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nin, 2007; Creswell, 2013; Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Knowles & Cole, 2007). When determining the specific type of qualitative study for your investigation, it is helpful to examine numerous sources of literature in order to sort out the nuances in justifying your particular selection.

Summary In this chapter we briefly discussed six types of qualitative research. These were chosen from among a number of types of qualitative research because they are commonly found in social sciences and applied fields of practice. Figure 2.1 offers a summary of the types of qualitative research discussed in this chapter. A basic qualitative study is the most common form and has as its goal understanding how people make sense of their experiences. Data are collected through interviews, observations, and documents and are analyzed inductively to address the research question posed.

Figure 2.1 Types of Qualitative Research

The other types of qualitative research discussed in this chapter share exactly the same characteristics of a basic qualitative study, which is why we placed the basic qualitative study in the center of Figure 2.1. However, although each of the other types shares these characteristics, each also has an added dimension. A phenomenological study is interested in the essence or underlying structure of a phenomenon; ethnography focuses on a sociocultural interpretation; grounded theory strives to build a substantive theory, one “grounded” in the data collected; narrative analysis uses people's stories to understand experience; and a qualitative case study is an in-depth analysis of a bounded system.

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CHAPTER THREE

EXPANDING THE QUALITATIVE PARADIGM

MIXED METHODS, ACTION, CRITICAL, AND ARTS BASED RESEARCH Imagine that you are interested in community development in your local neighborhood, and you need some information about the community at the same time that you are hoping to increase community involvement. You are interested in designing a type of research project to facilitate this process. In the last chapter we discussed six of the most common types of qualitative research, but none of them really will help you get all the information you need or will necessarily help to facilitate community involvement. There are other types of research designs that could help with this, that are either fully qualitative or have a strong qualitative component. In this chapter, we discuss several approaches to research that have become increasingly popular in the last few years.

We begin by discussing mixed methods approaches (that have both quantitative and qualitative components) and then move on to a discussion of action research and its varieties. Third, we discuss openly ideological forms of critical qualitative research (informed by neo-Marxist, critical, feminist, queer, dis/ability, critical race theory, or postmodern/poststructural/postcolonial theoretical frames that explicitly attempt to analyze and challenge power relations). Finally, we end with a brief discussion of arts based approaches to research. While these types of research with qualitative components are not quite as common as those discussed in the last chapter, they have become increasingly more popular, and many recent dissertations and journal articles make use of such approaches; in fact, some journals are devoted to these approaches to research. No current text on qualitative research would be complete without a consideration of these research methodologies.

Mixed Methods Research One approach to developing a study about community development in your neighborhood —in which you would gather information and, ideally, facilitate community involvement—is to conduct a mixed methods research study. You might begin by developing a quantitative survey exploring people's attitudes and interests, their involvement in community issues, and what they are most concerned about, as well as including the usual demographic queries. This would give you some important general information, and you might be able to explore statistically significant differences in concerns and involvement based on gender, race, or economic status. But such a survey wouldn't tell you anything about how those who are most interested in being involved in the community perceive how to get

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things done or to facilitate its development. Hence you might choose to also include a qualitative component whereby you interview a certain subset of survey respondents based on purposeful criteria. You might do individual interviews simply to gather such information, or focus group interviews if you were also interested in engaging people in interaction. This is one example of a mixed methods research study.

There are different ways to discuss mixed methods research. Creswell (2015) highlights that it can be discussed from a philosophical stance, “in which epistemology and other philosophical assumptions take center stage. It can also be presented as a methodology, that is, as a research process originating from a broad philosophy and extending to its interpretation and dissemination” (p. 1). He acknowledges that different authors discuss mixed methods in different ways, but his own stance is to look at it as a method. As such, he defines mixed methods research as:

an approach to research in the social, behavioral, and health sciences in which the investigator gathers both quantitative (closed-ended) and qualitative (open-ended) data, integrates the two and then draws interpretations based on the combined strengths of both sets of data to understand research problems. (Creswell, 2015, p. 2)

Our purpose here in this introductory book on qualitative research is primarily to discuss the use of mixed methods research for its qualitative components, and hence as a method in the way that Creswell (2015) describes. We first provide a brief history of the development of mixed methods approaches and then discuss the types of mixed methods designs.

