Designing Research

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Module 1 Designing qualitative Research

Marshall and Rossman (2016) Chapter 2 describe a range of qualitative genres. Each genre or approach is normally associated with tools for collecting and analyzing data, but also has a body of literature describing the norms and problems of the approach when designing research:

1.    ethnographic methods (approaches to society and culture)

2.    phenomenology (approaches to lived experience)

3.    talk and text (sociolinguistic approaches) includes discourse analysis, interviews, focus groups

4.    Moving from thick description to theory (grounded theory)

Grounded theory can be “classical” which tends to be positivist (reality is out there), or “critical” which tends to be constructivist (reality is how we construct it)*

5.    Case studies

case studies are characterized by focus on context, but can use any of the above methods, or a mix of them plus quantitative methods

*for more on critical vs classical grounded theory, see O’Connor et al, 2018.   

Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1994). Grounded theory methodology. Handbook of qualitative research, 17(1), 273-285. Glaser and Strauss (1967) are amongst the original proponents of grounded theory, and the chapter at the link is a good introduction if you are considering it.  

These five are the major genres. I won’t suggest time on the “critical genres” e.g. methods associated with critical theory, queer theory, race theory, feminist theory, etc, leading to (for example) race-based auto-ethnography or LGBTQ analysis. 

Starting with the five major genres, we design qualitative research in order to answer questions. We then collect data and analyze it. These three steps — design, collection, analysis — are typically described as an iterative process, because with a good question, we don’t know what we don’t know when we start out, and we have to adjust our approach as we learn more.

Since case studies are the most common approach in War Studies theses (as they are women’s studies and environmental studies incidentally) I have attached a summary and annotated bibliography on case studies in addition to the Marshall and Rossman chapter. 

Research Ethics for Qualitative Research

Our final section in the module on designing qualitative research relates to the problem of involving humans in research. I think some institutions have a tendency to go a bit overboard on this. For example, I don’t think you need a REB to “interview” librarians to incorporate their expertise, or public servants about grey literature to request through ATI, but the starting point is that if any people are involved, you need to consider REB. 

I hope to bring the REB chair into a VTC with us to discuss.