Qualitative study designs, Assignments of Research Methodology

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Introduction to qualitative study

designs

Day 1-Session 2 (9:30-10:30) Research, Training & Consultancy International and ACEPHEM Qualitative Research Methods Workshop Nairobi, Kenya

Session Outline

• Nature of Qualitative research
• Overview of Qualitative research designs
• Design 1: Ethnography
• Design 2: Grounded theory

What is Qualitative

research?

“I want to understand the world from your point of view. I want to know what you know in the way you know it. I want to understand the meaning of your experience, to walk in your shoes, to feel things as you feel them, to explain things as you explain them. Will you become my teacher and help me understand?” James P. Spradley (1979)

What is Qualitative

research?

“Development of concepts which help us to understand social phenomena in natural (rather than experimental) settings, giving due emphasis to the meanings, experiences and views of the participants.” (Pope & Mays. BMJ 1995;311:42-45)

Essential Questions at proposal phase

• What is the problem? – the Problem statement
• What do we know about the problem? - Literature review
• What is the gap in what we know? - Gaps in literature
• What needs to be done to fill the gap? - a broad suggestion
• How does one intend to fill the gap? - research aim and objectives

When To Choose Qualitative Approach

• Description
  • Qualitative research can reveal the nature of certain situations, settings, processes, relationships, systems or people
• Interpretation
  • To enable a researcher to gain new insights about a particular phenomenon
  • Develop new concepts or theoretical perspectives about the phenomenon
  • Discover the problems that exist within a phenomenon
• Verification
  • Allow researchers to test the validity of certain assumptions, claims, theories or generalizations within real-world contexts
• Evaluation
  • Allow researchers to judge the effectiveness of particular policies, practices and innovations.

Ethnography

• Aims to understand human behavior in the cultural context in which it is embedded
• Aims to understand the way in which people live from the emic (insider’s) perspective vs the etic (researcher’s or outsider’s) perspective

Ethnography

• Culture (way of life)
• all the ways a group of people interact, solve problems
• a pattern of living that guides thoughts, actions, sentiments as reflected in language, dress, food, traditions, customs, etc.
• Purpose of Ethnography is to make explicit what is implicit within a cultural group 11 The work of describing a culture (Spradley, 1980)

Phases of Ethnographic Research

• Pre-field Work
• Field Work
• Post-field Work

Role of Researcher

• Is the primary data collection tool
• Enters the world for an extended period of time. Asks questions, participates, collects whatever data are available
• Observes behavior - go beyond to inquire meaning of it
• Researchers make inferences from their observations, then test inferences over time until they are confident they have an adequate description of the culture
• Must set aside biases & explicate beliefs

Ethnography: Data Analysis and

reporting

• Follows a cyclical pattern
• Data collection, recording, analyzing, returning to the field to collect more data
• Findings presented in a two-step process
  • A cultural inventory
  • A final descriptive report that may be a book or monograph

Grounded Theory

• Goal is to develop a theory about the processes (social behaviour or scene) under investigation in a natural setting
• Useful in areas where little is known or when a new perspective is needed
• Tries to identify the core process and subsidiary processes in the situation

Researcher’s role in Grounded theory

• Studies the behavior and the social setting that influences the interaction
• Is a participant and observer
• No effort is made by researcher to put aside assumptions
• On the contrary the researcher uses past experiences and assumptions to better understand the processes being observed

Grounded Theory

Sample

• Participants who are experiencing the social process under study
• Size determined by theoretical sampling (collects, codes & analyzes data & then decides what additional data are needed)
• Saturation- inability of new data to add new codes Data Collection - Data collection & analysis are concurrent - Observation & audio-taped interviews - Field notes - Researcher participates in the social group, observes & records data relevant to study purpose - Broad open-ended questions - Ask participants to share stories of their experiences 20