RESEARCH DESIGN

RESEARCH DESIGN

EMERGENT DESIGN
A design that develops as the researcher makes ongoing decisions reflecting what has already been learned

Lincoln & Cuba (1985) – not researcher laziness or sloppiness – but rather desire to base inquiry on realities and viewpoints of those under study

Key: realities and viewpoints that are NOT KNOWN or UNDERSTOOD AT THE OUTSET

Characteristics of Qualitative Research Design

• Flexible, elastic, capable of adjusting
• Merging together of various data collection strategies
• Holistic, understand the whole
• Researcher is intensely involved
• Requires ongoing analysis of data to formulate subsequent strategies and to determine when field work is done

Qualitative Research Designs: Closer Look

1. Ethnography
2. Phenomenology
3. Grounded Theory
4. Biography Research
5. Case Study
6. Historical Study

ETHNOGRAPHY

• Research tradition in anthropology 
• Ethnoscience (Cognitive Anthropology): focuses on the cognitive world of a culture – semantic rules and shared meanings that shape behavior
• Provides a framework for studying meanings, patterns, and experiences defined by a cultural group in a holistic fashion
• Focus: the culture of a group of people
• Assumption: Every human group evolves a culture that guides members view of the world and the way they structure their experiences
• Aim: to learn from rather than study members of a cultural group

Two perspectives:

1. Emic – insider’s view, the way the members of a culture envision their world
2. Etic - outsiders’ interpretation of the experiences of that culture – strive to get at cultural experiences that members do not talk about or may not even be consciously aware

CONS

• Extensive field work
• Typically labor intensive
• Time consuming
• Researcher as instrument - to study a culture it requires a certain level of intimacy – needs to be developed – become one within the culture

Three types of information:

1. Cultural behavoir
2. Cultural artifacts
3. Cultural speech

Sources of information – in-depth interviews, records, charts, observations and other types of physical evidence are used

PHENOMENOLOGY
Philosophical Orientation

• World is shaped by the self and also shapes the self
• The person is a self within a body
• Person is referred to as “embodied” – our bodies provide the possibility for the concrete actions of self in the world
• The body, the world and the concerns, unique to each person, are the “context” within which that person can be understood

Assumption: 
-Believes that truths about reality are grounded in peoples’ lived experiences
-Human existence is “meaningful” and “interesting”

Two Schools of Thought:
1. Descriptive phenomenology
Edmund Husserl
Epistemology
one’s directed awareness or consciousness of an object or event
everyday conscious experiences were described 

2. Interpretive phenomenology
Martin Heidegger 
Ontology (nature of being)
seeks meanings that are embedded in everyday occurrences 

Four aspects of the lived experience:

1. SPATIALITY - lived space
2. CORPOREALITY - lived body 
3. TEMPORALITY – lived time 
4. RELATIONALITY – lived human relations

Data sources:

• In-depth conversations
• Researcher helps the participant to describe lived experiences without leading the discussion
• Two or more interviews/conversations are needed
• Usually small number of participants 
• May use participation, observation and introspective reflection

GROUNDED THEORY

• Is an inductive research technique developed for health-related topics by Glaser & Strauss (1967)
• Emerged from the discipline of sociology
• “Grounded” – means the theory developed from the research is grounded or has it roots in the data from which is was derived 
• Focus: is the evolution of a social experience – the social and psychological stages that characterize a particular event of process
• Methodology:

1. does not begin with a focused research question
2. the question emerges from the data

• Constant Comparison: is used to develop and refine theoretically relevant categories and to identify the basic problem
• Categories that are elicited from the data are constantly compared with data obtained earlier so that “commonalities” and “variations” can be determined
• Categories can be “condensed” and “collapsed”
• Data Sources:

1. in-depth interviews are most common
2. Observational methods
3. Existing documents
4. Usually a sample of 25 to 50 informants

BIOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH also known as Narrative Research

In narrative research, researchers:

• describe the lives of individuals
• collect and tell stories about people’s lives
• write narratives of individual experiences. 

