Advance Research Methods

and Analysis

Dr. Mushtaque Ali Jariko

Professor, Institute of Business
Administration
University of Sindh, Jamshoro
What is Research?
 Research is the systematic process of collecting and
analysing information (data) in order to increase our
understanding of the phenomenon with which we are
concerned or interested.
 Briefly research involves three main stages:
planning-time, resource management, etc.
data collection-tools, sampling
analysis-strategy and time required to interpret
findings and report
 Research Adds Knowledge About Educational Issues
 Addresses gaps in knowledge
 Expands knowledge
 Adds voices of individuals to knowledge
 Educators gain new ideas
 Educators gain new insight into methods
 Educators gain new insight into students
 Research Builds Student Research Skills
 Organizational skills
 Analytical skills
 Writing skills
 Presentation skills

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1. Purpose of doing research.
2. Intended uses of research.
3. How it treats time  time dimension.
4. The research techniques used
What the researcher trying to accomplish.
a. Exploratory/Formulative
b. Descriptive
c. Explanatory
Studies can be multipurpose
 Initial research conducted to
clarify and define the nature of
the problem. Exploring a new
topic.
 Specifically there could be
number of goals of exploratory
research.
 Examples:
 Focus group
 Interview
 Case studies
 Become familiar with the topic. Develop well
grounded picture of the situation.
 Develop tentative theories.
 Determine the feasibility of study.
 Formulate questions and refine issues for more
systematic inquiry.
 Develop techniques and a sense of direction for
future research
 Research designed to describe
characteristics of the
phenomenon understudy.
 Helps in diagnostic analysis
 Specific goals can be:
 Describe the situation/characteristics.
Provide an accurate profile of a group.
 Give a verbal or numerical picture (%).
 Present basic background information.
 Create a set of categories or classify.
 Clarify sequence, set of stages.
 Focus on ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’
and ‘how’ but not on ‘why’.
 Also called as causal research i.e.
 ‘Why’? Explanation.
 Identify cause and effect
relationship among different
factors.
 a. Basic Research
 Pure/fundamental/academic
 Developing/refuting/supporting
theories. Expand knowledge.
 Explanatory research is the most
common
 Applied can also contribute.
 Solve specific problems  help
practitioners. Market new
product.
 Choose one policy over the other.
 For improving productivity 
problem with machines, raw
material, persons working.
 Cross-Sectional Research: Observe at
one point in time. Snapshot study.
 Longitudinal Research: Examine at
more than one time. Can be 
- Time series study.
- Panel study.
- Cohort study – Category of people
who share the same experience.
 Experimental technique.
 Surveys. Quantitative
 Content analysis.
 Use of existing statistics.
 Field research.
 Case study. Qualitative
 Focus group discussions
 Mixed methods/techniques
 Type of Data collected

 Quali : Words, images or objects

 Quanti: Numbers and statistics

 What are the type of questions asked?

 Quali : Why? How?

 Quanti: How many , what
 Introduction
 Literature review method helps the researchers to
investigate thoroughly what has been said and
published in the areas of interests

A chapter from my thesis might be discussed.

 Action research is systematic inquiry done by
teachers (or other individuals in an educational
setting) to gather information about, and
subsequently improve, the ways their particular
educational setting operates, how they teach, and
how well their students learn (Mills, 2000).
 AR gives educators new opportunities to reflect on
and assess their teaching;
 To explore and test new ideas, methods, and
materials;
 To assess how effective the new approaches were;
 To share feedback with fellow team members;
 To make decisions about which new approaches to
include in the practice.
1. To solve the societal and organizational problems
2. To solve an educational problem;
3. To help educators reflect on their own practices
4. To address school-wide problems
5. When teachers want to improve their practices
 Students
Community
Teachers Stakeholders
Collaborative
Team

Staff Parents

Administrators
 Since there is public money involves, the PUBLIC at
large is interested
 Since time, money, and reputation is involved
EDUCATORS themselves are interested
 Since PARENTS pay taxes and spend some time
involved with schools and they have children they
are very interested.
 Society in general cares to some degree for reasons
of self preservation

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 QualitativeAnalysis
 What is it?
 It is the analysis of words or actions measured through
 Interview transcripts
 Field notes (notes taken in the field being studied)
 Video
 Audio recordings
 Images
 Documents (reports, meeting minutes, e-mails)

Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behaviour and the
reasons that govern such behaviour. The qualitative method investigates the why and how of
decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more
often needed, rather than large samples.
Qualitative methods produce information only on the particular cases studied, and any more
general conclusions are only hypotheses (informative guesses). Quantitative methods can be
used to verify, which of such hypotheses are true.
 What Is It’s Goal?
 Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) is the range of processes and
procedures whereby we move from the qualitative data that have
been collected into some form of explanation, understanding or
interpretation of the people and situations we are investigating.
 The process of QDA usually involves two things, writing and the
identification of themes.
Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) is the range of processes and procedures whereby we move from
the qualitative data that have been collected into some form of explanation, understanding or
interpretation of the people and situations we are investigating. QDA is usually based on an
interpretative philosophy. The idea is to examine the meaningful and symbolic content of
qualitative data. For example, by analysing interview data the researcher may be attempting to
identify any or all of:
The process of QDA usually involves two things, writing and the identification of themes. Writing
of some kind is found in almost all forms of QDA. In contrast, some approaches, such as
discourse analysis or conversation analysis may not require the identification of themes (see the
discussion later on this page). Nevertheless finding themes is part of the overwhelming majority
of QDA carried out today.
Coding into themes

 Looking for themes involves coding.

