Qualitative Research Project & Roundtable Presentations
How does this assignment help you become a qualitative researcher?
• In-depth interviewing is the most common form of qualitative research and a valuable technique with which sociologists study the subjective reality of groups within society.
This is your opportunity to hone your qualitative research skills through the use of the In-Depth Interview. The assignment will be easier to complete if you record your interviews. Steps to take for success:
1. Identify a topic of interest that would be worth exploring using qualitative methods based upon your original group interest and literature review (as determined in Week One). Remember, subjective reality is where your focus should be
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Identify five to ten points that are of interest in studying this topic and write two or three open-ended questions for each point. You will not use all of these questions; however, it is a good exercise to think about different ways to ask questions. To follow up on the example noted above, I would ask about their previous participation in other political groups, their attitudes about workers' rights, their personal sense of empowerment, and their ties to this topic (among other things).
3. Locate a competent informant, who has knowledge of the topic you are investigating and will consent to an interview (and tape recording). Make sure to explain to the informant that 1) this is for a class, and 2) his or her identity will be kept confidential. Also explain that he or she is free to decline any question that you ask.
4. Set a date and location for the interview; it should be private and convenient for your informant. Make sure to have extra cassettes and batteries (or enough power in your iphone). Make sure to look over your topics and questions. Keep a copy of the interview outline with you during the interview, so you can check off topics as the informant discusses them. (Often times, the informant will touch on some of your topics without having to ask direct questions. In such cases, you will annoy your informant if you ask the same question again; instead, try to probe for more
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What similarities did you find amongst the five transcripts? Could you create a typology, or a number of different themes that flow through the different transcripts? If so, support these findings with the use of direct quotes from the transcripts. Attempt to limit yourself to no more than four themes (and less is acceptable). Be sure to address the minority points of view uncovered from your interviews.
Conclusion
The paper should contain a conclusion (one or two paragraphs maximum) where you connect your findings with the general area of inquiry and address possible implications for the specific subfield of research in sociology. What is the big picture here? What does this kind of research add to your social issue of interest? Think big!
Transcript
The transcript of your interview will be evaluated based upon its breadth and depth. Did you create rapport with your interviewee and thereby encourage a deep description of the topic? In addition, were you able to encompass every aspect of the interviewee's experience. Both quality and quantity is important in bringing out the rich nature of the interviewee's
The method I chose for this analysis is in-depth interview. This ethnographic method will be best because it allows me to understand an
When you interview someone, you want to make sure they are at ease and they might be more cooperating than if you go straight into the questions you need answered to find the suspect. The first thing you do is to introduce yourself and ask questions about their family and their interest so when you go to ask the important, they will provide you with the answers you need.
Qualitative research involves the studied use and collection of variety of empirical materials-case study; personal experience; introspection; life story; interview; artifacts; cultural texts and productions; observational, historical, interactional, and visual text - that describe routine and problematic moments and meaning in individuals’ life.
How will participants be debriefed (written or oral)? If they will not be debriefed, give reasons. Please attach the written debrief or transcript for the oral debrief. This can be particularly important if covert or deceptive research methods are used.
The process of research required an approach to interviewing, mainly the necessity to plan and conduct a narrative interview, which can be defined by an interaction or dialogue with one or more individuals in order to build a narration of their lives within a certain environment. (Soler, 2013)
The qualitative method provides outcomes, which typically are detailed and very specific for my research. More so, it offers many ideas and philosophies to tell about my research. For instance, it helps me see how others feel and respond to a qualitative question. However, it does not allow me to express the amount of people who thinks, feels, and responds the same; due to coding. When I select my audience to conduct my research, I will use a small number of people from a specific targeted audience who have common traits. I will ask open ended question to convey a free interview, so the participants can participate in a response. However, I will alter my discussion to guide the question to ensure the understanding of the question is being understood.
As it pertains to the data analysis, the researcher used the raw verbatim transcripts of each interview. The transcripts are marked for similar passages of text with a code so that they could be retrieved easily
For example, if you are meeting with faculty with the purpose of learning about academic dishonesty, traditional interview questions might include, “Have you ever witness academic dishonesty?” or, “Do you know anyone who has been caught cheating on an exam?” A qualitative interview question could include queries such as, “Tell me what you know about academic dishonesty,” or, “How would you describe academic dishonesty?” This approach allows for a more expansive
The techniques that will be used to conduct key informant in the community includes face to face interviews and telephone interviews.
Executive Summary This guide to using qualitative research methodology is designed to help you think about all the steps you need to take to ensure that you produce a good quality piece of work. The guide starts by telling you what qualitative methodology is and when to use it in the field (understand people’s belief system, perspectives, experiences). It also flags the most important ethical issues that you will encounter (consent and confidentiality). The second part of the guide tackles how you can concretely develop qualitative research designs; starting from clearly
The article titled learning to interview in the social sciences makes a valid point that as interviewers we can never ensure what will happen during an interview. To some degree interviewing for the social sciences and the purpose of research resembles clinical intake interviews. Both processes are in fact “reality constructing, meaning-making occasions”. In my opinion the qualitative interview while it may develop a different ebb and flow than research specific qualitative interview, as they tend to have more targeted overall research questions, they both have the same aim in mind; to collect, interpret, and analysis “data” on some level. The findings obtained by the researchers in this study while valid they are not necessarily inclusive
The purpose in conducting an interview is to gather information that may assist, in “obtain valuable facts; eliminating the innocent; identify the guilty; and obtain a confession for what happened in an incident (Swanson, et at. Pg. 124,2011). An interview is a conversation with a certain goal in mind, which does not need a long list of standardized questions (Gordon & Fleisher, 2010). Conducting interviews for one case is time consuming. This is due to the
In social science research, research methods are an essential part of any project because they determine its validity, reliability and success. For qualitative researchers, interviewing is the most widely employed means for generating information (Holstein & Gubrium, 2004). It is claimed by Cohen (et al., 2007) that interviewing is valuable because it not only reports detailed views of interviewees, but also enables participants to speak in their own voice and express their own feelings and experiences (Berg, 2007). However, qualitative methods, especially interviewing, differ from quantitative approaches that many practical and ethical issues might arise in the process of interviews. Although the literature provides words of advice and caution on conducting qualitative interviews, only engaging in the interview could make people realize they made mistakes that limited the voice of their participants in favor of their own. In this article, I will describe the successes and barriers that arose upon reflection of my initial interviewing experience. As a novice, my analysis will focus more on the difficulties and mistakes because this might be more insightful and helpful to my development.
From my past interviews, I have learned that carrying qualitative research with the approach of informal conversations is the most helpful method. This worked perfectly for me because apart from my questions on topic of interest I relied on most of participant’s responses as the interaction drove me towards asking many follow-up questions. Also I observed my participant felt comfortable with informal interaction. For example, for the question “What kind of motivation did you get from your family side?” She comfortably shared the bad personal experiences she had with her husband like the idea of getting divorce.
Thus, qualitative interviewing is centered on the idea that participant perspectives and opinions are meaningful (Brayda & Boyce, 2014). Moreover, qualitative interviewing enabled the researcher to gain a deeper understanding of concepts that are not easily discernable, such as intention and feelings (Brayda & Boyce, 2014). This required that the researcher listened carefully to participant responses to be able to guide the discussion and ensure that relevant topics were discussed. It was also relevantt for the researcher to listen closely to be able to ask relevant follow-up question to solicit a deeper understanding of participant beliefs (Dempsey, Dowling, Larkin, & Murphy, 2016).