Doing Qualitative Research Online by Janet Salmons

This semester I am teaching a class called "Advanced Topics in Qualitative Research".  This is the first time we have offered this class in our new Ph.D. in Research Methods and Program Evaluation in Education in the UMass Lowell Graduate School of education. 


In the first part of the semester, I am mixing topics I have selected with the development of students' methodological topics (which they will be presenting later in the semester).  I identified topics that I thought were cutting edge, of interest to students, or I thought hadn't been fleshed out in the first qualitative research course they had taken with me. 


Our first text in the "selected by me" category was Janet Salmons book Doing Qualitative Research Online (Sage Publications, 2016).  I selected this because I felt the first semester of qualitative research had used the traditional approach focusing on face-to-face interactions, which doesn't really represent reality for anyone in today's digital world.  We read the text over two weeks, giving us time to digest the points. 


Most important thing to report first:  Everyone in the class liked the text.  It is well organized, informative, and clearly written.  There are great charts and tables throughout that illustrate the points being made, and students appreciated this component.  No one mentioned going to the online resources that are also available (I think they were more concerned with developing their own topics.)  Figure 2.1 was our all time favorite table:  Designing studies to generate new knowledge--I think I will see a lot more tables like this out of our group in the future. 


As  I mentioned in an earlier blog posting, I love Salmons formulation of data as "extant, elicited, and enacted".  I think that moves us up a level of generalization to create categories that are very useful for organizing ideas about types of data. 


Personally, I liked it that she didn't belabor the discussion of kinds of research.  I also like the "Discussion Questions and Exercises" at the conclusion of each chapter, where she gave students suggestions for looking at the products of research, comparing the end results and how people describe their methodological approach. 


One thing I noted that surprised me was that sampling was discussed in Part III, as if this would be considered after you have done the design and received institutional permission to move forward.  At my institution that discussion would have to occur prior to IRB approval.  I wondered if the difference is that located/geographical studies in a fixed place are sampled or approached differently than many online populations.  This may need more discussion in methodological circles. 


As a QDAS nerd, I was disappointed that there wasn't stronger discussion of the integration of these tools. Her references to further resources in this area could have been stronger. 


Don't let me forget to mention that I particularly liked the way she set up her appendix in the "Do you want to learn more about..." form.  Very effective and much less distanced than the usual annotated bibliography. 


Although the title of the book has the term "online" in it, I think this text would make a good cross-over text, that is, it could be used to teach qualitative research in its emerging hybrid form that intersects hybrid and online. 


So:  Thumbs up!  from the Fall 2016 course in Advanced Topics in Qualitative Research. 

Adding Qualitative Research to the Classic Research Design Course

This week I had so much fun at my institution, UMass Lowell!  I got to teach the qualitative research component of our classic research design course in the Graduate School of education.  I had 10 so-called research newbies in front of me, and it was my job to give them their first real taste of my passion--qualitative research. 


Why is this such a big deal, you ask?  Well, let me explain.  At my institution and at many others around the world, there is an introduction to research course that anchors all the other social science research training, which is supposed to give students a taste of all the possible flavors of research coming up in their doctoral program.  Most of these classes, however, are taught by people with deep roots in positivist perspectives, using textbooks that emphasize positive perspectives.  I am sorry if this sounds like over simplification to some, but that's what my experience has been.  Their interaction with qualitative research has been limited--and they tend to see it as affirming or instrumental, but not as a creative component in and of it own right, nor do they usually have a very complex view of the paradigmatic issues that burden methodological approaches. 


However, having launched the Research Methods and Program Evaluation in Education Ph.D. program, our little faculty has been meeting and discussing these issues with real openness...and the result was that my colleague who teaches our Introductory Research Course invited me in to teach the two weeks devoted specifically to qualitative research.  Last week was the first week of the two-week experiment.  


Selfishly I used it to introduce materials I am developing about the historical beginnings of qualitative research, the chronologies we use to describe its beginnings, and the plethora of research kinds that we now face about a century and a half since those first anthropologists and sociologists were beginning to take lay out the foundations of the field.  An interesting exercise I shared was this table of kinds of research taken from the indexes of four qualitative research textbooks on my shelf. 

Research Kinds In Qualitative Research:  J. Davidson    Derived from the Indexes of these texts. 

