Qualitative Research Methods

Collecting Evidence, Crafting Analysis, Communicating Impact

Sarah J. Tracy

• Editorial: Wiley-Blackwell
• Año: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118378588
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Categoría: Kommunikationswissenschaften

Qualitative Research Methods is a comprehensive, all-inclusive resource for the theory and practice of qualitative/ethnographic research methodology.

• Serves as a "how-to" guide for qualitative/ethnographic research, detailing how to design a project, conduct interviews and focus groups, interpret and analyze data, and represent it in a compelling manner
• Demonstrates how qualitative data can be systematically utilized to address pressing personal, organizational, and social problems
• Written in an engaging style, with in-depth examples from the author's own practice
• Comprehensive companion website includes sample syllabi, lesson plans, a list of helpful website links, test bank and exam review materials, and exercises and worksheets, available upon publication at www.wiley.com/go/tracy

CHAPTER 1

Developing contextual research that matters

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Contents

Overview and introduction

Three core qualitative concepts: self-reflexivity, context, and thick description

A phronetic approach: doing qualitative research that matters

Foci of qualitative research

Moving from ideas to sites, settings, and participants

Moving toward a research question

In summary

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What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words, “research methods?”

Many people never think explicitly about this question, and if they do, they think that research methods are difficult to learn and painstaking to conduct. However, you might be surprised to discover that you engage in research every day – and these methods not only provide important resources for understanding the world, but are actually a common and enjoyable way to spend our time.

We ask questions, listen to stories, watch others, participate in meetings, check our text messages, gossip, and engage in dialogue. In doing so, we gather qualitative data about social phenomena. Through talking to others we learn about their quirks, interests, pet peeves, and sense of humor. We learn about their culture. We think about these experiences, make patterns of meanings, and absorb the scene.

Simultaneously, share our own understandings in conversations, blog entries, and emails. In telling these stories we call out the most important players and evaluate their behavior. We do this to pass the time, interact, and have fun. But we also do it to understand the world and our place within it. We make sense through our talk, and our meaning making helps us know what to expect at future events. So, at a basic level, we all engage in research everyday. The focused study of research methods takes these everyday actions one step further: to a systematic analysis that may lead to better understandings – not only for us, but for others.

Overview and introduction

This book guides readers step by step through the qualitative methods process – research design, data collection, analysis, and creating a representation that can be shared with others, be that a class paper, a publication, a performance, a service portfolio, a website entry, or a letter to the editor. I will impart aspects of ­qualitative research I have found most methodologically sound, helpful, beautiful, fun, and interesting. I will also pause to discuss concepts that I have not practiced myself, but that are common in the field. This book offers guidance no matter whether you are a graduate student learning the basics of qualitative methods, an undergraduate completing a service project, a critical performance artist wishing to interrogate power relations, a rhetorician interested in ­complementing textual analysis, or a quantitative researcher hoping to augment statistical findings through qualitative insights.

Chapter 1 opens by introducing three central concepts that can jumpstart a qualitative project: self-reflexivity, ­context, and thick description. Next, I overview the unique, praxis-based, contextual approach of the book and how qualitative research is well poised for researching a number of disciplinary areas. Finally, I discuss the first steps in conducting a research project, including choosing a context and developing research questions.

Three core qualitative concepts: self-reflexivity, context, and thick description

Self-reflexivity

Self-reflexivity refers to the careful consideration of the ways in which researchers’ past experiences, points of view, and roles impact these same researchers’ interactions with, and interpretations of, the research scene. Let’s examine this definition in more detail.

Every researcher has a point a view, an opinion, or a way of seeing the world. Some people call this “baggage”; others call it wisdom. Rather than deny our way of seeing and being in the world, qualitative researchers acknowledge, and even celebrate it. A person’s demographic information provides the basic ingredients of a researcher’s perspective. For example, I am female, white, heterosexual, forty-something, partnered, and an aunt. My work roles have included professor, public relations coordinator, and cruise ship activities director. I raced an “Ironman” triathlon, and I drive a Mini Cooper Clubman. I believe that success rewards virtuous action and that good research provides opportunities for transformation.

This background shapes my approach toward various topics and research in general. Likewise, your own background, values, and beliefs fundamentally shape the way you approach and conduct research. The mind and body of a qualitative researcher literally serve as research instruments – absorbing, sifting through, and interpreting the world through observation, participation, and interviewing. These are the analytical resources of our own “subjectivity.” Of course, our bodies and minds also live in a context.

