Ravitch and Carl
Qualitative Research
SAGE Publications, 2016.
Chapter Overviews
Chapter 1:Qualitative Research: An Opening Orientation
Chapter One, Qualitative Research: An Opening Orientation, defines and situates qualitative research as a field of inquiry and approach to research. The chapter begins with an overview of the processes and key components of qualitative research, including the role of the researcher, and describes why and how qualitative research is reflexive, recursive, inductive, and systematic in its approach to understanding people and the world in context. The chapter then defines what we consider to be horizontals in qualitative research – criticality, reflexivity, collaboration, and rigor – as a way of framing the key values and characteristics of our approach to qualitative research. The chapter orients you to some of the primary approaches within qualitative research so that you understand the diversity and range of ways that you can situate your research and yourself within it. We conclude the chapter by sharing our thoughts about the power and potential of qualitative research.
Chapter 2:Using Conceptual Frameworks in Research
In Chapter Two, Using Conceptual Frameworks in Research, we discuss the role of conceptual frameworks, which include theoretical frameworks, to all aspects and phases of qualitative research. The chapter begins with a definition of what a conceptual framework is, what its key components are, and what it helps you do in your research. We describe the myriad roles and uses of a conceptual framework and discuss how you construct and develop one. We describe how the researcher, tacit theories, study goals, setting and context, and formal theory inform, influence, and shape conceptual frameworks. The chapter then provides commentary on and examples of conceptual frameworks to help you begin to develop and then continue to build and refine your own conceptual framework. The chapter includes suggested strategies for developing your emerging conceptual framework.
Chapter 3:Critical Qualitative Research Design
Chapter Three,Critical Qualitative Research Design, offers an ecological approach to qualitative research design that engages and supports criticality in qualitative research. The chapter begins with an overview of the qualitative research design process and then delves into specific discussions of focal aspects of the process including: developing study goals and rationale; formulating research questions; developing a conceptual framework; creating a theoretical framework and literature review; the role of writing in research design; considerations of site and participant selection; and the role of pilot studies and piloting instruments. Throughout the chapter we include a variety of recommended practices including memos on study goals and rationale, researcher identity/positionality, core constructs in research questions, goals of each of your research questions, theoretical framework development, implicit theory guiding your study, and critical research design. We also offer dialogic engagement practices including structured sets of conversations, paired question and reflection activities, reflective journaling, activities to help with your mapping of goals, research topic, and research questions, practices to help connect your research questions with methods, and theoretical framework charting.
Chapter 4:Design and Reflexivity in Data Collection
Chapter Four,Design and Reflexivity in Data Collection, is the first of two chapters that focus on data collection. This chapter focuses on the processes of qualitative data collection with an emphasis on considering data from an ecological/holistic perspective that seeks rigor, validity, and criticality and that views research participants as experts of their own experiences. In this chapter, we delve into the overarching processes and values of qualitative research design, connect them to data collection, and include a discussion of what it means to define, view, and approach qualitative data collection as an iterative and reflexive process. The chapter discusses the relationship of data collection to ongoing research design and highlights the role of reflexivity and the researcher-generated nature of qualitative data sources. To support the ideals of the chapter, we include a variety of strategies, recommended practices, and questions to help support a reflexive data collection process.
Chapter 5:Methods of Data Collection
Chapter Five, Methods of Data Collection,builds on the framework for data collection in Chapter Four and delves into a concrete exploration of the primary modes of qualitative data collection. The chapter highlights the key characteristics and values of qualitative interviews and discusses the primary considerations for developing and conducting qualitative interviews. The chapter then describes the method of observation and fieldnotes and discusses roles of the observer and the writing of observational fieldnotes. We then describe focus groups including their benefits and challenges and offer suggestions for how to approach and conduct them. Next, we describe the roles and uses of documents and archival data as a part of an overall approach to data collection. The chapter includes a discussion of a survey approach and using questionnaires. We also include a brief overview of selected participatory methods of data collection. Throughout the chapter, we provide recommended practices for each method and include ideas for memos related to these methods of data collection. We end the chapter by revisiting research design to ensure that your data collection methods align with your research questions.
Chapter 6:Validity: Processes, Strategies, and Considerations
In Chapter Six, Validity: Processes, Strategies, and Considerations,wedefine, reframe, and complicate the concept and related processes of validity as more than a set of procedures, but rather, as considerably different -- epistemologically and ontologically -- from the quantitative paradigm from which the concept of validity has been adapted. The chapter approaches validity as both an active methodological process and a research goal. We begin with a discussion of ways to consider and assess validity and describe key validity criteria. The chapter defines and explores specific validity strategies including triangulation, participant validation, the strategic sequencing of methods, thick description, dialogic engagement, multiple coding, structured reflexivity processes, and mixed methods research. We also include reflexive validity questions and an example of a validity-focused research design memo.
