METHODOLOGY AND ETHICS

Methodology and Ethics

Methodology and Ethics

Q1)

A Systems Method for Qualitative Research aims to help students unscramble the mysteries of qualitative data collection, coding, and analysis by showing how to use a systematic, qualitative technique: interactive qualitative analysis. The authors synthesize ideas from grounded theory, path and factor analysis, quality management theory, Foucauldian concepts of power and knowledge, and systems theory. A dialectical revision of Guba and Lincoln's theory of rigor is offered which, combined with systems theory, offers new insights into the meaning of reliability and validity in qualitative research (Barchard, 2008).

Unlike many theoretical works, Interactive Qualitative Analysis develops the theory into a complete and transparent set of protocols for research design, observation, analysis, and interpretation. The construction, interpretation, and comparison of recursive systems of meaning, or mindmaps, is articulated in detail. The book is organized so that those not interested in theory can skip to the applied chapters. Case studies illustrate each stage of the research process with an emphasis on interpretation (Barnes, 2003).

Qualitative research, also known as qualitative inquiry, is an umbrella term used to cover a wide variety of research methods and methodologies that provide holistic, in-depth accounts and attempt to reflect the complicated, contextual, interactive, and interpretive nature of our social world. For example, grounded theory, ethnography, phenomenology, ethnomethodology, narratology, photovoice, and participatory action research (PAR) may all be included under the qualitative label, although each of these individual methods is based on its own set of assumptions and procedures. What unifies these various approaches to inquiry is their primary reliance on non-numeric forms of data (also known as empirical evidence) and their rejection of some of the underlying philosophical principles that guide methods employed in the physical and natural sciences and frequently in the social sciences. This entry focuses on the philosophical frameworks positioning qualitative research and on qualitative research designs (Arestova, 1999).

Q2)

The data required to study experience require that they are derived from an intensive exploration with a participant. Such an exploration results in languaged data. The languaged data are not simply single words but interrelated words combined into sentences and sentences combined into discourses. The interconnections and complex relations of which discourse data are composed make it difficult to transform them into numbers for analysis. Producing findings from these data require analytic tools specifically designed to work with languaged data.

The form of qualitative data as discourse has significant differences from the form of quantitative data as numbers. Current qualitative research was developed in a context in which mainstream social science research valued and used statistical designs. Statistical designs have given specific, technical meanings to the terms it uses to describe its processes (e.g., significance, validity, sampling) (Baltar, 2012). Because the use of these terms has connotations drawn from their specialized use, their adoption to describe similar but different qualitative processes can lead to misunderstandings. Data is one of these terms. In the context of quantitative research, the meaning of data is linked to the “sense data” of ...