Showing papers in "Qualitative Inquiry in 2010"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a model for quality in qualitative research that is uniquely expansive, yet flexible, in that it makes distinc- tions among qualitative research's means (methods and practices) and its ends.
Abstract: This article presents a model for quality in qualitative research that is uniquely expansive, yet flexible, in that it makes distinc- tions among qualitative research's means (methods and practices) and its ends. The article first provides a contextualization and rationale for the conceptualization. Then the author presents and explores eight key markers of quality in qualitative research including (a) worthy topic, (b) rich rigor, (c) sincerity, (d) credibility, (e) resonance, (f) significant contribution, (g) ethics, and (h) meaningful coherence. This eight-point conceptualization offers a useful pedagogical model and provides a common language of qualitative best practices that can be recognized as integral by a variety of audiences. While making a case for these markers of quality, the article leaves space for dialogue, imagination, growth, and improvisation.
4,656 citations
TL;DR: The use of numerical/quantitative data in qualitative research studies and reports has been controversial as discussed by the authors, particularly when they are requested by reviewers for journals, and the potential problems created by such uses and how these can be dealt with.
Abstract: The use of numerical/quantitative data in qualitative research studies and reports has been controversial. Prominent qualitative researchers such as Howard Becker and Martyn Hammersley have supported the inclusion of what Becker called “quasi-statistics”: simple counts of things to make statements such as “some,” “usually,” and “most” more precise. However, others have resisted such uses, particularly when they are requested by reviewers for journals. This paper presents both the advantages of integrating quantitative information in qualitative data collection, analysis, and reporting, and the potential problems created by such uses and how these can be dealt with. It also addresses the definition of mixed methods research, arguing that the use of numbers by itself doesn't make a study “mixed methods.”
768 citations
TL;DR: This article reread the 50-year history of qualitative inquiry that calls for triangulation and mixed methods, and briefly visit the disputes within the mixed methods community asking how did we get to...
Abstract: I reread the 50-year-old history of the qualitative inquiry that calls for triangulation and mixed methods. I briefly visit the disputes within the mixed methods community asking how did we get to ...
451 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that there is a "methodological orthodoxy" in how mixed methods is practiced that currently favors quantitative methodologies, with a mixed methods praxis that positions qualitative methods second and quantitative methods as primary with an overall mixed methods design that is in the service of testing out quantitatively generated theories about the social world.
Abstract: This article discusses how methodological practices can shape and limit how mixed methods is practiced and makes visible the current methodological assumptions embedded in mixed methods practice that can shut down a range of social inquiry. The article argues that there is a “methodological orthodoxy” in how mixed methods is practiced that currently favors quantitative methodologies, with a mixed methods praxis that positions qualitative methods second and quantitative methods as primary with an overall mixed methods design that is in the service of testing out quantitatively generated theories about the social world. This article upends the current methodological focus on positivism by centering qualitative approaches to mixed methods practice. A qualitative approach seeks to empower individuals’ stories with the goal of understanding how they how make meaning within their social world. Through intensive case studies this article demonstrates the synergy of combining methods in the service of qualitative...
397 citations
TL;DR: Paradigms serve as metaphysical frameworks that guide researchers in the identification and clarification of their beliefs with regard to ethics, reality, knowledge, and methodology as discussed by the authors, and are used to guide them in identifying and clarifying their beliefs.
Abstract: Paradigms serve as metaphysical frameworks that guide researchers in the identification and clarification of their beliefs with regard to ethics, reality, knowledge, and methodology. The transforma...
332 citations
TL;DR: Distinctions between abduction and induction, and between phronesis and theory, are often elided in methodological discussion about case study as mentioned in this paper, and making these distinctions clear offers a pathway for...
Abstract: Distinctions between abduction and induction, and between phronesis and theory, are often elided in methodological discussion about case study. Making these distinctions clear offers a pathway for ...
266 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined recent trends in health-related mixed methods projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and similar federal agencies and found that mixed methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches is an emergent method that is achieving increasing acceptance and use across disciplines.
Abstract: Mixed methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches is an emergent method that is achieving increasing acceptance and use across disciplines. Despite the importance of funding to the adoption of a new research approach, there is no clear understanding of U.S. funding agencies’ support for mixed methods. This study examines recent trends in health-related mixed methods projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and similar federal agencies. The results indicate that mixed methods projects are getting funded and their numbers are increasing but that their prevalence is still low overall. The nature of the projects indicates that researchers are adopting many conventions of the field of mixed methods research and planning approaches that integrate advanced qualitative and quantitative designs and procedures. The article concludes with recommendations to enhance the dynamic relationship between researchers’ decisions to propose mixed methods studies and existing extramural f...
