FIELD: EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S LEVEL PAPER ON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH DESIGN
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Assessment 4 Context
Five Qualitative Methodologies
Ethnography
Ethnography is a descriptive research approach designed for in-depth investigation and description of cultures, cultural groups, large organizations and groupings, and their features. Ethnographers immerse themselves in the culture or organization they are studying, becoming a part of the culture in order to learn about it from the inside out. Consequently, this approach often requires longer timeframes for data collection, and ethnographers frequently return a number of times to the sites of their investigations to obtain more data. As a result, many doctoral learners avoid ethnographic studies because of the typically long time commitments. However, ethnography can be a fruitful approach, even in shorter periods, for understanding the customs, culture, belief systems, and implicit “rules” of organizations and large groups.
Ethnography is based on the anthropological tradition of research. Keep in mind that the culture being studied could be a corporate culture, such as that of Microsoft or a small start-up company; or the culture of a particular group of people operating in a specific social environment, such as that of a third-grade classroom among the students, teachers, teacher’s aides, and so on. An important aspect of this research approach is that the participants (culture) are studied in their natural habitat and social contexts. Individuals are not the unit of analysis for ethnography, although they may be sources of valuable data. Thus, qualitative research questions in social psychology and group psychology often are well-answered by ethnographic research.
Case Study
A case study is the in-depth study—using multiple methods and data sources—of a single case. Sometimes a number of cases are studied and reported together. The “case” in a case study is the object of study. A case study is an exploration of a “bounded system” over time. The phrase “bounded system” means that the target to be studied is easily distinguished for other instances of the same phenomenon; it has a clear boundary differentiating it from all others. Think of a case of measles (that is, one patient who has the measles), or a case of homicide (a single incident of murder, including the victim, the murderer, the police, the attorneys—anyone and anything relevant to the particular murder event). In those cases, the boundary is clear and it encircles all the information about the patient and his or her disease or the victim and the circumstances of the murder.
One could study a single case (in which a single instance is investigated in depth) or multiple cases (in which a number of instances of the target are studied and then compared with one another). For example, a single case study might investigate a single treatment program (the bounded system being that program and no other) or a new way of teaching reading in a school system (the bounded system being that particular school and those teachers and students using the new reading program). Or one could do a multiple case study of three different alcohol treatment programs, all cases of alcohol treatment, and compare them on many variables. In both instances, the boundary would encompass all the information, personnel, and contexts relevant to the subject.
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Case studies have roots in sociology (primarily the University of Chicago Department of Sociology from the early 1900s until 1935), in medicine (case study is a common way to present evidence of emerging illnesses or treatments before more focused studies can be done; for instance, Freud presented his new ideas about hysteria and his new ideas about treatment by means of detailed case studies), and in psychology (Piaget’s first findings of childhood cognitive development were presented as case studies of his own and others’ children). Program evaluations often are framed as case studies. When a subject is not well described in the scientific literature or it is newly emergent, descriptive case studies are often the best way to generate a lot of information about the case to base future and more tightly focused studies. It is because of the highly descriptive nature of the approach coupled with the fact that the subject is usually not previously well studied, that case studies seek numerous sources and types of information about the case, including its various contexts.
Grounded Theory
Grounded theory is a qualitative research approach that attempts to develop theories of understanding based on data from the real world. Grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1990; 1998) has its origins in symbolic interactionism, taking the perspective that reality is negotiated between people, always changing, and constantly evolving. The key word is theory, which in science means an explanatory statement or model based on research evidence. Unlike some other forms of qualitative inquiry, grounded theory attempts to go beyond rich description (which it also strives for) to an explanation of the phenomena of interest.
The second key word is grounded. This implies that the explanation is derived from the “ground,” the actual experiences, words, behaviors, and other data obtained from people directly involved or engaged in the topic. For example, if one wished to derive a grounded theory about the effects of childhood abuse on adult functioning, one would gather many kinds of data from persons who had grown up amid child abuse and would build the theory of how it affects adult development on the information obtained from those people. Another unique feature of the grounded theory is its tendency to “return” to the ground by taking preliminary insights back to the participants and asking them to further comment on and refine the researcher’s conclusions.
The primary tools of discovery are interviews and observations. However, grounded theory goes beyond the descriptive and interpretive goals and is aimed at building theories. The ultimate goal of this approach is to derive theories that are grounded in (based on) reality, which is grounded in the data collected from people actually involved in the issues under investigation. A grounded theory is one that is uncovered, developed, and conditionally confirmed through collecting and making sense of data related to the issue at hand. The hope is that such theories will lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon of interest and to ideas of exerting some control over the phenomenon. Although the grounded theory is designed to be a precise and rigorous process, creativity plays an important part in that process in the formulations of the data, to create a new order out of old. The use of literature also differs in the grounded theory approach. There is a recommendation against knowing the literature too well before using this approach because knowing the categories, classifications, and conclusions of previous researchers may constrain your creativity in finding new formulas.
