An Introduction to Qualitative Research Day 1

1. An Introduction to Qualitative ResearchDay 1 Radhika Viruru, Ph.D. Dept. of Psychological Sciences Qatar University

2. My experiences with qualitative research

3. Viruru, R. (2009) A postcolonial analysis of the discourse of children’s rights: A case study of a family literacy program in rural Texas. Paper to be presented at the Seminar on Children’s Living Rights, Sion, Switzerland, January 19-20. • Viruru, R. (2006) Postcolonial Technologies of Power: Standardized Testing and Representing Diverse Young Children.The International Journal of Educational Policy, Research, and Practice, 7, pp 49-70. • Viruru, R. & Cannella, G.S. (2006). A Postcolonial Critique of the Ethnographic Interview: Research analyses Research. In N.K. Denzin & M. Giardina (eds). Qualitative  Inquiry and the Conservative Challenge: Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast • Viruru, R. (2001) Postcolonial Ethnography: an Indian Perspective on Voice and Young Children. In G.S. Cannella, K. Anijar & J.L. Kincheloe (Eds.). Kidworld: Global Perspectives, Cultural Studies and Education.New York: Peter Lang • Viruru, R & Cannella, G.S. (1997). An Indian Voice in the Education of Young Children. International Journal of Education Reform, 6(3), 308-315.

4. Qualitative research • The basis of qualitative research: “the observer went to a foreign setting to study the customs and habits of another society and culture….”born out of concern to understand the other”. • Research is firmly grounded in Western traditions (the investigative mentality)

5. Definitions • “Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world. It consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible. These practices transform the world. They turn the world into a series of representations, including field notes, interviews, conversations, photographs, memos and recordings to the self” • (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005, p.3)

6. Definitions “Qualitative research begins with assumptions, a worldview, the possible use of a theoretical lens, and the study of research problems inquiring into the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. To study this problem, qualitative researchers use an emerging qualitative approach to inquiry, the collection of data in a natural setting, sensitive to the people and places under study, and data analysis that is inductive and establishes patterns or themes. The final report or presentation includes the voices of the participants, the reflexivity of the researcher and a complex description and interpretation of the problem, and it extends the literature or signals a call for action” Creswell, p. 36, 2007.

7. Qualitative questions • Qualitative research is concerned with developing explanations of social phenomena. That is to say, it aims to help us to understand the world in which we live and why things are the way they are. It is concerned with the social aspects of our world and seeks to answer questions about: • Why people behave the way they do • How opinions and attitudes are formed • How people are affected by the events that go on around them • How and why cultures have developed in the way they have • The differences between social groups • Qualitative research is concerned with finding the answers to questions which begin with: why? how? in what way? Quantitative research, on the other hand, is more concerned with questions about: how much? how many? how often? to what extent? http://www.trentrdsu.org.uk/cms/uploads/Qualitative%20Research.pdf

8. Fundamental assumptions about research • Social and natural sciences have identical aims, the discovery of natural laws that serve for explanation and prediction • Social and natural sciences are methodologically identical • Uniformity of nature in time and space • Large samples suppress idiosyncrasies and reveal general causes. • All phenomena have a reason. • Observers observe, and not disturb. • The language of science is exact, formalizable and literal: meanings are univocal.

9. Limits of traditional approaches to research Problematic assumptions: • Ontology (reality out there) • Epistemology (knower and known) • Generalizability • Linear causality • Value freedom • Rhetorical (the language of research) • Methodological (the process of research)

10. Constructed realities • Kinds of realities: • Social, Logico-mathematical, Physical. • If reality is what we construct it to be, what kinds of truths can we “discover” about human beings? • The connection between reality and discourse and the institutions that reflect those discourses. • Multiple intelligences as reality.

11. What do you see?

12. Implications for practice • Researcher is not looking for points of convergence. • Unstructured nature of data collection. • Researcher uses quotes and themes from participants and provides evidence of different perspectives.

13. Epistemology: • The relationship of knower to known: mutual and transactional • The disturbing and disturbed observer: • Reactivity: awareness of being tested, role selection, measurement as change agent. • Indeterminacy: the act of measurement renders some things indeterminate

14. Capitalizing on interaction • If theories and facts are not independent, “continuing and intensive interaction between the investigator and the object is essential” to forming sound judgments (p. 102). • More representative sampling and design procedures are achieved through interaction. • Continually working towards more sophisticated levels of understanding • Human research is impossible without cooperation from respondents • The natural advantages of the human instrument.

