Qualitative methods Lecture 8

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Qualitative methodsLecture 8

• Reporting qualitative data

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Last time

• Validity, reliability and generalisability
• Think concepts in an everyday way
• A valid excuse
• Do I believe in these results?
• Are these results valid for other cases?

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Today

• Making interview reports according to Kvale
• What is a good interview report?
• What is a bad interview report?
• Evaluation

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A bad interview report is(according to Kvale)

• Boring
• Often with long, heavy, word-for-word quotations
• Presented in a fragmented way with primitive
  categorisations
• Often too detailed
• Often cut up in incoherent bits
• Longs for coherent stories

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Reasons for bad texts

• The author can be drowning in comprehensive and
  complex interview texts the personal perspective
  gets lost
• The author can go native
• The author can fear making subjective
  interpretations
• The author does not know, which story to tell

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Methodological considerations

• Method as a black box (Kvale, p. 249)
• The reader has to guess what the researcher has
  been doing
• Necessary to judge the validity of the results,
  reinterprete or apply them
• Method neglect
• Can be due to a lack of formal procedures in the
  research
• Can be due to a lack of fixed conventions for
  reporting

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Other reasons...

• Counter reaction to the positivistic worshipping
  of method
• Bad method conscience?
• Are the applied procedures swept under the
  carpet?
• Fear and guilt of not matching the ruling ideals
  for methodology?

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Aim of reporting

• Inform other researchers and the public about the
  significance and reliability of the results
• Contribute with new knowledge
• Must be formulated in a way that the conclusions
  can be controlled by the reader
• Has to contain the main aim, methods, results and
  implications of the study

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With an eye for the report

• Thematizing
• Designing
• Interviewing
• Analysing
• Validating
• Reporting

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The good interview report

• Is read
• Is direct communication, often with a few pages
  summary
• Has to live up to both being a piece of art and
  be able to resist an interrogation in court

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Relevant questions to ask

• Are the results interesting?
• Do they give new knowledge and new insights?
• Do they give rise to new perspectives on the
  matter of research?
• Which theoretical implications do the results
  have?
• Does the new knowledge support dominating
  theories in the area or not?

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Methodological considerations

• How reliable are the results?
• What is the methodological foundation?
• Which practical consequences does the study have?
  
• Are the results valid enough to take action on
  their basis?

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Contact between interview text and report
quotations

• Connection with the normal text
• Quotations must be contextualised
• Quotations must be interpreted
• Balance between quotations and text
• Quotations must be brief
• Use only the best quotation
• Reproduce quotations in a written form
• There has to be a simple sign system for the
  editing of quotations

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Space.

• Tempting to write more and more and more and
• Necessary with a critical and selective distance

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Summing up

• Think in all phases of the project right from the
  start
• Think of a working process and a writing process
  (Whats the story?)