrative theory (Murray, 1999 &Sarbin, 1986), we are born

into a storied world,we live our lives through the creation and exchange of
narratives. A narrative can be defined as an organized interpretation of
sequence of events.
 ● Narratives are not just ways of seeing the world, but we actively construct

the world through narratives and we also live through the stories told by
others and by ourselves-they have ontological status.
Functions of Narrative Analysis

● According to Jonatham, A. Smith, there are three functions of narrative

analysis, which are ;

● The primary function of narrative is that it brings order to disorder. In telling

a story, there a narrator is trying to organize the disorganized and to give it a

meaning.

● Narratives not only bring order and meaning to our everyday life but, it also

provides structure to our very sense of selfhood.

● We tell stories about our lives to ourselves and to others. As such,We create

a narrative identity. Subjects recognize themselves in the stories they tell

about themselves

⮚ Cooperative inquiry

● In Cooperative Inquiry, a group of people get together to investigate the

issues of concern and interests. Each member of the group provides ideas
and is a part of activity that is being investigated.

● Each member has the right to decide the questions that are to be addressed in

research. Therefore, each member has a contribution in the conclusion

reached by the cooperative inquiry group.
 ● There are four different types of knowledge that forms a research cycle in

Cooperative inquiry practical knowing, experiential knowing,

propositional knowing and presentational knowing
a) practical knowing, which includes the knowledge that we get from doing
something and is expressed in terms of skills and competence.
b) experiential knowing, which includes the information that we get when we have
face to face interaction with other people
c) propositional knowing, which is expressed in informative statements and
includes knowing through ideas and theories.
d) presentational knowing, which includes the representation of experiential
knowing in form of story, dance, movement, drawing and sculpture

● There are some skills that are important while conducting a cooperative

inquiry. These skills include: Being present and open, Radical practice
and congruence, Non judgemental and meta-intentionality and
Emotional competence.
1) Being present and open ;This skills basically talks about compassion and
importance. It also includes openness to new experiences, classification
of our perception of objects and events, so that we can be more
participative to its crucial meaning.
2) Radical practice and congruence ;
While doing cooperative enquiry the researcher should have a skill of radical
practices and congruence, which in simply means that the researcher should
be aware of the purpose and the outcome, underlying values, its motives and
defining norms. Being aware of any lack of resemblance between these
different features of action and adjusting them accordingly are also included
in this skills.
 3) Non-attachment and meta-intentionality ; This skill or ability is concerned
with the purpose of the research and not with ones identity and emotional security
in an action. It also includes having various alternative behavior and considering
their probable consequences and implication to the entire situation.
4) Emotional competence ; This skill helps in identifying and managing emotional
states in various ways. This skill focuses on keeping action free from alteration
driven by the condition of early years and unprocessed distress.

● Different forms of Cooperative inquiry includes: same role inquiry,

counterpartal role inquiry,mixed role inquiry, outside inquiry, inside

inquiry, transpersonal inquiry, open boundary inquiry and closed
boundary inquiry.
1) Same role enquiry
The enquiry in which every member of the group has same role such as
health visitor and are concerned
with the characteristics of their practice within the role.
2) Reciprocal role enquiry
The enquiry in which more than one people interact within a role of equal
status such as partner, friends
and enquiry into the interaction.
3) Counterpartal role enquiry
The enquiry which deals with the relationship between practitioner and
client and focuses on what this relationship is trying to achieve.
4) Mixed role enquiry
This enquiry deals with several different kinds of practitioners. They may
find out similarities and differences in their various modality of practice. If
they work together, then they may pay attention to aspects of this, as in the
 enquiry involving various complementary therapists and general medical
practitioners, investigating issues of power and conflict involved in their
collaboration (Reason, 1991).Different forms of Enquiry can also be divided
on the basis of where the action phase is focused.
5) Inside enquiries ; Inside enquiries take place when all the action phases occur in
the same place within whole group. This includes two types of enquires: group
interaction inquiries and group-based inquiries.
a) Group interaction enquiry; is concerned with what goes on inside the enquiry
group such as members are studying their individual and collective experience of
group process.
b) group-based enquiry- when all action phases occur in similar space but in some
phases there may be paired or small group activities done side by side or each
person doing their own individual activity side by side with everyone else.
6) Outside enquiry ;When the group member working or personal lives are focused
outside the group meeting it is called outside enquiry. In this enquiry the group
members came together in reflection phase inorder to share the data, make
meaning of it, and modify their thinking and planning the next action phase in light
of all this. Group members separate at each action phase.

⮚ Critical Document Analysis

● Critical Documentary Analysis (document analysis) is a type of qualitative

research in which documents are reviewed by the analyst to assess an

appraisal theme.

● Documents are interpreted by the researcher to give voice and meaning

around an assessment topic.

There are three primary types of documents
Public Records: The official, ongoing records of an organizations activities.
Examples include student transcripts, mission statements, annual reports, policy
manuals, student handbooks,Strategic plans, and syllabi.
Personal Documents: First-person accounts of an individuals actions, experiences,
and beliefs.
Examples include calendars, e-mails, scrapbooks, blogs, Facebook posts,
duty logs, incident reports, reflections/journals, and newspapers.
Physical Evidence: Physical objects found within the study setting (often called
artifacts).
Examples include flyers, posters, agendas, handbooks, and training
materials.
Advantages of Document Analysis

● Firstly, document analysis is an efficient and effective way of gathering data

because documents are manageable and practical resources. Documents are

common in place and come in a variety of forms, making documents a very
accessible and reliable source of data.

● Documents can provide supplementary research data, making document

analysis a useful and beneficial method for most research.