15. Who is Hannah? • Hannah exercise

16. Implications for practice • What you “know” as researcher” • Reflexivity • Prolonged engagement • Persistent observation • Documenting the emic perspective

17. Generalizations • “Generalizations are assertions of enduring value that are context free”. • Generalizations tied to the idea of prediction and control. • Based on idea of determinism • Do not exist in nature, active creations of mind, represent inductive logic. • Free from time and space contexts. • Reductionist • Naturalistic generalizations: • More intuitive, based on personal and vicarious experiences. • Working hypothesis: transferability and fittingness

18. Bill: "You know, those feminists all hate men." Joe: "Really?" Bill: "Yeah. I was in my philosophy class the other day and that Rachel chick gave a presentation." Joe: "Which Rachel?" Bill: "You know her. She's the one that runs that feminist group over at the Women's Center. She said that men are all sexist pigs. I asked her why she believed this and she said that her last few boyfriends were real sexist pigs. " Joe: "That doesn't sound like a good reason to believe that all of us are pigs." Bill: "That was what I said." Joe: "What did she say?" Bill: "She said that she had seen enough of men to know we are all pigs. She obviously hates all men." Joe: "So you think all feminists are like her?" Bill: "Sure. They all hate men."

19. Implications for practice • Avoidance of broad conclusions • Letting the reader create their own generalizations • Providing “thick description”

20. Causality • Understanding causes is key to prediction and control • Knowledge of causes is power. • Is looking for causes instinctive? • Multiple definitions of causation: • Temporal precedence (time itself is social construction)

21. Causality • Human behavior is more complex than cause effect relationships • Is it a useful concept to have? • Why replace it? The need for explanation and management.

22. Mutual simultaneous shaping • “Everything influences everything else, in the here and now”. Mutual shaping is “circumstances relative”

23. Example research study 1 • The University of Georgia studied the effects of dormitory hours on the GPA of 787 resident freshmen women. Of that group 371 women were required to observe dormitory hours, while the remaining (n = 416) were given permission by their parents to ignore closing hours. At the end of the academic term there was no significant difference in GPA between the two groups. Would you be willing to conclude from this study that dorm hours have no effect on GPA?

24. Example research study 2 • In 1953, Dr. J. N. Morris of London Hospital's Medical Research Council conducted what turned out to be a classic study of exercise and heart disease. His participants were drivers and conductors of London's double-decker busses, and he found that the drivers had 1.5 times the incidence of heart disease as the conductors and 2 times the coronary death rate. (Was this an ethical study?). Since the drivers simply sat in their seats all day while the conductors ran up and down the stairs to collect the fares, Dr. Morris asserted that exercise was the causal variable that brought about the observed health differences.

25. Implications for practice • Providing complex details in report. • Provides opportunities to see connections.

26. Values • Traditional perspectives on research have been that the values of the inquirer do not influence the outcomes of the study. • Objectivity is possible. • In qualitative research, the values of the researcher are always a part of the study, and must be acknowledged. • An acknowledgement of values opens the door to different definitions of what research can and ought to be.

27. Are these studies “value-free”? • There are growing concerns among social studies professionals that social studies instruction is disappearing from elementary schools. These concerns have become more pressing as educational policies emphasize core curricula of reading, writing, mathematics, and science. Questions arise as to how social studies can resume its traditional role as one of these core curricula. One possibility is to have social studies included in the accountability movement through testing. This article contemplates the role of testing in impacting social studies instruction in the elementary curriculum through a comparative analysis of data collected from a study of practicing elementary teachers in two states: one in which social studies instruction is tested and the other in which social studies instruction is not tested. Heafner et al. (2006) “To Test or Not to Test?: The Role of Testing in Elementary Social Studies” A Collaborative Study Conducted by NCPSSE and SCPSSE” Social Studies Research and Practice www.socstrp.org Volume 1, Number 2, Summer 2006

