Research Methods
CLASSICAL QUALITATIVE APPROACHES
(summarised and adapted from John C Creswell’s Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design, 2007)
1. Narrative Research
“Narrative” could be used interchangeably as text or discourse with a focus on stories told by individuals (Polkinghorne, 1995).”Narrative” can also be understood as “a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of of events/actions, chronologically connected” (Czarniawska, 2004, p. 17).
Types of Narrative Research:
– analysis of narratives vs narrative analysis (Polkinghorne, 1995)
– biographical study
– autobiography (Ellis, 2004)
– life history (Denzin, 1989)
– oral history (Plummer, 1983)
Procedures (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000):
(i) Select one or more individuals who have stories or life experiences to tell. Gather them through multiple types of information (or “field texts”) that can include journals, diaries, researchers’ fieldnotes, letters, family members’ stories, official correspondence, photographs, sound files, memory boxes and other artifacts.(ii) Collect the context of these stories (e.g. personal experiences such as jobs, homes; culture such as ethnicity; and historical context such as time and place)
(iii) Analyse the stories and then “restory” them into a framework that makes sense (e.g. time, place, plot, scene) (cf. Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2000). It could be through a chronological sequence, causal relationships, narrative tension that resolves in the end.
(iv) Involve participants in the research by negotiating relationships. Make meanings of stories together, finding turning points, themes, etc.
2. Phenomenological Research
A phenomenological study “describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon” (Creswell, 2007, p. 57), unlike narrative study that reports on the life of a single individual. The purpose is to reduce individual experiences with a phenomenon “to a description of the universal essence” (ibid., p. 58), i.e. a common experience.This experience could be the phenomena such as insomnia, being left out, anger, grief, or people undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery (Moustakas, 1994).This approach is most suited for researchers wanting to study and understand the features of a phenomenon, and/or to develop practices or policies.
Philosophical Influences: Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), whose ideas were then expanded by Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty
Types of Phenomenological Research:
– hermeneutical phenomenology (Van Manen, 1990)
– transcendental or psychological phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994)
Procedures (cf. Moustakas):
(i) Specify the broad philosophical assumptions of phenomenology. The researcher must bracket out, as much as possible, their own experiences.(ii) Data are collected from individuals who have experienced the phenomenon, through in-depth interviews, multiple interviews, observations, journals, art, poetry, music and other artistic forms, taped conversations, formally written responses, vicarious experiences of drama, films, poetry, novels. Polkinghorne (1989) recommends a sample size of 5-25.
(iii) Two broad questions are asked:
– What have you experienced in terms of the phenomenon?
– What contexts or situations have typically influenced or affected your experiences of the phenomenon?
(iv) Data analysis – through interview transcriptions. Highlight “significant statements”, sentences or quotes (“horizonalisation”, c.f. Moustakas 1994). Then develop clusters of meaning from these significant statements into themes.
(v) These themes are then used to write a description of what the participants experienced (textual description), taking into account the contexts or settings that influenced them (i.e. “imaginative variation” or “structural description”).
(vi) From the structural and textual descriptions, the researcher writes a composite description that presents the “essence” of the phenomenon called the “essential, invariant structure”. For example, all experiences have an underlying structure (grief is the same whether the loved one is a puppy, parrot, or child). The reader should come away with a feeling that they understand what it is like for someone to experience that phenomenon now (Polkinghorne, 1989).
3. Grounded Theory Research
(Barney Glaser & Anselm Strauss, 1967)
Contrasting it with phenomenology, the intent of a grounded theory study is to “move beyond description and to generate or discover a theory, an abstract analytical schema of a process” (Creswell, 2007, pp. 62-63), or action or interaction (cf. Strauss & Corbin, 1998). The development of the theory might help explain practice or provide a framework for further research.A key idea is that theory-development does not come ‘off the shelf’, but is generated or “grounded” in data from participants who have experienced the process (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). It can be seen as an extension of a phenomenological study.The researcher typically conducts 20 to 30 interviews based on several visits to the field.
Types of Grounded Theory:
– systematic procedures (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, 1998)
– constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2005, 2006)
Procedures (c.f. Strauss & Corbin):
(i) Initial questions to ask:
– What was the process?
– How did it unfold?
(ii) Go to the field and ask participants more detailed questions to shape the axial coding phase, which may involve 20-60 interviews. The purpose is to saturate the model:
– What was central to the process? (core phenomenon)
– What influenced or caused this phenomenon to occur? (causal)
– What strategies were employed during this process? (strategies)
– What effect occurred? (consequences)
(iii) Data Analysis
– Open coding: Researcher forms categories of information about the phenomenon being studied by segmenting information. Within each category, you would need to find several properties, or subcategories, and look for data to dimensionalise, or show the extreme possibilities on a contiuum of, the property.
– Axial coding: Researcher assembles data in new ways after open coding by using a coding paradigm or logic diagram (i.e. a visual model) in which the researcher identifies a central phenomenon, explores causal conditions, specifies strategies, identifies context and intervening conditions, and delineates the consequences.
– Selective coding: Researcher may write a “story line” that connects the categories. Alternatively, propositions or hypotheses may be specified that state the predicted relationships.
(iv) Develop and visually portray a conditional matrix that elucidates the social, historical, and economic conditions influencing the central phenomenon.
(v) The result of this process is a substantive-level theory. This theory may be tested later for its empirical verification with quantitative data to determine if it can be generalised.
4. Ethnographic Research
An ethnography focuses on an entire cultural group, unlike grounded theory’s selective individuals. The sample size has to be larger than grounded theory’s in order to examine shared patterns. Usually, the ethnographer describes and inteprets the shared and learned patterns of values, behaviours, beliefs, and language of a culture-sharing group (Harris, 1968).
