Qualitative & Mixed Research Approaches

1. Qualitative & Mixed Research Approaches By GudayEmirie (PhD) Assistant Professor of Social & Cultural Anthropology College of Social Sciences Addis Ababa University May 7, 2013 Addis Ababa

2. Qualitative Research Approach It is one of the research approaches in which the inquirer often makes knowledge claims based on: • Constructivist perspectives (i.e., the multiple meanings of individual experiences meanings socially and historically constructed, with an intent of developing a theory or pattern) • Advocacy/participatory perspectives (i.e., political, issue-oriented, collaborative, or change oriented) or both. • Narratives, phenomenologies, ethnographies, grounded theory studies, or case studies. The researcher collects open-ended, emerging data with the primary intent of developing themes from the data (Creswell 2013)

3. Major Types of Qualitative Research Creswell (2013) illustrated the following major types of qualitative research: • Ethnographies, in which the researcher studies an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a prolonged period of time by collecting, primarily, observational data. The research process is flexible and typically evolves contextually in response to the lived realties encountered in the field setting. • Case studies, in which the researcher explores in depth a program, and event, and activity, a process, or one or more individuals. • Narrative research, a form of inquiry in which the researcher studies the lives of individuals and asks one or more individuals to provide stories about their lives.

4. Major Types of Qualitative Research Con’t • Phenomenological research, in which the researcher identifies the "essence" of human experiences concerning a phenomenon, as described by participants in a study. Understanding the "lived experiences" marks phenomenology as a philosophy as well as a method, and the procedure involves studying a small number of subjects through extensive and prolonged engagement to develop patterns and relationships of meaning. • Grounded theory, in which the researcher attempts to derive a general, abstract theory of a process, action, or interaction grounded in the views of participants in a study. This process involves using multiple stages of data collection and the refinement and interrelationship of categories of information.

5. Qualitative Data Collection Methods • Observations, in which the research takes field notes on the behavior and activities of individuals at the research site. In these field notes, the researcher records, in an unstructured or semi-structured (using some prior questions that the inquirer wants to know) way, activities at the research site. The qualitative observer may also engage in roles varying from a non- participant to a complete participant. • Interviews, the researcher conducts face-to-face interviews with participants, interviews participants by telephone, or engages in focus group interviews with six to eight interviewees in each group. These interviews involve unstructured and generally open-ended questions that are few in number and intended to elicit views and opinions from the participants.

6. Qualitative Data Collection Methods Con’t • Document review/analysis, during the process of research the qualitative investigator may collect documents. These may be public documents (e.g., newspapers, minutes of meetings, official reports or private documents (e.g., personal journals and diaries, letters, e-mails). • A final category of qualitative data consists of audio and visual material. This data may take the form of photographs, art objects, videotapes, or any forms of sound. (Creswell 2013)

7. Qualitative Data Analysis & Interpretation • Data analysis in qualitative research is an on-going process involving continual reflection about the data, asking analytic questions, and writing memos throughout the study. • It is not sharply divided from the other activities in the process, such as collecting data or formulating research questions. • It involves using open-ended data, for the most part. This requires asking general questions and developing an analysis from the information supplied by participants. (Creswell 2013)

8. Qualitative Data Analysis & Interpretation Con’t… Qualitative data analysis & interpretation involves the following steps: • Organize and prepare the data for analysis. This involves transcribing interviews, optically scanning material, typing up field notes, or sorting and arranging the data into different types depending on the sources of information. • Read through all the data. A first general step is to obtain a general sense of the information and to reflect on its overall meaning. What general ideas are participants saying? What is the tone of the ideas? What is the general impression of the overall depth, credibility, and use of the information? Sometimes qualitative researchers write notes in margins or start recording general thoughts about the data at this stage. • Begin detailed analysis with a coding process.

9. Qualitative Data Analysis & Interpretation Con’t… 4. Use the coding process to generate a description of the setting or people as well as categories or themes for analysis. • Advance how the description and themes will be presented in the qualitative narrative. The most popular approach is to use a narrative passage to convey the findings of the analysis. This might be a discussion that mentions a chronology of events, the detailed discussion of several themes (complete with sub-themes, specific illustrations, multiple perspectives from individuals, and quotations), or a discussion with interconnecting themes. • A final step in data analysis involves making an interpretation or meaning of the data. Interpretation in qualitative research can take many forms, be adapted for different types of designs, and be flexible to convey personal, research-based, and action meanings. (Creswell 2013)

10. Qualitative Data Analysis Purposes of QDA • Steer a researcher’s thinking away from literature and personal experiences • Avoid standard ways of thinking • Stimulate the inductive process • Focus on what is in the data • Allow for clarification of assumptions • Listen to what people are saying and doing • Force the asking of questions and giving of provisional answers • Discover properties and dimensions of categories (Straus & Corbin, 1998:89)