28. Value-free inquiry? • This qualitative case study of two Arab American preservice teachers living, studying, and learning to teach in post-9/11 New York City explores how arts-informed inquiry opens up a different space for conceptualizing the human condition. Poetry and collage allowed the researcher and participants to co-theorize in a way that rendered a portrait that reflects the tones, intensities, and various hues of their experiences during this historical time period. Poetry provided a space to talk with each other about the (re)presentation and (co)understandings of the experiences, whereas collage provided an alternative dimension to discuss the emotions and feelings involved with shifting selves and power struggles. This article argues that arts-informed inquiry provides the possibilities to paint “an authentic portrait” through engaging in evocative experiences that reveal the multidimensionality of our lived realities. “Learning to Teach in the Shadows of 9/11: A Portrait of Two Arab American Preservice Teachers Roberta M. Newton, Teachers College Qualitative Inquiry, Volume 11 Number 1, 2005 81-94

29. Implications for practice • Researcher openly discusses the values that shape the narrative and includes them in written reports. • Implications for authenticity

30. Naturalistic axioms • The nature of reality: multiple, constructed and holistic • The relationship of knower to known: interactive, inseparable. • Generalization: a “working hypothesis” that describes a single case • Causal linkages: mutual simultaneous shaping. • Inquiry is value bound.

31. Characteristics of naturalistic inquiry • Natural setting: realities cannot be understood outside their contexts. • The human instrument: no other instrument can adjust to/appreciate multiple realities. • Uses tacit knowledge. • Qualitative methods (though not exclusively) • Purposive sampling: try to choose a sample that gives you the widest range. • Inductive data analysis. • Grounded theory. • Emergent design

32. Characteristics of naturalistic inquiry • Negotiated outcomes • Case study reporting • Idiographic (particular) rather than generalizable interpretations. • Tentative application. • Special criteria for trustworthiness.

33. When to use qualitative research • “Quality” versus “quantity”. • For problems that need exploration • For problems that need a complex detailed understanding. • To empower individual and collective voices. • To write in styles that push the limits of formal academic narratives • To understand contexts • The question of “fit”

34. Five Approaches to Qualitative Research: Based on “Creswell, J. (2007). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

35. Narrative Research • Narrative research: begins with the experiences as expressed in lived and told stories of individuals • Can take the form of biographical studies, life histories or oral histories. • Collecting stories and “restorying them

36. Example abstract • In my research, which has involved collecting women’s accounts of becoming mothers, I am seeking to understand how women make sense of events throughout the process of child bearing, constructing these events into episodes, and thereby (apparently) maintaining unity within their lives Miller, T. (2000). Losing the plot: narrative construction and longitudinal childbirth research. Qualitative Health Research, 10, 309-323.

37. Phenomonological research • Describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experience of a certain phenomena. • Can center around basic broad questions: “what have you experienced in terms of the phenomena” and “what contexts have influenced your experience of the phenomena”

38. Example abstract • Given the intricacies of power and gender in the academy, what are doctoral advisement relationships between women advisors and women advisees really like? Heinrich, K. T. (1995). Doctoral advisement relationships between women. Journal of Higher Education. 66, pp. 447-469.

39. Grounded theory research • Employed in situations where it is perceived as necessary to go beyond description and generate theory. • Use of the constant comparative method • Can lead to follow up quantitative research

40. Example abstract • The primary purpose of this article is to present a grounded theory of academic change that is based on research based by two major research questions: What are the major sources of academic change? What are the major processes through which academic change occurs? Conrad, C.F. (1978). A grounded theory of academic change. Sociology of Education, 51, 101-112.

41. Ethnographic research • This kind of research focuses on an entire cultural group: describes their shared patterns of values, behavior, language and culture… • Field work as method of data collection.

42. Example abstract • This article examines how the work and the talk of stadium employees reinforce certain meanings of baseball in society, and it reveals how this work and talk create and maintain ballpark culture Trujillo, N. (1992). Interpreting (the work and talk of) baseball. Western Journal of Communication, 56, 350-371.

43. Case study research • This kind of research involves the study of an issue explored through one or two cases within a setting or context.

44. Example abstract • The purpose of this study was to take a look into education through the eyes of three teachers who are facing their final year as professional educators. The overarching goal was to determine how they have seen children, teachers, administration, policy, and testing change across the thirty year span of their work as teachers in Texas’ public schools. Through their comments they give a considerable amount of insight into the transformation education has experienced in the last three decades. But unexpectedly, they reveal as much about our changing society than they do education itself. Project submitted in EDCI 690, Summer 2005, Texas A&M University.