Qualitative Proposal & Analysis

Question 1

naturalistic approach

Answer 1

• aims to maintain fidelity to the real world
• stresses the importance of social reality in people’s perceptions of their environment
• emphasis on process and meaning

Question 2

why do qualitative research

Answer 2

• investigate little-known phenomena
• identify or discover categories of meaning
• generate hypotheses for future research

Question 3

participants in qualitative research

Answer 3

small sample
situated in real life contexts
obtained from a wide variety of sources
rich in detail

Question 5

selecting a sample

Answer 5

• not statistically representative
• tends to be purposive
• select people with a range of experiences

Question 6

specific sampling techniques

Answer 6

• maximum variation sampling
• theoretical sampling
• homogenous sampling
• sampling for typical cases
• sampling for extreme or deviant cases
• snowball/ chain sampling
• criterion sampling

Question 7

when do we stop sampling

Answer 7

• when we reach saturation
• theoretical analysis complete
• no new themes come up in data collection
• existing themese well understood

Question 8

strengths of interviews

Answer 8

• elicits personal reactions
• permits non-rational or inconsistent responses
• permits unanticipated responses
• data is often extremely detailed and rich

Question 9

limitations of interviews

Answer 9

• time-consuming
• may generate vast amounts of data to analyse
• impossible to generalise findings to wide population

Question 10

think aloud interviews

Answer 10

used to test questionnaires, websites, leaflets etc.

Question 11

types of written data

Answer 11

• unsolicited
• solicited
• pre-existing research data/ archive data

Question 12

unsolicited written data

Answer 12

research questions about public discourse/ social representations

Question 13

solicited written data

Answer 13

address subjective experience

Question 14

issues with archive data

Answer 14

• consent
• sampling
• between original data and research question

Question 15

issues with unsolicited data

Answer 15

• permission
• need to understand original context
  purpose of communication

Question 16

issues with solicited data

Answer 16

• clear instructions to participants
• how to encourage people to write ‘enough’

Question 17

written data strengths

Answer 17

• high ecological validity
• insight at socio-cultural level
• access dispered/ rare individuals
• answer sensitive questions without face-to-face contact
• can obtain prospective longitudinal data

Question 18

written data limitations

Answer 18

• participants may not write enough
• can be difficult to probe for more details
• data may not be rich/ detailed enough to sustain through qualitative analysis

Question 19

aims of focus groups

Answer 19

• elicit shared understanding of a topic
• examine the collective sense-making process
• explore how feelings, attitudes and beliefs are jointly constructed in a group situation

Question 20

what should you not use focus groups for?

Answer 20

• individual perspectives and experiences
• individual attitudes and opinions
• the range of attitudes that people hold about a particular topic

Question 21

strengths of focus groups

Answer 21

• can provide active demonstrations of which arguments and ideas on a topic are the most powerful in a group
• can provide rich and detailed data
• avoids direct ‘expert’ interviewing
• can produce more natural talk than in an interview situation

Question 22

limitations of focus groups

Answer 22

• can be difficult to arrange/ organise
• greater risk of distress to participants
• requires practice
• transcription is time-consuming

Question 23

issues with online methods

Answer 23

• data integrity
• online rapport and trust

Question 24

strengths of online methods

Answer 24

• good fit for researching online behaviours
• reflect cultural trends
• low cost
• naturalistic data
• offers anonymity

Question 25

limitations of online methods

Answer 25

• lack of nonverbal cues
• ethical challenges
• cannot make inferences beyond internet users
• cannot verify participants identities
• constraints of technology
• risks of technology

Question 26

steps of reflexive thematic analysis

Answer 26

• familiarising yourself with data
• generating initial codes
• searching for themes
• reviewing themes
• defining and naming themes
• producing the report