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Qualitative Inquiry Mind Map - Coggle Diagram
Qualitative Inquiry Mind Map
5 Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry
Narrative
Narrative as data (written or oral)
Example: a student writes a narrative about their transition from high school to college and talks about their high and low points. The writing is descriptive and personal
Features: tells a story or analyzes a story. Uses words to understand personal experiences, histories, context, etcetera…. About a life, lives, or culture. There are often epiphanies or turning points in the story. Understanding historical context is important to understanding the overall story line.
Phenomenological
Seeks to understand the lived experience of a phenomenon; from a single person or several individuals who have experienced the phenomenon
Example: a woman shares her lived experience of surviving a nearly fatal car accident
Features: seeks to understand what it is like to have lived a particular experience. Interprets the meaning of the experience. Looks for essential themes of the experience
Ethnographic
Typically a cultural study that seeks to understand shared patterns of beliefs, behaviors, and patterns of a cultural group. The researcher spends much time in the field as observer and immerses him/herself in the day to day lives of the group to understand the culture .
Example: Dr. Harmening seeks to understand the surfing culture so spends a year living among the surf culture in southern california to understand its shared patterns of values, behaviors, language, beliefs.
Features: time intensive, participant observation, immersion in the day to day lives of the group. Researcher as both insider and outsider
Case Study
A case seeks to understand a particular problem or issue and is bound within the context of the case itself.
Example: a higher ed student seeks to understand how a campus deals with the aftermath of a campus shooting spree
Features: It is studied within a bounded system (time and place) and may be a single case or multiple cases. It may involve one site of study or multiple sites. It always involves multiple forms of data – observations, narrative, interviews, document analysis– in order to develop a thick description of the case. May use both quantitative and qualitative data
Grounded Theory
Seeks to understand a phenomenon or experience of something and moves beyond that to generate a theory about it. A theory is an explanatory model or schema. The theory is grounded in the data and emerges from it.
Example: a higher ed doctoral student seeks to understand how one experiences the process of writing a dissertation. Seeks to build a theory about the process to help others understand what it is like
Features: builds a theory through several types and “layers” of coding to get to the core phenomenon. An involved type of research process whereby data becomes “saturated” and the researcher takes sequential steps through the coding process in order to generate a theory
Philosophical Underpinnings of Qualitative Research
Constructivist Approach
Positivism
Logical
Human knowledge understood through sense perception
Mathematical
Constructivism
Knowledge is socially constructed
Knowledge generated through interaction of idea and experience
Philosophical Assumptions of Qualitative Research
Ontological
Ontology is the nature of reality or existence
Guiding QR question: “what is the nature of reality?”
Characteristics: reality is subjective, more than one possible reality as seen by participants
Implications for QR: evidence is used such as words, quotes, and themes of participants. This provides various perspectives of reality
Epistemological
Epistemology is the study of knowledge and how we come to “know”; it is concerned with the question of the nature of knowledge – its limits and its validity
Guiding QR question: “what is the relationship between the researcher and that being researched?”
Characteristics: researcher is a part of that being researched; distance is lessened between subject and researcher
Implications for QR: researcher is collaborative, spends time with participants, is in the “field” , takes an insider role.
Methodological
Methodology is the rules or methods one uses to carry out the research; a particular set of procedures
Guiding QR question: “what is the process of research?”
Characteristics: inductive reasoning, topic understood within the context of the study, emergent design is used as the nature of the study changes and progresses
Axiological
Axiology is the study of the nature of values and ethics
Guiding QR question: “what is the role of values in research?”
Characteristics: researcher fully acknowledges the role of values and potential personal biases
Implications for QR: researches discusses their own values and biases, in writing, as it may effect the research. Own interpretation is discussed, and often the participants’ interpretations
Rhetorical
Rhetoric is concerned with or related to speaking and writing
Guiding QR question: “what is the language of research?”
Characteristics: writing is literary and more informal (yet still academic); uses personal voice – “I” , and writes using qualitative language
Implications for QR research: writing is usually more engaging, using first person pronoun, and uses qualitative terms to define methods and analysis
Characteristics of Qualitative Research
Conducted in a natural setting
Researcher is the instrument of data collection
Uses multiple sources of data (data triangulation)
Data analysis is inductive
Participants’ meanings they bring to the research matter
Design is emergent and may change as the research is carried out
A theoretical lens is often used and guides the study and understanding the data
Interpretive
Holistic; develops a complex picture of the problem
When to use Qualitative Research as a method
When asking a complex question
When asking a what, how, or why question
When trying to get an in-depth picture or story about the problem or issue
To help understand a problem highlighted in quantitative research or to follow up on a finding of quantitative research
To look for the uniqueness in a problem, people, event, issue, etc
To help explain something
To build a causal theory
Coding Data
Codebook
Description
Code
Category
Theme
Exemplar
Exemplars
Descriptions
Code
Code
Category
Category
Category
Theme
Category
Category
Code
Code
Code
Category
Theme
Code
Begin with reading through data several times
Write notes in margins of summative statements throughout document
Look for patterns and repetition
Move from specific (e.g., key words, phrases, and meaning units) to become codes
Codes
Moving from coding to categories is like putting pieces of the puzzle together and starting to note a pattern. In some instances codes may get subsumed into a category.
Example: Two codes “intrinsic motivation” & “facing adversity” were subsumed under one category called “self reliance” because the category was all about the student’s ability to rely on the self and internal resources in order to cope with the world and navigate through it.
Move to the general (i.e., codes are compared to one another to see if they can be collapsed into broader categories)
Categories
Themes
Different approaches to coding
Code by words
A process of reductionism
Read through documents
Code by key words that are frequent
Key words or phrases become categories
See how categories relate to one another
Come up with the larger theme
Use metaphor as a way to understand overall theme
Code by literature or theoretical frame
Literature and theory can help us know what to look for and how to "hang" the data
Use themes in literature to both ask research questions and to analyze data categorically
Use theoretical frames to do the same
E.g., using Strange and Banning’s model to code student experiences
Literature and theory can help us understand findings and make claims that support or refute prior literature or theory or show where there are gaps
Look for the outliers
This can help readers understand the larger themes yet see the discrepancies in the findings
Data is compared and contrasted
Themes are developed
Patterns emerge
Outliers in the patterns help us understand the continuum and give us perspective
Keep moving back and forth in the data
Keep visual representations of patterns
Seek relationships among patterns
Example Coding for Well Being
Physically and mentally healthy
Positive Self Image
Being at peace
Happy
Typical grounded theory the researcher moves from the specific
Specific
To the general
General
Back to the specific
The core phenomenon is derived from the coding and categories and becomes very specific.
Coding process begins at the macro level
Macro level
Moves to the micro level
Micro level
Moves back to the macro level where a larger story is told
Ways to organize data
Observation notes
Field notes
Document analysis
Personal journaling
Participant journaling
Memos
Transcripts from interviews
Interviews digitally recorded
Visual representations of data
Emails
Recorded phone conversations or notes from such
Video recordings
Building evidence
Keep a running log of how and why you are coding the data the way you are
Make sure the steps are clearly laid out
Provide links between data types; cross analysis
Use visuals and words as evidence to support your themes or categories
Use frequencies as evidence
Be very clear and transparent about the coding and analytic process