As a process, extended observation comes through participant observation, in which the researcher is immersed in the day-to-day lives of the people and observes and interviews the group participants.
Philosophical Influences: Boas, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Mead, Park, Dewey.
Types of Ethnography:
– confessional ethnography
– life history
– autoethnography
– feminist ethnography
– ethnographic novels
– visual ethnography in photography, video, electronic media
– realist ethnography (Van Maanen, 1988)
– critical ethnography (Carspecken & Apple, 1992; Madison, 2005; Thomas, 1993)
Procedures:
(i) Identify and locate a culture-sharing group to study over an extended period of time, so that their shared language, patterns of behaviour, and attitudes have merged into a discernable pattern.
(ii) Select cultural themes or issues to study about the group. This involves an analysis of the culture-sharing group. Themes may include: emculturation, socialisation, learning, cognition, domination, inequality, child and adult development (LeCompte, Millroy, & Preissle, 1992)
(iii) To study cultural concepts, determine which type of ethnography to use. A critical ethnographer, for instance, may address an inequity in society, use the research to advocate and call for changes, and specify issues to explore (e.g. oppression, empowerment, dominance, inequality).
(iv) Gather information where the group works and lives, a process called fieldwork.
“Field issues of respect, reciprocity, deciding who owns the data and others are central to ethnography. Ethnographers bring a sensitivity to fieldwork issues (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995), such as attending to how they gain access, giving back or reciprocity with the participants, and being ethical in all aspects of the research, such as presenting themselves and the study” (Creswell, 2007, p. 72).
(v) Forge a working set of rules or patterns as the final product of this analysis. The final product is a holistic cultural portrait of the group that incorporates the views of the participants as well as the views of the researcher. Other products may be more performance based, such as theatre productions, plays, poems.
5. Case Study Research
Case study research involves “the study of an issue explored through one or more cases within a bounded system (i.e., a setting, a context)” (Creswell, 2007, p. 73).
In-depth data collection involve multiple sources of information, e.g. observations, interviews, audiovisual material, documents, reports.
As a general rule, qualitative researchers are reluctant to generalise from one case to another because the contexts of cases differ.
Philosophical Influences: Malinowski’s study of the Trobriand Islands; LePlay’s study of families.
Types of Case Studies:
– single instrumental case study
– collective or multiple case study
– intrinsic case study
Procedures:
(i) Identify your case(s): an individual, or several individuals, a programme, an event, an activity. Purposeful sampling may be present at this stage to offer different perspectives on the problem, process, or event you want to portray.
(ii) Collect 6 types of information (cf. Yin, 2003):
– documents
– archival records
– interviews
– direct observations
– participants-observations
– physical artifacts
(iii) Analyse data – either holistic analysis (of an entire case), or embedded analysis (of a specific aspect of the case). A detailed description emerges, e.g. history of the case, chronology of events, etc. Then, focus on a few key issues (analysis of themes) not for generalising beyond the case, but for understanding the complexity of each case.
(iv) Report the meaning of the case (interpretation), especially if the meaning comes from learning about the issue of the case (instrumental case), or learning about an unusual situation (an intrinsic case).
ARTS-BASED RESEARCH
1. Practice as Research (PaR)
Practice as research “involves a research project in which practice is a key method of inquiry and where, in respect of the arts, a practice (creative writing, dance, musical score/performance, theatre/performace, visual exhibition, film or other cultural practice) is submitted as substantial evidence of a research inquiry” (Robin Nelson, 2013, pp. 8-9).
Examiners need to “be convinced that the proposed inquiry necessarily entailed practical knowledge which might primarily be demonstrated in practice – that is, knowledge which is a matter of doing rather than abstractly conceived and thus able to be articulated by way of a traditonal thesis in words alone.” (ibid.)
Estelle Barrett also writes:
“It can be argued that the generative capacity of creative arts research is derived from the alternative approaches it employs—those subjective, emergent and interdisciplinary approaches—that continue to be viewed less favourably by research funding assessors and others still to be convinced of the innovative and critical potential of artistic research. That studio production as research is predicated on an alternative logic of practice often resulting in the generation of new ways of modelling meaning, knowledge and social relations is still a relatively foreign idea within in the wider university research community. Rather than attempting to contort aims, objectives and outcomes to satisfy criteria set for more established models of research, I believe there is a need to generate appropriate discourses to convince assessors and policy-makers that within the context of studio-based research, innovation is derived from methods that cannot always be pre-determined, and “outcomes” of artistic research are necessarily unpredictable.” (Barrett, 2007/2010, p.3)
2. Practice-based Research
Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean (2009) describe practice-based research when “creative work in itself is a form of research and generates detectable research outputs” (p.5). There is an emphasis on the creative practice in itself.
3. Practice-led Research
Hazel Smith and Roger T. Dean (2009) state that practice-led research is a form of “creative practice – the training and specialised knowledge that creative practitioners have and the processes they engage in when they are making art – [that] can lead to specialised research insights which can then be generalised and written up as research” (p.5). This highlights “the insights, conceptualisation and theorisation which can arise when artists reflect on and document their own creative practice” (ibid.).
For Linda Candy (2006), the creative work in practice-based research acts as a form of research. In practice-led research, it is about the practice that leads to research insights (knowledge generation).
There are still debates on how these terms are used and defined, which explains why many universities still do not encourage such forms of research (both as process and output).
One helpful way to understand the difference is to think of “practice-led research as an approach that allows you to incorporate your creative practices into the research, legitimises the knowledge they reveal and endorses the methodologies, methods and research tools that are characteristic of your discipline” (from Edith Cowan University library).