Chapter 7:An Integrative Approach to Data Analysis
In Chapter Seven, An Integrative Approach to Data Analysis, building on our discussion of criticality in qualitative research design, we present key analytic frames that help to reconceptualize data analysis more critically by highlighting the formative, iterative, recursive, and ongoing value of developing intentionality around interpretation and formal analysis. We overview approaches to qualitative data analysis and suggest an integrative approach to data analysis that critically explores and addresses the interpretative power in/of analysis and the need for an ethical and critical stance on data analysis that respects participants and their lived experiences. The chapter then discusses data and theory integration and triangulation in qualitative data analysis and considers the need to actively recognize and address issues of interpretive authority and power asymmetries within qualitative data analysis. We provide specific ways to help you create the conditions to ongoingly seek out alternative perspectives through a variety of processes.
Chapter 8:Methods and Processes of Data Analysis
Chapter Eight, Methods and Processes of Data Analysis, builds on the framework for data analysis articulated in Chapter Seven and focuses on the influences and techniques necessary for a critical, rigorous, and valid analysis process. We describe a three-pronged approach to data analysis that includes the ongoing processes of data organization and management, immersive engagement, and writing and representation. As a part of this multi-layered approach, we describe a data management plan, suggestions for organizing and managing your data, ideas about the preparation of transcripts, pre-coding processes, and ways to read data. We describe specific data analysis strategies including approaches to and processes of coding, dialogic engagement strategies, and connecting strategies. The chapter details how to code various kinds of data including documents and considerations about the use of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. We discuss how to generate, scrunitize, and vet themes and provide a sample process for developing analytic themes. The chapter ends with ideas about the role and issues of writing and representation in qualitative data analysis.
Chapter 9:Writing and Representing Inquiry: The Research Report
Chapter Nine, Writing and Representing Inquiry: The Research Report, focuses on the processes of writing qualitative research, including discussions of conceptual, theoretical, and analytical approaches to writing throughout the research process. As discussed in previous chapters, we underscore the power inherent in qualitative research and representation, and we argue for respectful, authentic, and ethical representations of participants and settings. The chapter describes aspects of research writing including how your research and writing are shaped by your goals, audience(s), and purposes. The chapter also describes various considerations in the format and structure of a final research report and provides a sample structure for a qualitative report.
Chapter 10:Crafting Qualitative Research Proposals
Chapter Ten, Crafting Qualitative Research Proposals,focuses onconsiderations in the writing of qualitative research proposals with a discussion of the central components of research proposals including the introduction, conceptual framework, methodology and research design, and offers a qualitative research proposal template that you can use or adapt as a basis for the proposal you develop in your specific milieu. We include an annotated example of an exemplary research proposal to illuminate the processes we describe throughout this chapter.
Chapter 11:Research Ethics and the Relational Quality Of Research
Chapter Eleven, Research Ethics and the Relational Quality of Research,discusses the relational quality of research and research ethics. The chapter begins by framing and defining what we mean by relational ethics. The chapter addresses more common components of ethics including Institutional Review Boards, ethics committees, codes of ethics, and informed consent and assent and argues for a view of ethics that extends beyond these necessary and important safeguards for participants. The chapter explores the concepts of research boundaries, reciprocity, transparency in goals, expectations, processes, and roles, as well as issues of data management and security in the Information Age. We discuss ethical dimensions of the concept of the “researcher as instrument” by exploring the ideological and methodological processes of researcher reflexivity and push against the “expert-learner binary.” The chapter also discusses the ethics of collaboration and design flexibility.
Epilogue:Revisiting Criticality, Reflexivity, Collaboration, and Rigor
Epilogue: Revisiting Criticality, Reflexivity, Collaboration, and Rigorrevisits and underscores the four horizontals that thread across the chapters – criticality, reflexivity, collaboration, and rigor. We provide examples of alternative ways to think of and enact these horizontals from current graduate students to help you think about ways that these key aspects of qualitative research can be applied. We then share thoughts about the power and potential of qualitative research and include wishes for you as you embark on the personal, professional, and intellectual journey that is qualitative research.
Appendix
We have created a robust Appendix to provide additional examples that will illuminate the processes of conducting qualitative research. The appendixes offer examples of memos, conceptual frameworks, instruments, a full pilot study, analysis plans, data displays, coding schemes, conference and grant proposals, consent forms, and assent forms.