A Brief History of Mixed Methods Research Mixed methods approaches to research have developed and been accepted over time. Creswell and Plano Clark (2011) discuss the formative period as the late 1960s and early 1970s, when there began to be a combination of quantitative surveys and interviews to answer research questions.

They term the next stage, in the later 1970s and 1980s, as the paradigm debate period. These debates focused on the differences in epistemological assumptions of qualitative and quantitative research. As was discussed in Chapter One, qualitative research is generally based on the assumption that “reality” is constructed by individuals, in light of their experiences; hence, in this view, there is not one reality but many realities. By contrast, some argue that the positivist underpinning of quantitative research is based on a belief that there is one reality that can be measured. Hence during this debate period (and currently still for some scholars), there were the purists, who argue that quantitative and qualitative methods should not be combined because they have incompatible epistemological underpinnings. Others counterargue that it is possible to conduct a quantitative study exploring general trends and tendencies without fully embracing a positivist worldview. These situationalists “adapt their methods to the situation,” whereas “pragmatists believe that multiple paradigms can be used to address research problems” (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011, p. 26).

The next period, during the 1990s, resulted in procedural developments in fleshing out different types of mixed methods approaches to research, whereas the more recent period, from roughly 2000 to the time of this writing, Creswell and Plano Clark (2011) term “the advocacy and expansion period.” This period has been characterized by not only an

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expansion of possibilities of mixed methods approaches but also a perception of such approaches as a methodology in their own right. This more recent period has resulted in the appearance of handbooks and journals devoted to mixed methods research. Further, funding sources have provided guidelines for doing mixed methods research, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) taking the lead in 1999. The National Science Foundation in 2003 conducted a workshop on qualitative research methods and touted the benefits of a mixed methods approach (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2011), and since then numerous funding sources call for mixed methods research proposals.

Types of Mixed Methods Research There are many types of mixed methods research. Creswell (2015) discusses three primary designs: a convergent design, an explanatory sequential design, and an exploratory sequential design. In a convergent design, both the qualitative and quantitative data are collected more or less simultaneously; both data sets are analyzed and the results are compared. For example, Kerrigan (2014) made use of a “convergent parallel mixed method case study” (p. 341) of four different community colleges (each of which served as a “case”) to explore the relationship of organizational capacity and the use of data-driven decision making. In doing so she drew largely on the leadership literature and the literature on forms of capital. First, she used purposeful criteria to select the four cases. Next, she invited all administrators at the director level and above and selected faculty (based on certain criteria) to fill out a quantitative survey. During the same period she also interviewed a select group of faculty and administrators about their data-driven decision making. She analyzed both sets of data within each case and across cases, and found that “community colleges' organizational capacity for data-driven decision-making is a function of human and social capital, but not physical capital” (p. 346), with physical capital being access to and an understanding of technology. This is an example not only of a convergent design study but also of a mixed methods comparative case study.

In what Creswell (2015) refers to as the explanatory sequential design, the quantitative data are collected first; the collection of the qualitative data follows, generally with the purpose of explaining the results or a particular part of the findings in more depth. One example is Tisdell, Taylor, and Sprow Forté's (2013) mixed methods study examining the teaching beliefs and pedagogical practices of 245 financial literacy educators and how they attempt to educate about financial matters in working class and cultural communities. They first conducted a quantitative survey. Then interviews were conducted with 15 of those respondents who indicated high attention to cultural issues on the survey; the interviews focused on what they actually did in practice. Hence the quantitative data provided information about what the beliefs and espoused educational practices of financial literacy educators were, in general, including their level of attention to cultural issues. But the qualitative interviews provided cultural stories and examples of how these beliefs, specifically about cultural issues, played out in their pedagogy.