Patton, M. (2015).  Qualitative research and evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.).  Sage Publications.	Savin-Baden, M. & Major, C. (2013).  Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice.  Routledge:  New York.	Hays, D. & Singh, A. (2012).  Qualitative inquiry in clinical and educational settings.  The Guildford Press:  New York.	Punch, K. & Oancea, A. (2014) Introduction to Research methods in Education.  (2nd ed.) Sage Publications.
Action Research Anthropology Autoethnography Embodied Ethnography Case Studies Collaborative/Participatory Research Ethnography Education action research Empowerment Evaluation Ethnographic futures research Applied Ethnography (anthropology) Narrative Ethnography Organizational Ethnography Public Ethnography Virtual Ethnography Ethnomethodology Grounded Theory Hermeneutics Indigeneous Research Interactive Inquiry Mixed Methods Narrative Inquiry Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative inquiry Qualitative inquiry Symbolic Interactionism	Action research Critical/emancipatory action research Pragmatic action research Participatory action research Anthropology Arts-based case studies Arts-informed inquiry Autoethnography Case study Discourse analysis Feminist theory Democratic evaluation Duoethnography Ethnodrama Ethnography Autoethnography Grounded theory Hermeneutics Interpretivism Life course research Narrative research Naturalistic inquiry Participatory Action Research Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative research Symbolic interactionism	Action Research Participatory Action Research Anthropology Applied Research Autobiographical case study Autoethnography Biographical case study Case study                        Life Histories Collective case study Critical theory Ethnomethodology Dialectical hermeneutics Discourse analysis Ethnography Femininst research Grounded theory Hermeneutics Mixed methods Narrative analysis Narratology Symbolic Interaction	Action research Critical action research Participatory action research Anthropology Case studies Critical discourse analysis Discourse analysis Ethnography Grounded theory Constructivist grounded theory Mixed methids research Narrative analysis Naturalistic research Phenomenological Analysis Qualitative research Symbolic interactionism

Looks pretty daunting, right?  And this is not the sum total of kinds of research one could list--there are many more out there. 


My cry to the field is--isn't it about time that we started talking about the principles of qualitative research and started looking at these kinds of research as talking points in an ongoing conversation about those principles? 


Onward and upward--I can't wait for next week's class:  data collection and analysis and QDAS!

Emerging Scholars at UMass Lowell

View of University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the past two years, UMass Lowell has been engaged in a wonderful undergraduate research project called "Emerging Scholars".  Conceived of by the Center for Women and Work, Emerging Scholars are a hand-picked group, selected from our top undergraduates.  Each one is assigned to work with a researcher who has submitted an application.  The match is made...and the results are great.

The Sexting project is in its second year.  Andy Harris from the Criminial Justice Program and I are sharing the joys of working with this year's Emerging Scholar for our project--Deborah Paul.  Follow this link to see the three of us at the mid-year get together, where the Emerging Scholars share their progress with the various researchers and other campus visitors. 


Emerging Scholar Presentations December 2012

It is always very exciting to hear your own Emerging Scholar describe the semester's work, but also very interesting to hear about what everyone else is doing.  Deborah has taken on independent analysis of a cache of data from the project...and she quickly became an NVivo whiz.  She is definitely going places.  We are pleased that she was chosen as our Emerging Scholar for 2012-2013. 

Center for Women and Work at UMass Lowell: Another Great Holiday Fair

It was another great success--the annual holiday fair of the Center for Women and Work at UMass Lowell.  Thursday November 29 from 2-7 pm at the Inn and Conference Center--you had to be there or be square. 

For the second year, I was invited to serve as the official MC (translation: person who introduces musicians and urges everyone to shop more).  I know why I was asked--I have the right hat!  The Jester's hat!

And--here I am modeling the silent auction item I won--a crocheted piece by psychology professor Sarah Kuhn. 

This event has now become a holiday time feature on the campus--it celebrates the work of campus women, raises funds for the Center for Women and Work, and is a great time for all!  Don't miss next year's event. 

Urmitapa Dutta at UMass Lowell: Everyday Peace

UMass Lowell is pleased to welcome a new faculty member in the psychology department--Dr. Urmitapa Dutta.  She comes to us from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois.  Dr. Dutta brings a wealth of experience about the day-to-day possibilities of creating peace in places where violence has become a normalized event. 

This fall I was lucky to have her as a speaker in my doctoral course on qualitative research methods.  She discussed her dissertation work in northern India where she worked with young adults using a blend of critical ethnography and participatory action research.

Spring 2013 she will be offering a very interesting class that will engage students in these same methods.

 

This is a not-to-be-missed experience!  

QRN Brown Bag December 13: Steve Tello and Yi Yang

Image via WikipediaTello and Yang presented the last Qualitative Resarch Network Brown Bag on the UMass-Lowell campus for the Fall 2011 semester.  The topic "How Nascent Entrepreneurs Leverage Networks in a University Network" drew a large audience from many corners of campus. 

The two are working with cases drawn from a university incubator for medical devices.  They found significant distinctions among the case examples, particularly between entrepreneurs who had prior experience with full product development processes and those who did not. 

What I particularly enjoyed in their presentation is their discussion of their process as qualitative researchers.  The description of how submitting to a presentation and getting feedback helped them to hone in on their analysis issues was very helpful. 

As in any field, even when a methodology is accepted (and in business qualitative research is a newer acquisition) each reader will come with their own pre-conceptions of that methodology.  We discussed the ways this affects the journal review process.

I can't wait to see where they will go next with this research.  I am sure there is going to be more to come.

Speaking of more to come...the Qualitative Research Network also has more to come in the next semester.  Plans are afoot for another great semester.