Research Quality in
Qualitative Methods
Class Session 6
ADLT 673, October 13, 2015

Assumptions of Qualitative
Design
• Are concerned with process over outcomes
• Are interested in the meaning of experience –
how people make sense of their lives
• Act as the primary instrument for data collection
and interpretation
Qualitative Researchers ….

Assumptions of Qualitative
Design
• Involves fieldwork – the researcher physically
goes to the setting or site to observe or record
behavior
• Is descriptive—the researcher seeks to
understand in terms of words or pictures
• Is inductive—the researcher builds abstractions,
concepts, hypotheses, and theories from details
Qualitative Research ….

Characteristics of a Qualitative
Research Problem
The concept is “immature” due to a lack of theory or
previous research
The sense that the available theory may be inaccurate,
inappropriate, incorrect, or biased
A need exists to explore and describe the phenomena
and develop theory
The nature of the phenomenon may not be suited to
quantitative measures

In a paper or proposal, the
researcher should
• Specifically describe the type of design and its
approach to data collection, analysis, and report
writing*
• Narrative Inquiry
• Ethnography
• Case Studies
• Phenomenology
• Grounded Theory
* Not an inclusive list – these are some of the more common

In a paper or proposal, the researcher
should describe design characteristics
The discipline or field where it originated
A good definition of the design
The typical unit of analysis for the design
Types of problems investigated by the design
Types of data collection
Data analysis processes & formats for reporting
Any other special characteristics of the design

The Researcher’s Role
Researcher biases, background, steps taken re: reflexivity
Why this site? What was done at the site?
Will it be disruptive? How minimize? What effects might that
have on the quality of the data?
How will results be reported? What will the “gatekeeper”
gain from the study?
Indicate steps taken to obtain IRB permission
Comment on sensitive / ethical issues: confidentiality of
data, anonymity of participants, and intentions to use
research for intended purposes

Data Collection Steps
• Setting the boundaries for the study
• Parameters for data collection
• Purposefully select participants who are best suited
to provide insight into the research question
• Collecting information through
observations, interviews, documents, and
visual materials
• Establishing the protocol for recording information
• Indicate the type of data to be collected and provide a
rationale for it

Thoughts on Interviewing
• NOT to get answers, test hypotheses, or evaluate
• In-depth interviewing is a means to understand the
experience of other people, and the meaning that
they make of their experience
• “Tell me about…”
• “Can you describe for me…”
• What, how, and why questions
• Interviewer: fewer words (short questions)
• Interviewee: many words (allow for expansive
answers)
• Use probes
• Watch for markers and follow them up with a probe

Conducting Focus Groups
• Requires a highly skilled facilitator to draw people out,
listen carefully, and encourage others to build on the topic
• Important to build rapport with group – food helps, but
finish it before you start to record
• Pose question to the group, then wait for first response.
Build off that response by asking, “Can anyone else relate
to that experience” or “Has anyone else had a different
experience?”
• Encourage as many diverse responses as possible
• If the participant gives a short, one or two word answer,
ask for an example, and keep asking for examples

Tricks of the Trade
Use digital recorder(s) – need 2 or 3 for a table of 12 participants
No more than 4-5 questions per hour/ 6 to 8 in 1.5 hours
Round robin number your participants (no names) and have them
use their number before speaking
If you conduct the intervention, ask another (qualified) person to serve
as your facilitator
Use a transcriptionist familiar with qualitative data ; decide on degree of
clean-up in transcription (verbatim / pauses and hesitancies)
Always listen to your data; do not rely on transcripts alone

Triangulation: An Important Feature in
Qualitative Studies
Use of multiple measures of the same variable to
increase confidence that the data reflect the
phenomenon under study
• Source triangulation: use of a variety of data sources
• Investigator triangulation: Different researchers
contribute to the research team
Methodological triangulation: use of multiple methods
to study a problem

Characteristics: Narrative Studies
Stories from individuals and groups (can include
documents) about individuals’ lived and told
experiences
Stories are either told to the researcher, or co-
constructed between the researcher and participant
Strong collaborative feature in all narrative inquiry
Types of narratives: Autoethnography, life history, oral
history

Characteristics: Ethnography
Purpose is to study cultural phenomena in a natural
setting
Originated in anthropology
Researcher spends long periods of time living in the
host culture to study it
Methods are primarily direct observations of activities
of group studied; formal and informal interviews
Quality often depends upon time spend in observing
and interacting with informants
Use of extensive field notes (taken or recorded and
transcribed immediately after observations)