In the exploratory mixed methods research design (Creswell, 2015), the qualitative data are collected first, and then a survey is created based on an analysis of the qualitative data. One generally employs this method of research when little is known about a particular population or subject, and the qualitative data are used to explore and define the topic in order to create a survey instrument to gather data from a larger sample. An example is Jodi Jarecke's (2011) dissertation study of third-year medical students' perceptions of

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teacher-learner relationships in the clinical environment and how they relate to students' perceptions of teaching and learning in their own future role as educators. (The third year is typically when medical students move from the classroom to the clinic.) While there had been some studies of third-year medical students, there was none about faculty-student relationships. Hence Jarecke initially interviewed thirteen students in their third year and then developed a survey, based on issues and themes that were raised during the interviews, that was distributed to all third-year students at a single institution. She found that relationships were affected by contextual factors, relating to time, the clinical hierarchy, and the particular clinical rotation content area. Further, faculty-student relationships were extremely important in determining students' specialty area.

Often one form of data in a mixed methods study is more primary than another (Plano Clark et al., 2013). For example using the topic posed at the beginning of this chapter, we could design the community development study of a local neighborhood predominantly as a qualitative case study, in which we primarily conduct observations, analyze documents, and interview neighborhood residents. In the middle of the project it might appear that a quantitative survey with a broader group of participants might yield some important further data. So what began as a qualitative case study becomes a qualitative mixed method case study, but the qualitative data remains primary. In this scenario the quantitative component is nested within the design of what is predominantly a qualitative case study design. Plano Clark et al. (2013) refer to these as embedded designs, defined as:

having an unequal priority in terms of the relative importance of the quantitative and qualitative components for addressing the study's research questions. Researchers choose an embedded approach when their research questions include primary and secondary questions, where one question (e.g., the primary question) calls for a quantitative approach and the other question (e.g., the secondary question) calls for a qualitative approach. (p. 223)

Given that this book is primarily about qualitative research methods, most of the mixed methods studies we refer to here in this chapter and use as examples are embedded designs in which the quantitative components are nested within primarily qualitative designs. Our point here is to discuss the ways in which researchers have used qualitative and quantitative components together to yield a richer understanding of the subject under study. For further information on mixed methods research, we recommend readers to any of the excellent resources that have been cited here.

Action Research Action research is a form of practitioner research. It not only seeks to understand how participants make meaning or interpret a particular phenomenon or problem in their workplace, community, or practice, but it also usually seeks to engage participants at some level in the process in order to solve a practical problem. Social workers, teachers, and health professionals often engage in action research to improve their practice (Stringer, 2014). For example, a teacher might begin to wonder whether or not a particular intervention will improve the math skills of her students. She might develop an intervention strategy and study its effects over time, simultaneously engaging students in the process.

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Practitioners also engage in action research in organizations, for social or community development, and for social change. The research design emerges over time, as one engages with the participants, and together researcher and participants decide on next steps in working toward coming up with solutions to the problem. In considering an example, let's return to the study posed at this chapter's opening about community development in your local neighborhood, at the same time that you are hoping to increase community involvement. You could easily design such a study through an action research methodology. What might such a study look like?

You could begin by gathering six key leaders in the community and conducting a focus group interview to explore what these leaders see as key issues in the community and how they think the community might work together to facilitate its own development. You would likely try to engage these key leaders as co-researchers to help design the next phase of study and to discuss what kinds of data need to be collected in the community. As a researcher and with the leaders' permission, you would audiotape this interaction and transcribe and analyze it as data. Imagine that during this opening focus group interview these leaders decide that the next step should be for them to conduct interviews with community members; they do so, and then all of you reconvene to analyze some of what was found so far. In the next stage, together you might decide to do a survey to get some more large-scale quantitative data about the community. Imagine that through the interviews and the survey you find that one thing that people seem to emphasize is the need to engage the youth of the neighborhood in positive change for the community; a few people suggest a community art project. So after figuring out how to find the money to fund such a project, one subgroup decides to engage a community artist to work with youth to create a series of community murals. This subgroup then studies the process of engaging youth in this mural creation.