244 citations
TL;DR: It is argued that qualitative mixed method designs introduce many of the incompatibility problems of mixed method design that use qualitative and quantitative components.
Abstract: Mixed methods, defined as one complete method (as the core project) plus a different simultaneous and sequential supplemental strategy, have been well explicated for combining the most difficult designs—that is, qualitative and quantitative methods. However, experts in qualitative inquiry have relatively ignored the issues that occur while describing qualitative simultaneous and sequential designs in which both components are qualitative. In this article, the author argues that qualitative mixed method designs introduce many of the incompatibility problems of mixed method design that use qualitative and quantitative components. Various qualitatively driven mixed method designs are presented. Then, using an armchair walkthrough, QUAL-qual designs are contextualized within a hypothetical project of breaking bad news, and several examples of QUAL- qual mixed method designs are discussed.
204 citations
TL;DR: This article tracked the history of qualitative research, reflective of the individual's own experience in the field, and many scholars participated in the ongoing dialogue around the shift from a solely positivist model of research to a multiple-models context.
Abstract: Tracking the history of qualitative research is to some extent a personal journey, reflective of the individual's own experience in the field. Many scholars participated in the ongoing dialogue around the shift from a solely positivist model of research to a multiple-models context. There still remain some philosophical and practical problems, around which the field will be in dialogue for some time to come. Those problems include the issue of rapport, especially in the face of an increasingly critical turn in the social sciences, and the stances adopted for mixed-methods models. Conversations around these and other issues have never been more urgent, in light of the National Research Council's press for a return to conventional scientific inquiry.
202 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that all interviews are emotional and embodied performances and that good interviewing is facilitated by a reflexive awareness of, and engagement with, the emotional, embodied, and performed dimensions of the interview.
Abstract: The article argues that the emotional framing of interviews plays a major role in shaping the content of interviews. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of Jessica Benjamin and Luce Irigaray, the article describes how interviews can be experienced as either conquest or communion. Qualitative researchers typically focus on the cognitively articulated aspects of the interview and elide the significance of their own and the interviewee’s, emotions. A reanalysis of two previous qualitative interview studies is used to illustrate the difference between interviews experienced as conquest or communion. The article argues that all interviews are emotional and embodied performances and that good interviewing is facilitated by a reflexive awareness of, and engagement with, the emotional, embodied, and performed dimensions of the interview.
159 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue for the importance of mapping as a multisensory research method in terms of its ability to evoke relationships between place, lived experience, and community.
Abstract: This article argues for the importance of mapping as a multisensory research method in terms of its ability to evoke relationships between place, lived experience, and community. Based on an interd...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined 13 mixed methods studies that contained an advocacy, transformative lens, which consisted of incorporating intent to advocate for an improvement in human interests and society through addressing issues of power and social relationships.
Abstract: A concern exists that mixed methods studies do not contain advocacy stances. Preliminary evidence suggests that this is not the case, but to address this issue in more depth the authors examined 13 mixed methods studies that contained an advocacy, transformative lens. Such a lens consisted of incorporating intent to advocate for an improvement in human interests and society through addressing issues of power and social relationships. Included for review were 10 criteria for a transformative study and rigorous procedures for mixed methods research. The findings of this study suggested that several transformative criteria are being used in published mixed methods studies but that some are underutilized. This analysis helped advance eight key elements that authors might use for incorporating a transformative lens into a mixed methods study.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that qualitative researchers should reconsider the promotion of validity or validation practices that disable researchers' responsibility and decision making during the research process, and utilize the concept of aporia to discuss researchers' responsibilities in the face of impossible decisions when aiming for "valid" and trustworthy qualitative research practices.
Abstract: In this article, the author problematizes external, objectified, oversimplified, and mechanical approaches to validity in qualitative research, which endorse simplistic and reductionist views of knowledge and data. Instead of promoting one generalizable definition or operational criteria for validity, the author’s “deconstructive validity work” addresses how validity can be framed in the context of researchers’ responsibility and decision making during the research process. More specifically, the author utilizes the concept of aporia to discuss researchers’ responsibilities in the face of impossible decisions when aiming for “valid” and trustworthy qualitative research practices. The author argues that qualitative researchers should reconsider the promotion of validity or validation practices that disable researchers’ responsibility. Alternatively, it could be illuminative to ask how impossible validity and ongoing puzzlement associated with the quality of qualitative research could influence current rese...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how interviewing in place, and making place the central theme of discussion, can have both practical and theoretical advantages for the research encounter, and also open up an appreciation of other forms of knowledge and narration.