 This enables researchers to retrieve and collect together all
the text and other data that they have associated with some
thematic idea
Example
“When you move into your own home, you're alone. There
is no bustle of people around the house. I miss having
someone to chat to when I get home. I put the TV or
some music so there’s some background noise, the
silence makes me feel so alone. Sometimes I will be sat
watching trash TV and thinking I should be out doing
something rather than watching this rubbish. I read a
lot but sometimes I am too tired and just want to veg
out. But it's been good to move out of mum and dad’s as
it's not healthy to rely on them as they won't last forever.
I become independent and made my own decisions. It's
good they still there when I need them. It's good to
have some distance as when I was at home I was arguing
a lot with my dad and that was what made me decide it
was time to go.”
Interpreting

 It is easy to write and code in ways that are nothing more

than descriptive summaries of what participants have said
or done.
 But you need to trick is to move towards explaining why
things are as you have found them.
Organising
 Researchers tend to approach this organisation in one of two ways.
1. Manual methods
 Notes and interviews are transcribed and transcripts and images etc. are
copied. The researcher then uses folders, filing cabinets, wallets etc. to
gather together materials that are examples of similar themes or analytic
ideas.
2. Computer based
 Many analysts now also use dedicated computer assisted qualitative data
analysis (CAQDAS) packages. Can be tricky to learn and no point unless
your sample size is large
Approaches to analysing QD
 Action research
 Field Research
 Memory work
 Analytic InductionFramework
analysis
 Mixed methods
 Biographical research
 Grounded theory
 Narrative analysis
 Ethnomethodology Matrix
Analysis/Logical Analysis
 ConversationbAnalysis
 Phenomenography
Comparative analysis
 Interpretative
Phenomenological Analysis
(IPA)
 Phenomenology Discourse
analysis
 Life History QCA - Qualitative
Comparative Analysis
 Ethnography Life-world
analysis
 Symbolic interactionism
Thematic Analysis
 We will only look at a simple Thematic Analysis which is
likely to be appropriate for the majority of you given your
experience and the nature of the data you will be collecting.
 See Braun & Clarke (2006) for extensive detail
Braun & Clarke (2006)
 “Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing
and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (p.79)
 It differs from other analytic methods such as IPA and
grounded theory because it does not require the researcher
to subscribe to the implicit theoretical commitments of
other approaches
What is a theme?
 “A theme captures something important about the data in
relation to the research question, and represents some level
of patterned response or meaning within the data set”
(Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 82)
 Will be evidenced in a number of participants responses
Focus?
 You can focus on:
 A rich description of themes emerging from the ENTIRE data
set
 OR
 Provide a detailed account of one particular aspect (in
relation to a particular question)
Inductive versus
theoretical thematic analysis
 Themes can be identified in
 Bottom up way (inductive)
 Top down way (theoretical and deductive)
 Inductive – themes are strongly linked to data itself,
may not bear a strong relation to the actual questions
asked
 Deductive – themes are driven by the researchers
theoretical or analytic interest in the area
 Choice usually maps onto how and why you are coding
the data
 Code for a specific research question (maps onto theoretical
approach)
 Or specific research question can evolve through the coding
process (maps onto the inductive approach)
Semantic or Latent Themes
 Semantic approach, the themes are identified within the explicit or surface
meanings of the data, and the analyst is not looking for anything beyond
what a participant has said or what has been written.
 In contrast, a thematic analysis at the latent level goes beyond the semantic
content of the data, and starts to identify or examine the underlying ideas,
assumptions, and conceptualizations / and ideologies /that are theorized as
shaping or informing the semantic content of the data.
 If we imagine our data three-dimensionally as an uneven blob of jelly, the
semantic approach would seek to describe the surface of the jelly, its form
and meaning, while the latent approach would seek to identify the features
that gave it that particular form and meaning.
 Thus, for latent thematic analysis, the development of the themes
themselves involves interpretative work, and the analysis that is produced is
not just description, but is already theorized
How to conduct and write up Thematic
Analysis
1. Make sure you explicitly state the theoretical position you
are taking in your write up.
2. Familiarise yourself with your data
3. Generate initial codes
4. Search for themes
5. Review themes
6. Define and name themes
7. Produce report
Source: Gibbs (2007)
Phase Description of process
familiarise yourself with the data Transcribing data (if necessary), reading and
re-reading the data, noting down initial ideas.
generate initial codes Coding interesting features of the data in a
systematic fashion across the entire data set,
collating data relevant to each code.
search for themes Collating codes into potential themes,
gathering all data relevant to each potential
theme.
review themes Checking if the themes work in relation to the
coded extracts (Level 1) and the entire data
set (Level 2), generating a thematic ‘map’ of
the analysis.
define and name themes On going analysis to refine the specifics of
each theme, and the overall story the analysis
tells, generating clear definitions and names
for each theme.
Produce report The final opportunity for analysis. Selection of
vivid, compelling extract
examples, final analysis of selected extracts,
relating back of the analysis to the
research question and literature, producing a
scholarly report of the analysis
 CODE CATEGORY THEME THEORY
Evading
responsibilities

Poor management
No strategy to govern

Management issues
Lack of organisational
interest
interestinterest
Poor strategic
No training Lack of resources management of
programmes private sector causes
employees’
dissatisfaction and
Need of HRM poor job skills

No motivation and
incentives

Employee
No hope for dissatisfaction
promotions Employees concerns

Unclear goals and

poor skills No future prospects

No Capability building

General Particular
Content Analysis
Discourse Analysis
 Meaning and interpretations of languages
Narrative Analysis
 Narrative analysis is mostly used in qualitative research to
construct meaning of feelings and experiences of individuls
and their intentions towards the subjects( Cortazzi, 2014).