11. Strengths of Qualitative Research • Useful for obtaining: • insights into the routine and problematic experiences and the meaning attached to these experiences of individuals (biography, auto-biography, life history, oral history, auto-ethnography, case study) and groups (phenomenology, ethnography, grounded theory), which under certain conditions (e.g., data saturation, theoretical saturation, information redundancy), can achieve understanding: - case study- to study how…has affected… - ethnographic study- to describe and interpret the types of … experienced by different cultural groups - phenomenological inquiry- to describe the meaning of the lived experiences for individuals who have experienced ………(sever e psychological trauma)

12. Strengths of Qualitative Research Con’t... • Regardless of the research design or method used, qualitative research can inform policy development, if it is conducted in a way that leads to insights into particular … processes that exist within a specific setting, location, context, time, event, incident, activity, and/or experience.

13. Limitations of Qualitative Research “Qualitative research is typically based on small, nonrandom samples…which means that qualitative research findings are often not very generalizable beyond the local research participant” (Onwuegbuzie & Johnson 2004:410)

14. Crises in Qualitative Research According to Denzin & Lincoln (2005), qualitative researchers must confront the following three crises: 1. Representation • Difficulty for qualitative researchers in adequately capturing lived experiences (p.19) 2. Legitimation • “a serious rethinking of such a term as validity, generalizability, and reliability (p.17) 3. Praxis • leads qualitative researchers to ask, “How are qualitative studies to be evaluated in contemporary, post-structural moment?” (p.18)

15. Crises in Qualitative Research Con’t To address these crises, in recent years there have been calls for: • more rigor in qualitative research, where rigor is defined as the goal of making “data and exploratory schemes as public and replicable as possible” (Dezin, 1978:7) • making the research process more public (e.g. frameworks for making qualitative data analyses more explicit) though there has been little direction as to how to accomplish this Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech (2012) believe that Dezin & Lincoln’s (2005) crises can be addressed by using a framework for making qualitative data analyses significantly more explicit

16. Overview of Mixed Research (MR) Most Recent Definitions of Mixed Methods of Research (MMR): • an intellectual and practical synthesis based on qualitative and quantitative research; • the third methodological or research paradigm (along with qualitative and quantitative research); • recognizes the importance of traditional quantitative and qualitative research but also offers a powerful third paradigm choice that often will provide the most informative, complete, balanced, and useful research results;

17. Most Recent Definitions of MMR Con't • MMR is the research paradigm that: • partners with the philosophy of pragmatism is one of its forms (left, right, middle); • follows the logic of mixed methods of research (including the logic of the fundamental principle and any other useful logics imported from qualitative and quantitative research that are helpful for producing defensible and usable research finding (s); • relies on quantitative and qualitative viewpoints, data collection, analysis and inference techniques combined according to the logic of MMR to address one’s research question(s); and • is cognizant, appreciative, and inclusive of local and broader sociopolitical realities, resources, and needs. Furthermore, the mixed methods research paradigm offers an important approach for generating important research questions and providing warranted answers to those questions. This type of research should be used when the nexus of contingencies in a situation, in relation to one’s research is likely to provide superior research findings and outcomes” (Johnso, Onwuegbuzie,& Turner, 2007)

18. Mixed Research Process According to Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech (2012) “Overview of Mixed Research: A Step-by-Step Guide”, mixed research can be conceptualized as comprising the following 13 distinct steps: Step 1: Goal of Mixed Research Step 2: Mixed Research Objective Steps 3 & 4: Rationale & Purpose Step 5: Research Questions Step 6: Sampling Design Step 7: Mixed Research Designs Step 8: Data Collection Step 9: Mixed Analysis Steps 10-11: Legitimation and Interpretation in Mixed Research Step 12: Writing Mixed Research Report Step 13: Reformulating Research Question

19. Step 1: Goal of Mixed Research • Predict • Add to the knowledge base • Have personal, social, institutional, and/or organizational impact • Measure change • Understand complex phenomena • Test new ideas • Generate new ideas • Inform constituencies • Examine the past (Newman, Ridenour, Newman, & DeMacro, 2003)

20. Step 2: Mixed Research Objective • Exploration • Description • Explanation • Prediction • Influence (e.g., Johnson & Christensen, 2008

21. Steps 3 & 4: Mixed Research Rationale & Purpose Collins, Onwuegbuzie, & Stutton (2006) identified: • 4 major rationales for mixing quantitative & qualitative data • More than 65 purpose for mixing quantitative & qualitative d ata Reference Collins, K.M.T, Omwuegbuzie, A.J. m& Stutton, I.L. (2006) “A Model incorporating mixed methods research in special education and beyond. Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, 4, 67-100