Abstract: The article is concerned with the placing of, and making place central to, the research interview. Drawing on research on changing agricultural practices in the Peak District, the United Kingdom, the article explores how interviewing “in place,” and making place the central theme of discussion, can have both practical and theoretical advantages for the research encounter. Emplacing the encounter means that often marginalized voices can be brought into a more coconstructed and democratic narrative, while the farm and its associated micropolitics can provide a medium through which new, and often unforeseen, trajectories and narratives can develop. Moving outside, it is seen, may offer a freedom to the research. Such mobile interviewing offers devices, contexts, and instances that support and enhance the interview process, and also open up an appreciation of other forms of knowledge and narration.
TL;DR: The problematic nature of silence and its tendency to trouble qualitative inquiry is discussed in this article. But rather than seeking methodological remedies for such impediments, the article dwells on, and in, the recalcitrance of silence.
Abstract: The article engages with the problematic nature of silence and its tendency to trouble qualitative inquiry. Silence is frequently read as resistance—as an impediment to analysis or the emergence of an authentic voice. Rather than seeking methodological remedies for such impediments, the article dwells on, and in, the recalcitrance of silence. The authors read silence, via Derrida and Freud, as the trace of something Other at the heart of utterance—something intractable, unspeakable, unreasonable, unanalyzable. Silence confounds interpretation and manifests, intolerably, the illusory status of speech as full “presence” or living voice. Yet it also incites the search for meaning and is therefore productive. How might Method work with the alterity of silence, rather than seeking to cure or compensate for its necessary insufficiencies? The article is organized around three examples or parables of silence. Humor gets tangled up in the text further on.
TL;DR: This article examined the current use of poetry in qualitative research and deconstructed the reflexive circular e-mail for future possibilities as a data collection method and explored the following tensions: representation of research, research poets' training and experience, explanation or interpretation, and trustworthiness.
Abstract: In this article, the authors examined the current use of poetry in qualitative research. The literature yielded the following purposes of poetry: poetic allusions, cultural poetry research, participants’ poetry as data, data poems, research experience poems or poems from the field, and autoethnographic poetry.The authors drew on the experiences from a research poetry group, a reflexive circular e-mail, and research poems they authored. The authors deconstructed the reflexive circular e-mail for future possibilities as a data collection method and explored the following tensions: representation of research, research poets’ training and experience, explanation or interpretation, and trustworthiness. The authors composed Poetic Interludes throughout the article as a way of poking around at, with, and through poetry.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on multiple truths pertaining to doctoral education as expressed by three Latina doctoral recipients, and examine how their challenges and successes manifest in their professional lives in academia.
Abstract: This article focuses on multiple truths pertaining to doctoral education as expressed by three Latina doctoral recipients. These scholars successfully navigated various educational processes with the support of one another, their families, faculty, and their chosen discipline. The authors, as sister scholars, retell their educational journeys through testimonio and analyze how their trenzas de identidades multiples (multiple strands of identity, that is, motherhood, social class, and public intellectual) now inform their work. By interrogating the extent to which intersections of identity affect educational and career pathways, the authors use platica (dialogue) to theorize their doctoral experiences and examine how their challenges and successes manifest in their professional lives in academia.
TL;DR: Hesse-Biber et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out that the field of mixed methods has an historical legacy of practice that has remained invisible and pointed out the need for a reflective turning point in thinking about the theory and practice of mixed method research.
Abstract: This special issue marks a reflective turning point in thinking about the theory and practice of mixed methods research. As a field of study, mixed methods practice is both “old” and “emergent.” It is old in that the field of mixed methods has an historical legacy of practice that has remained invisible. Early on, social science research practice employed mixed methods data. Hesse-Biber (2010) notes,Mixed methods research developed with the earliest social research projects; among these are studies of poverty within families conducted in the 1800s in Europe by researchers such as Frederic LePlay (1855) and Charles Booth (1891) . . . research practices included the use of demographic analysis, participant surveys and observations, and social mapping tech-niques. These methods practices filtered into the research landscape in the United States by the begin-ning of the 20th century. . . . The
TL;DR: The authors argue that critical public pedagogies offer us glimpses of the pedagogical Other, forms and practices of education that exist independently of, even in opposition to, the commonsense of education.