Examples from Medicine
• Boys in White (1961) by Becker, Geer,
Hughes, & Strauss – an early ethnography
• Original problem framed as a question:
What does medical school do to medical
students other than give them a technical
education?
• Evolved to become a study of medical
school culture; reflective of emergent
design

Characteristics: Case Study
Best used to study “how” and “why” questions within
a bounded system
Ideal approach when the variables are inextricably
linked to the context in which they occur
The goal of a case study is exploratory, does not
include evaluation of an intervention
Tells a story, with intricate details, with special
attention paid to specifics about the setting, culture,
and the participants in the study
Individual can be the unit of analysis; can then conduct
a cross-case analysis of multiple individuals studied

Case Study of Eight Physicians
at MCV earning the M.Ed.
• Bounded system: cohort of physician learners
within one institution
• Methods included
• Interviews (beginning of program, mid-point, upon
completion)
• Focus group (someone else conducted)
• Inductive analysis of data from class learning
products: papers written, presentations made; CV
analysis; projects, etc.

Characteristics: Phenomenology
Purpose is to identify phenomena as they are perceived
by the study participants
What is the meaning, structure, and essence of the lived
experience of this phenomenon by individual(s)?
Direct investigation and description of phenomena
without a priori theories about causal explanations
Has many derivatives, such as phenomenological
heuristic inquiry (Moustakas): researcher must have
experienced the phenomena him/herself

Characteristics: Grounded Theory
Involves the discovery of theory through the analysis of
data
Involves both inductive and deductive thinking through
a constant comparison of data at different levels of
abstraction
Not a descriptive qualitative method
Researcher does not formulate hypotheses in advance
since preconceived hypotheses result in theory
ungrounded in data
Goal is to generate explanatory concepts: the unit of
analysis is the incident as reported by individuals

Key Concepts in Grounded Theory
Continual questioning of gaps, omissions, inconsistencies,
and incomplete understandings – this informs the need for
additional data on the situation being studied
Open processes in conducting research, rather than fixed
methods and procedures
Generate theory and data from interviewing, rather than
observation practices
Data collection, coding and analysis occur simultaneously,
not as separate components of research design
Inductive: theory must grow out of the data and be
grounded in the data

How does grounded theory work?
Initial (or open) coding and categorization of
data
• Identify important words, or groups of words in the data and
then label them
• In vivo codes, words taken verbatim from participants
Concurrent data collection and data analysis
• Researcher collects data with an initially purposive sample
• These data are coded before more data are collected
• Researcher constructs a theoretical proposition and then
collects data to test the hypothesis
• Engages in a constant comparison analysis
• Result is theory built up from the data themselves

Data Coding
Coding is analysis – Reviewing field notes or transcripts and
dissecting them meaningfully while keeping the relationships
among the parts intact
Codes are labels for assigning meaning
Codes are attached to “chunks” of data: either words, phrases,
sentences, or paragraphs
It is not the words that matter, but their meaning
Codes are used to organize and categorize data into themes and
patterns
Coding can be done manually or with the aid of qualitative data
software

Two Methods for Coding
• Can begin with a provisional “start list” of
codes based on conceptual framework prior to
fieldwork. This is called a priori coding
• Coding can be done using inductive methods
solely (grounded theory)
• Initial data are transcribed and reviewed line by
line, typically within a paragraph. In the margins
next to the paragraph, categories or labels are
generated, and the list grows. The list is reviewed,
modified, and continuously examined.

Rigor and Quality in
Qualitative Research Methods
Quantitative Qualitative
• Internal Validity
• External Validity
• Reliability
• Objectivity
• Credibility (truth value)
• Transferability
(applicability)
• Dependability or
Trustworthiness
(consistency)
• Confirmability (neutrality)

Credibility
Addressed by three issues: (1) the techniques and
methods used to ensure integrity and accuracy of the
findings; (2) the qualifications, experience, and
perspective that the primary researcher brings to the
study, and (3) the paradigm orientation and assumptions
that undergird the study (Patton, 1990)
Trustworthiness When researcher describes in
detail how successive interpretations of the data are
carried out and makes this available for public scrutiny in
publications; primary data should also be made available
to participants for their verification (Reissman, 1993)