Talking about Qualitative Research

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Talking about Qualitative Research

• Wen-chi Wu

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Reference--Books

• Doing qualitative research
• Crabtree BF, Miller WL. (eds). Sage 1999.
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Reference--Journals

• Qualitative Health Research
• Medical Anthropology Quarterly
• Sociology of Health and Illness
• Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
• Social Science and Medicine
• International Journal of Health Services
• Journal of Health and Social Behavior
• Health Education and Behavior
• BMJ

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Whats Qualitative Research? (1)

• Qualitative research begins by accepting that
  there is a range of different ways of making
  sense of the world and is concerned with
  discovering the meaning seen by those who are
  begin researched and with understanding their
  view of the world rather than that of the
  researchers.(by Roger Jones BMJ 311(6996)2,
  11995)

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Whats Qualitative Research? (2)

• Behind every quantity there must lie a
  quality.(by Gertude Jaeger Selznick, PH. D.)
• The purpose
• Develop concepts which help us to understand
  social phenomena in natural settings (rather than
  experimental settings)
• Emphasis to the meanings, experiences, and view
  of all the participants.

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Example

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Why?

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How to do it?
AimsQuestions
GatheringProcess
Sampling/ collecting
Describing
Representingthe account
Organizing
AnalysisProcess
CorroboratingLegitimating
Connecting
InterpretiveProcess
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Sampling (1)

• Characteristics
• Small
• Not assumes knowledge sufficient to define the
  larger population
• Not assumes the event is normally distributed in
  the population
• Some data source are richer than others
• Purposive sampling

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Sampling (2)

• What to sample?
• A template organizing style from literature or
  experience
• Events, places, persons, artifacts, activity,
  time
• How to sample?
• Fit with question or phenomenon
• Snow ball sampling or announce
• Stop when data become saturated.

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Sampling (3)

• Maximum variation sampling
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• Typical or deviant case sampling
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• Critical case sampling
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Sampling (4)

• Theoretical sampling
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• Confirming and disconfirming cases
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• Mixed sampling

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Data gathering

• How Participant observation, key informant
  interviews, depth interviewing, focus groups,
  field research, life history, ethnography,
  literature review, etc.
• Data video tapes, radio tapes, notes, scene,
  picture
• First hand records
• Second hand archives, documents

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Analysis

• Organizing style
• Template?????
• Editing????
• Immersion / crystallization????

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The dance of interpretation

• Dancer interpreters and texts
• How to dance?
• Describing
• Organizing/classify
• Connecting with case
• Corroborating/make more certain
• representing the account (audience and skills)
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Technical Fixes

• Purposive sampling
• Bias?Enhancing sample coverage
• Grounded theory
• Original theory ?Developing theory
• Multiple coding
• Inter-rater reliability, refine interpretation
• Triangulation
• Confirmation of internal validity, refine
  findings
• Respondent validation
• Confirmation of interpretations

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Quali. Different with Quanti.
Qualitative Quantitative
Social theory Action Structure
Methods Observation, interview Experiment, survey
Question What is X? (classification) How many Xs? (enumeration)
Reasoning Inductive Deductive
Sampling method Theoretical Statistical
Strength Validity Reliability
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Criteria of Traditional Science

• Internal validity
• The degree to which findings correctly map the
  phenomenon in question
• External validity
• Generalize
• Reliability
• Replicated or reproduced
• Objectivity
• Free from bias

Randomization Large sample size Standardized
measurement Statistical method Quantity
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Criticize

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Good Qualitative Research

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Thank you very much!!