Abstract: In this article, the authors argue that inquiry into critical public pedagogies, public sites of counterhegemonic educational activity, requires that researchers’ epistemological, representational, and ethical obligations extend to examine how their practices might undermine the political possibilities of these sites, diminish the transformative potential that public pedagogies hold, and ultimately reinscribe normative, limiting notions of educational possibility. Interweaving a framework from postcolonial thought, poststructural feminist and performative methodologies, and the literary contributions of Mikhail Bakhtin, the authors posit that critical public pedagogies offer us glimpses of the pedagogical Other—forms and practices of education that exist independently of, even in opposition to, the commonsense of education. Without this careful approach to researching sites of learning outside of the known, researchers risk adopting an institutionalized, colonial gaze, applying reductive logics to or even...
TL;DR: In this paper, the personal narrative of a research partner, a person with a renal disease, unfolds in dialogue with her research mates, whose voices are also present in the text.
Abstract: There is a trend in medical and health research to involve patients in the research process. A recent role is the patient acting as a research partner in a team of professionals. There are a few publications about these collaborations and the value of research partners. But is the research partner accepted as a credible knower? How can equality in the collaboration be reached? And how to handle tensions between the research partner’s personal agenda and the interests of and burdens on fellow patients? Finally there is the question of how the research influences the research partner’s self-perception. The purpose of this article is to investigate these epistemological, relational, ethical, and existential issues, while presenting an ethnodrama. In this drama, the personal narrative of the research partner, a person with a renal disease, unfolds in dialogue with her research mates, whose voices are also present in the text. The article is based on a health research agenda—setting process with the Kidney Ass...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on informants' interaction with questionnaires as a method of collecting data and analyze how the informants struggle with the reality imposed on them by the instruments' items.
Abstract: The article focuses on informants’ interaction with questionnaires as a method of collecting data and analyzes how the informants struggle with the reality imposed on them by the instruments’ items...
TL;DR: The authors explored and shared the creative journey and interpretive process I experienced when creating fiction as a qualitative researcher and showed how the creation of fiction can usefully show other truths and different viewpoints.
Abstract: This article explores and shares the creative journey and interpretive process I experienced when creating fiction as a qualitative researcher. I seek to accomplish three things: (a) to articulate the process of creation and interpretation; (b) to revisit the burgeoning literature that argues for the use of fiction and other poetic, artistic writing as useful contributions to scholarly research; and (c) to show how the creation of fiction can usefully show other truths and different viewpoints.
TL;DR: In this article, the focus is on refunctioning the mythological residue of Malinowksian modes of fieldwork from which springs trends for apprenticing graduate students to do and write up fieldwork.
Abstract: In this essay, we engage current discussions about refunctioning ethnography along lines that are meant to reimagine larger trajectories of ethnographic theory and practice. While these discussions are complicated and involved, much attention has been focused on refunctioning the mythological residue of Malinowksian modes of fieldwork from which springs trends for apprenticing graduate students to do and write up fieldwork. What has received less attention in these discussions are two other related tendencies on which we focus here: the first concerns connecting current leanings toward collaborative ethnographic activisms, in particular, with those contemporary performances of ethnography that surface from Boasian-situated histories; the second concerns connecting these contemporary performances as they articulate in practice, with not only graduate, doctoral-level training in ethnography but also emerging impulses for teaching and learning ethnography at all levels, including undergraduate instruction.
TL;DR: The dominant "aesthetic of objectivity" pervades much contemporary performance ethnography and scholarly performance text, subverting many scholars' stated desire to use aesthetic forms to critique hegemonic discourses and democratize scholarship as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This article is about the ways in which a dominant “aesthetic of objectivity” (Denzin, 2003, p. 73) pervades much contemporary performance ethnography and scholarly performance text, subverting many scholars’ stated desires to use aesthetic forms to critique hegemonic discourses and democratize scholarship. First, I will define the dominant “aesthetic of objectivity” as it applies to performance ethnography and performance texts and trace its origins to mainstream documentary theatre performances. I will then examine how these conventions play out in an example of an explicitly scholarly performance project, and argue the significance of liveness in the scholarly performance act. Finally, I will offer a few examples of arts-based research performance projects operating in alternate aesthetic paradigms rupturing the “aesthetic of objectivity” and offer recommendations and further questions for arts-based researchers and scholars interested in experimenting with performance forms.
TL;DR: The authors analyzed transcripts of eight research meetings for aspects and assumptions underlying their collaboration and found that three overarching aspects of their process emerged from the analysis: position-taking, meaning-making, and producing.