The point here is that in action research studies, the research design continues to unfold as researcher and participants collect and analyze data and make decisions for the next phase of the study. Lead researchers work with participants as co-researchers at every phase of the study.

Principles of Action Research Action research as a theory and approach to research began to develop in the 1940s out of psychologist Kurt Lewin's work on group relations. While Lewin wasn't necessarily the first to use action research—people have been informally doing action research since the dawn of time—“he was the first to develop a theory of action research that made it a respectable form of research in the social sciences” (Herr & Anderson, 2015, p. 12). Since the time Lewin developed the theory, action research has been used in many different situations with many different configurations to solve practical problems; indeed, that is its purpose. There are different types of action research, but all forms of it share several principles. Herr and Anderson's (2015) explanation of action research is a useful starting point for examining some of these principles: “Action research is oriented toward some action or cycle of actions that organizational or community members have taken, are taking, or wish to take to address a particular problematic situation” (p. 4).

A first principle, then, of action research is that it focuses on a “problematic situation” in practice. Hence its purpose is to either solve this practical problem or at least to find a way

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to further enhance what is already positive in a practice situation; it is always focused on the improvement of practice.

A second principle of action research is that the design of the study is emergent; as Herr and Anderson (2015) state, it is “oriented toward some action or cycle of actions” (p. 4) in which researchers and participants engage to improve practice. Hence the design of an action research study typically unfolds while the study is in process through a spiral cycle of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting (Kuhne & Quigley, 1997). The researcher(s) initially plan what they are going to do as a first step; in the next phase they act or implement what they have initially planned; in the third phase they observe what happened as a result of the action; and in the fourth phase they reflect on what they will do next as a result of the data they have collected and analyzed in this first cycle. Typically the reflection phase becomes the next planning phase. Usually this reflective phase also engages the participants as co-researchers in the next steps for the study.

A third principle of action research is that, to at least some extent, researchers engage participants as co-investigators. Action research is generally not done on participants; it is done with participants. This is why Herr and Anderson (2015) emphasize that action research is about engaging in action that “organizational or community members have taken, are taking, or wish to take” (p. 4) to change some aspect of their situation. The degree to which participants act as co-investigators varies in action research projects, and they can also be more involved in some phases than in others. Often participants are not that interested in writing up the study, for example. Further, the setting might dictate to some degree the extent to which participants can act fully as co-researchers. However, one key to the success of an action research project is the extent to which there is participant buy-in and active participation. As Stringer (2014) notes, “active participation is the key to feelings of ownership that motivate people to invest their time and energy to help shape the nature and quality of the acts, activities and behaviors in which they engage” (p. 31). If one wants to make something happen in a community, or a workplace, or in an area of professional practice, one key to doing so is participants' active participation.

A fourth principle of action research is that the degree to which the lead researcher (the one who is eventually responsible for the study) is an insider or outsider to the community under study makes a difference and must be a consideration in any action research study (Herr & Anderson, 2015). One can conduct an action research study as an insider to an organization, or as an outsider, or some configuration of the two that may emerge over time. One could be a complete insider; teacher researchers, for example, typically conduct research with students in their own classes to improve some aspect of their teaching. They are complete insiders both to the school and to their own classroom. One could also be a collaborative researcher with a teacher doing a similar study. For example, a researcher from a university might engage with a teacher or group of teachers as co- researchers to engage in a certain approach to literacy. So if the university researcher were an outsider, this scenario represents an outsider collaborating with an insider. In our community development study example, if you are a member of the community you are an insider, but you might not necessarily be a leader in the community at the beginning of the study, and at the outset you may be a sort of marginal insider—you live in the community but may have not had a significant involvement with the community. However, you are an insider taking on a lead role as a researcher with other community members to get the study done and to make something happen in the community, and you may

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become a more important part of a group of community leaders in the process. If one is a complete outsider to an organization, it is important to try to collaborate with at least one insider in some way in order to be able to engage more authentically with participants who have a vested interest in improving their practice. No matter what stance one takes as a researcher, it is important to remember this: “action research seeks to develop and maintain social and interpersonal interactions that are nonexploitive and enhance the social and emotional lives of all people who participate” (Stringer, 2014, p. 23).