Context

Qualitative research is about immersing oneself in a scene and trying to make sense of it – whether at a company meeting, in a community festival, or during an interview. Qualitative researchers purposefully examine and make note of small cues in order to decide how to behave, as well as to make sense of the context and build larger knowledge claims about the culture.

Clifford Geertz, sometimes referred to as the father of interpretive anthropology, focused specifically on context, preferring to examine the field’s rich specificity. As Geertz (1973) famously put it: “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning” (p. 5). Ethnographers construct meaning through immersion in a context comparable to that of scientific research – say, an experimental laboratory study – that isolates variables and controls circumstances, so that findings can be replicated.

Indeed qualitative researchers believe that the empirical and theoretical resources needed to comprehend a particular idea, or to predict its future trajectory, are themselves interwoven with, and throughout, the context. Social theories are based in the ever-changing, biased, and contextualized social conditions of their production. So, for example, we can read detailed analyses of inner-city poverty and glean emergent theories of social justice from these rich evocations.

Thick description

Directly related to context is the idea of thick description, according to which researchers immerse themselves in a culture, investigate the particular circumstances present in that scene, and only then move toward grander statements and theories. Meaning cannot be divorced from this thick contextual description. For instance, without a context, a person’s winking could mean any number of things, including that the person is flirting, is trying to communicate secretly, has an uncontrollable facial twitch, or is imitating someone else’s twitch (Geertz, 1973). The meaning of the wink comes precisely from the complex specificity and the circumstances that inform interpretations of intention; “The aim is to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts; to support broad assertions about the role of culture in the construction of collective life by engaging them exactly with complex specifics” (p. 28).

By describing the background and context of action, researchers can decipher a twitch and tell it apart from a wink and from a parody of a wink – and they may interpret the meaning(s) of all these gestures and help predict whether we are likely to see the behavior again. This process of interpretation is dependent upon the scene’s particulars. This being the case, context provides a central role for qualitative research, while a priori theory takes a back seat. Given the focus on context, the driving force of much qualitative research is practical in nature.

A phronetic approach: doing qualitative research that matters

I take a praxis-based or “phronetic” approach to research (Tracy, 2007). This approach suggests that qualitative data can be systematically gathered, organized, interpreted, analyzed, and communicated so as to address real world concerns. I suggest that researchers begin their research process by identifying a particular issue, problem, or dilemma in the world and then proceed to systematically interpret the data in order to provide an analysis that sheds light on the issue and/or opens a path for possible social transformation. Doing “use-inspired” (Stokes, 1997) contextual research is especially well suited for service learning, socially embedded research, public intellectualism, funded projects, and community partnerships.

What is phronetic research? The ancient Greek noun phronēsis is generally translated as ‘prudence’ or ‘practical wisdom’ (Aristotle, 2004). Phronēsis is concerned with contextual knowledge that is interactively constructed, action oriented and imbued with certain values (Cairns & Śliwa, 2008). Research conducted under its guidance serves “to clarify and deliberate about the problems and risks we face and to outline how things may be done differently, in full knowledge that we cannot find ultimate answers to these questions or even a single version of what the questions are” (Flyvbjerg, 2001, p. 140). This approach assumes that perception comes from a specific (self-reflexive) subject position and that the social and historical roots of an issue precede individual motivations and actions. It also assumes that communication produces identity for the researchers as well as for those researched, and that it generates knowledge that benefits some more than others. Qualitative methods are especially suited for examining phronetic questions about morality and values. Social action is always changing; therefore contextual explanations and situated meanings are integral to ongoing sensemaking.

Strengths of qualitative research

Through a phronetic approach that focuses on self-reflexivity, context, and thick description, qualitative research has a number of advantages as a research method. First, many researchers – especially young scholars who do not have the luxury of comfy offices or high-tech laboratories – are all too happy to escape their shared apartments and cramped graduate school offices and venture into the field. This may be why so many excellent ethnographies are conducted by people under the age of 30. As Goffman (1989) said about naturalistic field research: “You’re going to be an ass… And that’s one reason why you have to be young to do fieldwork. It’s harder to be an ass when you are old” (p. 128).

Second, qualitative research is excellent for studying contexts you are personally curious about but have never before had a “valid” reason for entering. Third, in addition to personal interest or disciplined voyeurism, qualitative data provide insight into cultural activities that might other...