Phenomenology
The key to understanding phenomenology lies in the phrase “lived experience.” Put most simply, phenomenology is the study of the lived experience of persons who are going through the phenomenon to be understood. By using the terms “lived experience” and “going through,”
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we put the focus squarely on exactly how a phenomenon reveals itself to the experiencing person in all its specificity and concreteness. A phenomenon can be anything that a person experiences, but phenomena (the plural) are defined precisely in their quality of being experienced by someone. A feeling, such as anger can be a phenomenon, but a phenomenological study of anger would focus on what it is like to be angry and to feel anger as an actual, lived experience. Similarly, being hired by a large corporation or being elected to office or losing a loved one in a car accident all are phenomena, but a phenomenological analysis focuses on how the people experiencing them actually experienced them—felt, thought about, perceived, observed, reflected upon them.
As a methodological approach, phenomenology is open to whatever may be significant to the understanding of a phenomenon. The person experiencing a phenomenon is asked to attend to it and then to describe it exactly as it appears in his or her consciousness, without prejudgment, bias, or any predetermined set or orientation. Likewise, the researcher takes great pains to reduce his or her own predetermined sets or orientations so that the reports of the participants can “reach” the researcher’s own consciousness with as little filtering as possible. This process of suspending one’s preconceptions about the phenomena under inquiry is a process often referred to in phenomenology as epoche (pronounced “eh-poh-kay”), from a Greek root meaning “to suspend” or (from another root) “to keep steady or hold steady.”
It means a conscious attempt to “reduce” the bias of preconceptions by continually setting aside preconceptions and looking anew at the things themselves. The founder of philosophical phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, used to say that the phenomenologist had to be “a perpetual beginner,” returning always “to the things themselves” (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 14). The “things” are the phenomena we are trying to understand. We know that any pure, unfiltered perception is impossible, so the “reduction” of the researcher’s biases is an ongoing and always-imperfect thing. In Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phrase, “The most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of a complete reduction” (1962, p. xiv).
The goals of the phenomenological method are as follows: The researcher seeks to describe the phenomena in rich detail, illuminating the lived experience of the participants mediated through their reports. Through those descriptions, the researcher aims at the apprehension (literally, the mental grasping) of the structure of the phenomenon as it appears in the consciousness of the participants. By bringing to light these structures of experiences, the research investigates the foundations (bases or origins) of the phenomenon-as-experienced, seeking finally to know the possible ways of perceiving all such phenomena (known as the “essence” of the phenomenon). Keep in mind that the term “phenomena” always implies the thing-as-experienced in the consciousness of the person who experiences. Consequently, phenomenology as such is not concerned with objective descriptions of “things-in-themselves,” without reference to the perceiver or knower. Thus, terms like “structure” and “essence” should not be interpreted as being about the external thing (phenomenon) but about the structure or essence of how the participants experience the external thing.
The task of the phenomenological researcher is to investigate the processes of intuition, reflection, and description with which the participants experience the phenomenon. Accordingly, phenomena are not manipulated but rather are permitted to reveal themselves. The substance of phenomenology consists of the data of experience and their meaning for the experiencing individual. Paradoxically, although psychological phenomenological research is certainly about “real” phenomena, always as experienced by people, there is no “subject-object split” in phenomenological research. Both are considered an integral part of any happening—there is the external world and its manifestations, which are manifested in the consciousness of the one
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who experiences. The proper subject matter of phenomenology is not consciousness alone but always consciousness-of-phenomena-being-experienced (Merleau-Ponty, 1962).
Heuristics (Heuristic Phenomenology)
According to Michael Patton (2002) heuristics (also called heuristic phenomenology) is a form of phenomenological inquiry that brings to the fore the personal experience and insights of the researcher along with those of participants. Heuristics is a research model that places special emphasis on knowing through the self, by becoming one with the topic and experiencing it as it exists in the world. Eric Craig (1978) defines heuristics in his work The Heart of the Teacher as: “A private discovery oriented approach to understanding how individuals experience themselves and their world” (p. 22). What has been said about phenomenology, in general, is applied to the heuristic approach as well, and now the researcher himself or herself becomes one of the participants. In most heuristics texts, the researcher and the participants are called “co- researchers.”
There are two focusing or narrowing elements of heuristic inquiry within the larger framework of phenomenology. First, the researcher must have personal experience with and an intense interest in the phenomenon under study and be willing to be a participant (co-researcher in his or her own study). Second, the other participants (co-researchers) must share an intensity of experience with the phenomenon.
Heuristic inquiry lends itself to single case designs in which the researcher is the only participant. However, in the general psychology specialization, single case designs are not allowed to provide the learner with a broader research experience involving live participants, and to sharpen the learner’s research skills with participants prior to graduation and the conferring of the doctoral degree.
Some heuristic research reports are written in the first person because of the intense involvement of the researcher. However, in the general psychology specialization, all dissertations must be written in the third person to conform with Capella University's requirements and standard scholarly requirements and to provide the learner with a full experience of the customary standards of research presentation.
The goals of heuristics are the same as those of phenomenological inquiry, with the addition of the involvement and illumination of the researcher’s experience.
References
Craig, E. (1978). The heart of the teacher. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms International.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and theory for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.