A final principle of action research is that researchers and co-investigators collect and analyze multiple forms of data in a systematic way as the research process unfolds. Most action research studies make use of only qualitative data collection methods. However, as we have seen, participants as co-researchers could also decide they want to conduct a quantitative survey as part of their data collection methods, though it is rare in action research studies that participants choose to do so. What all qualitative action research studies have in common is that they make use of only qualitative data collection methods, such as interviews, focus groups, observations, and analysis of documents or artifacts. Many qualitative action research studies begin with in-depth interviews of participants as part of the planning process and then engage participants as co-researchers in a problem- solving process, and often conclude with individual or focus group interviews reflecting on the process. Stuckey (2009), for example, conducted an action research study of participants with Type 1 diabetes and the role of creative expression as they made further meaning of their diabetes. She conducted individual interviews, then engaged the participants in a series of group creative expression activities of their own choosing, and at the end of the process conducted individual interviews.

In sum, there are distinct principles of action research that hinge on making something happen, that focus on solving real problems in practice, and that engage participants, at least to some extent, so that the research meets their needs. Most action research studies are qualitative action research studies, since most collect only qualitative forms of data; however, as we have seen, it is possible to include a quantitative component in an action research study.

Types of Action Research There are many types of action research that are variously named: teacher research, collaborative action research, cooperative inquiry, appreciative inquiry, critical action research, feminist action research, and participatory action research (Herr & Anderson, 2015). There are some distinctions among these types, but most of the differences can be accounted for in the theoretical framework that informs the action research study, as well as the degree to which participants are involved in the overall design and implementation of the study.

In reviewing some of the developments of action research and its varieties, Kemmis, McTaggert, and Nixon (2014) distinguish the types of action research in light of Habermas's three types of knowledge:

1. Technical action research guided by an interest in improving control over outcomes;

2. Practical action research guided by an interest in educating or enlightening practitioners so they can act more wisely and prudently;

3. Critical action research guided by an interest in emancipating people and groups from irrationality, unsustainability and injustice. (p. 14)

This is a useful framework for considering some of the main differences in the types of action research.

While it is certainly possible to do a technical action research project—perhaps an intervention strategy for teaching math with the sole purpose of improving standardized test scores—such action research projects are clearly unusual. Most action research projects fall into what Kemmis et al. (2014) refer to as either “practical action research” or “critical action research.”

Teachers and professors often conduct qualitative action research studies in their own classrooms to improve their practice. These are most often examples of what Kemmis et al. (2014) refer to as “practical action research” studies. In the 1990s, such forms of action research were often referred to as “teacher research” or “teacher action research”; now they are more often called “practitioner inquiry” or “collaborative action research” (Cochran- Smith & Lytle, 2009). The point of teacher action research is the improvement of teaching practice at the same time that the teacher-researcher develops into more of a reflective practitioner and creates new knowledge about and with her or his students. Such teacher action research projects typically emerge as teachers become curious about or have “puzzling moments” in their practice (Ballenger, 2009, p. 1). As a result of such puzzling moments, a teacher might begin to implement a new strategy or method of teaching by making use of the plan-act-observe-reflect cycle to implement change. Some teachers do so by partnering with university researchers, and others do so on their own or with other teacher groups. In these forms of action research, there is generally less of an emphasis on engaging K–12 students directly as co-researchers, although teachers solicit their input; rather, the emphasis is more on the voice of collaborative teacher groups or on the unfolding knowledge and professional development in the teacher's practice.