As a distinct form of qualitative research, a narrative typically focuses on studying a single person
A story in narrative research is a first‑person oral telling or retelling of an individual 

STRUCTURE:
Stories have a beginning, middle, and end

DEVELOPMENT:

• predicament, conflict, or struggle
• protagonist or character
• sequence with implied causality (a plot

RESEARCHER’S TASK

• Re-stories the individual stories
• researcher gathers stories and analyzes them for elements of the story
• researcher rewrites the story to place it in a chronological sequence
• Re-storying provides a causal link among ideas 
• Validates the accuracy of the report

Potential issues:

• Story authentic? (“Faking the data” possible)
• Is the story “real?” (Participants may not be able to tell the “real story”)
• Who “owns” the story? (Does the researcher have permission to share it?)
• Is participant’s voice lost?
• Does the researcher gain at the expense of the participant?

CASE STUDY
“Case study is a strategy for doing research which involves an empirical investigation of a particular contemporary phenomenon with its real life context using multiple sources of evidence.” (Yin, 1981)

ADVANTAGES

• Intensive study 
• Locate deviant cases - method to study rare phenomena
• method to challenge theoretical assumptions 
• alternative or complement to the group focus of psychology 

Potential issues

• Critics of the case study method often claim:
• Studying a small number of cases is insufficient for establishing reliability or generality of findings;
• The intense involvement of the researcher in the study of the case could bias the findings; 
• Some critics suggest case study research is useful only as an exploratory tool or for establishing a hypothesis;
• Some would claim it is unscientific.

HISTORICAL RESEARCH

PROCESS:
synthesizing data from many different sources.

PURPOSE:
to collect, verify, and synthesize evidence from the past to establish facts that defend or refute your hypothesis.

LIMITATIONS:
sources must be both authentic and valid

SOURCES:
uses secondary sources and a variety of primary documentary evidence, such as, logs, diaries, official records, reports, archives, and non-textual information [maps, pictures, audio and visual recordings 

ADVANTAGES

• The historical research design is unobtrusive; the act of research does not affect the results of the study.
• The historical approach is well suited for trend analysis.
• Historical records can add important contextual background required to more fully understand and interpret a research problem.

DISADVANTAGES

• There is no possibility of researcher-subject interaction that could affect the findings.
• Historical sources can be used over and over to study different research problems or to replicate a previous study.
• The ability to fulfill the aims of your research are directly related to the amount and quality of documentation available to understand the research problem.
• Since historical research relies on data from the past, there is no way to manipulate it to control for contemporary contexts.
• Interpreting historical sources can be very time consuming.
• The sources of historical materials must be archived consistently to ensure access.
• Original authors bring their own perspectives and biases to the interpretation of past events and these biases are more difficult to ascertain in historical resources.
• Due to the lack of control over external variables, historical research is very weak with regard to the demands of internal validity.

KEY TERMS TO REMEMBER

SUBJECTS
traditionally used in experimental or quasi-experimental designs where those involved in the research are the pawns in the greater scheme of things, reacting to the intervention

RESPONDENTS
A term favored in sociology for survey designs where those involved respond or answer structured and semi-structured questionnaires; responds tell the researcher exactly what the researcher asks: no more, no less. 

INFORMANTS
a term derived from anthropology
the investigator is considered naïve and must be instructed about what is going on in a setting
Key informant – the person selected as the primary link between the anthropologist and the cultural group being studies 

PARTICIPANTS
Indicates the most active role of the persons who are being studied
Used in qualitative inquiries

VARIABLE

properties or characteristics of some event, object, or person that can take on different values or amounts

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE

Characteristics or condition that is introduced, removed or manipulated to cause a change in the dependent variable that is to be observed or measured

Predictor of Input

An experimental or treatment group is the group that receives the influence of the independent variable, and differs from the control group in the dependent variable

DEPENDENT VARIABLE

Characteristics or condition that is observed and measured to find out how the independent variable affects it.  

Outcome or attitude variable

Z-VARIABLE 

Secondary independent variable that is included and measured in the study to determine whether it affects, modify or alter the relation between the independent and dependent variable