22. Rationale for Mixed Research Rationale: Categories & Their Formulated Meanings

23. Examples of Purpose for Mixing Quantitative & Qualitative Approaches

24. Step 5: Research Questions (RQs) • RQs reflect the problem that the researcher want to investigate • More specifically, RQs are interrogative statements that represent “an extension of the statement of the purpose of the study in that it specifies exactly the question that the researcher will attempt to answer” (Johnson & Christensen, 2004:77)

25. Step 5: Research Questions (RQs) Con’t... RQs can be formulated based on: • theories, • past research, • previous experience, or • the practical need to make data-driven decisions in a work environment Thus, they serve as signposts for the reader, foreshadowing the specific details of the study. (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

26. Step 5: Research Questions (RQs) Con’t... RQs have several roles: • Provide a framework for conducting the study. • Helping the researcher to organize the research and giving it relevance, direction, and coherence, thereby helping to keep the researcher focused during the course of the investigation. • Delimit the study, revealing its boundaries. • Give rise to the type of data that are eventually collected. • Occupy a place in the mixed research process that is central, interactive, emergent, and evolving. (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

27. Step 5: Quantitative Research Questions (RQs) in Mixed Research • Tend to be very specific in nature. • Most quantitative RQs fall into one of the following three categories: (a) Descriptive (b) Comparative (c) Relationship (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

28. 1. Descriptive RQs in Mixed Research • Seek to quantify responses on one or more variables • Often begin with the words: “What is…” or “What are…” (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012) • Examples: ???

29. 2. Comparative RQs in Mixed Research • Seek to compare two or more groups on some outcome variable (i.e., dependent variable) and often use words such as “differ” and “compare” • Comparative questions involving two groups usually can be written using the following form: - “What is the difference in (dependent variable) between (Group 1) & (Group 2)?” - This question can easily be extended for three or more groups by replacing the word “between” with “among” (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

30. 3. Relationship RQs in Mixed Research • Concerned with trends between (among) two (or more) variables and often use words such as “relate,” “relationship,” “association”, and “trend”. • Relationship questions involving two variables usually can be written by using the following form: - “What is the relationship between (independent variable) and (dependent variable) among (population)?” - This question can easily be extended for three or more groups by replacing the word “between” with “among” (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

31. Summary of Qualitative RQ in Mixed Research • One can derive the quantitative research designs (i.e., historical, descriptive, correlational, causal-comparative, experimental, experimental) from the quantitative RQs. • Good qualitative RQs should identify the population and dependent variable(s), whether they represent descriptive, comparative, or relationship research questions. • If they represent comparative or relationship research questions, then the independent variable(s) also should be identifiable. • Researchers should avoid starting a quantitative RQs with the word “Do” because it motivates “yes/no” responses, which, in turn, place undue emphasis on null hypothesis significance tests, possibly to the exclusion of indices of practical significance. • Unfortunately, many research methodology textbooks cannot avoid using this form of quantitative research question. (Onwueguzie, Collins, & Leech, 2012)

32. Support of MR by Researchers from Alternative Paradigms Con’t… • “Having demonstrated that we were not then (and are not now) talking about antiquantiative posture or the exclusivity of methods, but rather the philosophies of which paradigms are constructed, we can ask the question again regarding commensurability: Are paradigms commensurable? Is it possible to blend elements of one paradigm into another, so that one is engaging in research that represents the best of both worldviews? The answer, from our perspective, has to be cautious yes. This is especially so if the models (paradigms) share axiomatic elements that are similar, or that resonate strongly between them.” (Guba & Lincoln 1994:105) • It is highly questionable whether such a distinction [between qualitative inquiry and quantitative inquiry] is any longer meaningful for helping us understand the purpose and means of human inquiry.”(Schwandt 2000:210) • “All research is interpretive, and we face a multiplicity of methods that are suitable for different kinds of understandings. So, the traditional means of coming to grips with one’s identity as a researcher by aligning oneself with a particular set of methods is no longer very useful. It we are to go forward, we need to get rid of that distinction.” (Schwandt 2000:210)

33. Support of MR by Researchers from Alternative Paradigms • “Both qualitative and quantitative methods may be used appropriately with any research paradigm.” (Guba & Lincoln 1994:105) • “The information may be quantitative or qualitative. Responsive evaluation does not rule out quantitative modes, as is mistakenly believed by many, but deals with whatever concern, or issue.” (Guba & Lincoln 1989:174) • “indeed there are many opportunities for the naturalistic investigator to untilize quantitative data-probably more than are appreciated.” (Lincoln & Guba 1985:198-9)

34. Criticism of MR by Researchers from Alternative Paradigms “It is not just the ‘methodological fundamentalists’ who have bought into [this approach]. A sizable number of rather influential…educational researchers…have also signed on. This might be a compromise to the current political climate; it might be a backlash against the perceived excesses of postmodernism, it might be both. It is an ominous development, whatever the explanation.” [emphasis added] (Howe 2007:57).

35. Thank you for your attention!!!