Other forms of practical action research are focused more on organizational change, sometimes on behalf of a particular subgroup within an organization. Banerjee (2013), for example, conducted an action research dissertation study of early career scientists to develop leadership within their organization. She herself did the research as an insider to the organization; as such she was aware that early career scientists within the organization often feel isolated, and her study developed partly to ameliorate this need as well as to develop their leadership. Two different action research teams, made up of these early career scientists and their mentors, met monthly over a two-year period. In this case she was looking for these scientists to get involved in continuing to design the project (a co-researcher role) even as they engaged in a leadership development project. As the researcher, she took responsibility for convening the groups and supporting the process (and writing up the report), but the participants determined their own projects. She found that they developed adaptive leadership capabilities to get their projects done, which was supported by the learning culture of the group itself.

Another player on the action research stage, particularly in education and other applied fields of practice, is appreciative inquiry (AI), which emerged from the field of organizational development. Some would argue that AI differs from action research in that it does not focus on solving a problem in practice per se. According to Cooperrider, Whitney, and Stavros (2008), its focus is more on what is positive in an organization and on initiating interventions by highlighting the positive, according to the 4D (discovery, dream, design, and destiny) model. In particular, they state: “AI interventions focus on the speed of imagination and innovation instead of negative, critical, and spiraling diagnoses commonly used in organizations. The discovery, dream, design, and destiny model links the energy of the positive core to change never thought possible” (p. 3). AI studies are often done in health care organizations. For example, Richer, Ritchie, and Marchionni (2009) conducted an AI study with health care workers to discover and implement innovative ideas related to cancer care. Later, this same group of researchers conducted a critical literature review analyzing studies that have used AI in health care settings (Richer, Ritchie, & Marchionni, 2010). While AI does focus on what is positive in organizations as opposed to what is problematic, given that it is process oriented and initiates a change process, we consider it a form of what Kemmis et al. (2014) call “practical action research.”

There is a wide body of literature that discusses what Kemmis et al. (2014) refer to as “critical action research.” Critical action research studies are specifically about attempting to challenge power relations based on societal structures of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, or religion. From a theoretical perspective, such research studies are informed by critical theory or pedagogy, feminist theory, critical race theory, or other theoretical orientations that are specifically focused on challenging power relations. Some critical action research studies are also participatory action research studies, in which the participants in the study act to a great degree as co-researchers. In other critical action research studies, there are more limitations on the extent to which participants can act as co-researchers. For example, in most formal education settings there are some limitations on the extent to which students can be involved in determining curriculum or their final (graded) evaluation in the course. But in critical action research studies, teachers typically work with students so that they can have some say and control over what they are learning.

Siha's (2014) critical action research study serves as an example. Siha, a community college writing professor, conducted a critical action research study making use of critical pedagogy in his writing composition class, based on the thinking of Paulo Freire (Horton & Freire, 1990). He wanted his students to begin to write about things that they cared about and that mattered in their lives, as they learned about different types of writing—the kind of writing that was expected by an academic culture that requires “standard English” versus the kind of language that they might engage in at home or on the street. In his teaching, he emphasized that one form of language use or writing is not necessarily “better” than another; rather, they needed to know which type to use in which setting, and in the community college writing setting or in any formal writing, they generally had to make use of the standards of writing and language determined by the “power culture.” In emphasizing this, he was trying to highlight to some degree that writing and language “standards” are determined by those who are part of the hegemonic culture, and these

standards are not better or worse than their home language; they just need to know which to use in which setting.

As part of the planning phase, he engaged participants in an initial educational narrative writing assignment in which they highlighted the kinds of writing and topics in which they were interested. After analyzing these papers as documents and as part of the group planning process, he and the student participants then opted to make use of smaller writing groups as a critical pedagogy technique to use for feedback related to a series of five different types of writing assignments. Students learned to question assumptions and analyze power issues in relation to writing and language, and they engaged in processes that helped them become more involved in their education and learn to build better writing skills in the process. He and each of the students analyzed the writing, and at the end of the study Siha conducted individual interviews with students. This is an example of a critical action research study, in which students participated to some degree as active participants and had a say in determining the direction of writing assignments, but not to the same degree that they might in a participatory action research study.