Abstract: While collaboration is common in qualitative inquiry, few studies examine the collaborative process in detail. In our study, we adopt an interpretive, reflexive stance to explore our process as a collaborative qualitative research team. We analyzed transcripts of eight research meetings for aspects and assumptions underlying our collaboration. Three overarching aspects of our process emerged from the analysis: position-taking, meaning making, and producing. We adopt a learning stance in our work together and make meaning through an iterative, dialogic process that foregrounds and backgrounds key elements of the research process. While some scholars have questioned whether truly collaborative research ever occurs among peers, we illustrate through our findings what such a process can look like.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the dilemma in relation to our experiences of conducting sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable groups in developing countries of Asia and the Pacific, and offer three case examples to explicate the difficulties faced in matching ethics theory with proforma approval requirements.
Abstract: Qualitative researchers are often confronted by ethical challenges when making research decisions because current guidelines and principles guiding research ethics do not wholly cover the concerns that can arise in complex social research situations. In this article, the authors explore this dilemma in relation to our experiences of conducting sensitive qualitative research with vulnerable groups in developing countries of Asia and the Pacific. With a focus on informed consent, the authors offer three case examples to explicate the difficulties faced in matching ethics theory with proforma approval requirements, which may limit the application of more expansive approaches to research design. To conclude, the authors put forth recommendations for modifications to the ethics system as a whole to promote greater collaboration and inclusion of qualitative researchers to the review and practice of research ethics in Australia.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors draw upon participant observation data collected at wine festivals at seven sites scattered across western British Columbia and Southern California and examine how people express taste sensations and preferences to others, as well as what role wine's material properties play in these social dramas.
Abstract: Sensuous scholarship refers to research about the human senses, through the senses, and for the senses. Sensuous scholarship asks us to recognize the meaningfulness of our somatic experience of the world, to understand the skilful activities through which we actively make and remake the world through our senses, and to develop evocative strategies of representation— to write sensuously. In this article, the authors reflect on one particular genre of sensuous scholarship, which they refer to as the somatic layered account. The authors draw upon participant observation data collected at wine festivals at seven sites scattered across western British Columbia and Southern California. The authors examine how people express taste sensations and preferences to others, as well as what role wine’s material properties play in these social dramas. In formulating and developing the concepts of somatic accounts, taste vocabularies, and somatic joint acts, the authors contribute to a growing understanding of the social...
TL;DR: In this article, an ethnography of corridor life in a large university building forms the basis of the discussion, focusing on two unintended consequences of ethical regulation of social enquiry: the exclusion of participants and, subsequently, a transformation of research practice.
Abstract: This article focuses on two unintended consequences of ethical regulation of social enquiry: the exclusion of participants and, subsequently, a transformation of research practice. An ethnography of corridor life in a large university building forms the basis of the discussion. Originally intended as a pilot for a broader study of informal networks of power, the project’s aim seemed unachievable. External ethical bureaucracy engendered an overdeveloped sensitivity to doing wrong, resulting in a bizarre form of reflexivity. The first consequence of ethical constraint is, paradoxically, the exclusion of participants and their worlds, as research projects are ever more tightly framed. However, forced to reflect on her research habitus, the author discovered that a conventional qualitative research focus on participants’ narrative/biographic accounts and face-to-face interaction can be similarly restrictive. In conclusion, the author discusses how practicing an unpeopled ethnography can open up space for democratic, innovative research within the confines of current ethical regulation.
TL;DR: The ways in which the media searches out, depicts, and writes about teacher-pupil sex-related topics have implications both for researchers working in the area and, sometimes more seriously, for the people who participate in and contribute to that research as respondents as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The ways in which the media searches out, depicts, and writes about teacher—pupil sex-related topics have implications both for researchers working in the area and, sometimes more seriously, for the people who participate in and contribute to that research as respondents. In this article, the authors discuss, and provide an example of, the composite fiction strategy they developed and decided to adopt primarily for purposes of protection when writing up a project that investigated the perceptions and experiences of teachers (and those of members of their families, their friends, and colleagues) who had been accused of sexual abuse of pupils, which they said they had not committed and of which they were eventually cleared
TL;DR: In this paper, a poetic and prose-based installation is grounded in the researcher's experience attempting to merge her artist-researcher-teacher (a/r/t) identities.
Abstract: The following poetic installation reflects on the artistic—scientistic divide that permeates how research practice is carried out and assessed even within the qualitative paradigm. Some poems question the art—science dichotomy and how it shapes truth-telling practices in both research and teaching. Other poems challenge the mind—body dichotomy. The poetic and prose-based installation is grounded in the researcher’s experience attempting to merge her artist—researcher—teacher (a/r/t) identities. The author employs a fragmented prose or montage style along with the poetry in an effort to mirror the (re)assembling of her a/r/t identities.