Practitioners and community members sometimes take on an action researcher role and conduct participatory action research (PAR) studies in their own communities to specifically challenge power relations and initiate change in their communities. Our proposed community development study, described earlier as an action research project, could easily be considered a PAR study. In almost all PAR studies, such researchers are either insiders of the communities where they are conducting such studies or are specifically asked by a community to help them engage in a PAR study. Kemmis et al. (2014) highlight that in critical PAR studies, participants are “profoundly interested” in their practices “and in whether the conditions under which they practice are appropriate” (p. 6). Hence it is easy to involve such participants in a PAR study; in fact, it is usually their idea, and they initiate the study specifically to engage with others to make those conditions better. Kemmis et al. (2014) provide numerous examples of critical PAR studies in their work.

Critical PAR studies can affect and transform people from both an individual and a societal perspective. Pyrch (2007) argues that PAR helps people to move beyond fear—or in spite of fear—to take action, and that taking control of fear is liberating in itself. He describes his own journey of doing so in much of his work in Canada and then discusses the connection between PAR and popular education as adult education, noting: “For me, the community development concept is a combination of adult learning and social action for the purpose of educating people for collective cooperative enterprises for local control of local affairs” (p. 208). Many people either do not believe that they can join with others to exercise control of local affairs or are too afraid to even think they can. Moving beyond that fear, that lack of awareness, or both is part of what PAR is about. This too can sometimes have policy implications. Carney, Dundon, and Ní Léime (2012), for example, describe how their PAR study in Ireland with community activist groups affected policy decisions as people moved beyond fear. Indeed, this is ultimately the purpose of PAR studies: to engage people in taking action on their own behalf as part of their own communities.

In sum, there are many types of action research studies. Most such studies fall into what Kemmis et al. (2014) refer to as “practical action research” or “critical action research”

studies. In addition, most make use of only qualitative data collection methods; though occasionally some action researchers or collaborative teams will opt to collect some forms of quantitative data, this is quite unusual in action research studies. While all action research studies attempt to engage participants to meet their own needs and interests, the extent to which participants actually become co-researchers varies with the type of action research study and the stage of the study. Participatory action research studies most fully engage participants as co-researchers. As we have seen, both critical and participatory action research studies are intended to challenge structured power relations such as those based on social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. But there are also other forms of critical research that are not specifically critical or participatory action research studies. It is to these types of qualitative research studies that we now turn.

Critical Research In our preceding discussion, we talked about one form of critical research—critical action research (and participatory action research, which is a form of critical research). But thinking more generally about critical research, what makes it specifically critical is the theoretical framework that informs the study; in the case of critical action research studies, the point is specifically to help people understand and challenge power relations in the process of the study and to make something happen while the study is going on. There are many other types of qualitative studies informed by critical or feminist theory, queer theory, critical race theory, dis/ability, or poststructural/postmodern/postcolonial theory (collectively called “critical studies) that do not necessarily intend to specifically make something happen or solve a problem in practice while the study is going on. The point is that these types of studies are collectively critical in the sense of the theoretical framework that informs the study and in their analysis of power relations. It is analyzing the data, in light of the theoretical framework and the power relations of society that inform how people make meaning, that makes the study critical. We will discuss the role of the theoretical framework in qualitative research studies more thoroughly in the next chapter, but because critical research studies are now so common, in light of what Yvonna Lincoln (2010) refers to as “the critical turn” in qualitative social science research, we will discuss them in some depth here.

Goals and Types of Critical Research In critical inquiry the goal of the study in its findings or results is to critique and challenge, to transform, and to analyze power relations. In most critical studies, the hope is often that people will take action as a result of the study. As Patton (2015, p. 692) observes, what makes critical research critical is that “it aims to critique existing conditions and through that critique bring about change.” Thus critical research is not a “type” of qualitative research in the same sense as the others covered in the last chapter. Rather, critical research is about a worldview, and this worldview and the tools of analysis from this perspective can be applied to many types of qualitative research. Thus, for example, one could do a critical ethnography or a critical narrative study. A critical lens can also be used for interpreting data in a basic qualitative study, a grounded theory study, or a case study. The point is that in desig