U2D1-68 - Follow instructions below to answer the questions regarding Identifying Qualitative Inquire Themes in Research

APPLICATION EXERCISES

1. Naturalistic inquiry study: You are a purposeful sample of one (n = 1). Undertake a naturalistic inquiry study of a week in your life. At the beginning of the week, plan what you will do during the week. Then, (a) document what you did that unfolded as planned and (b) document what happened that wasn’t planned or expected. What emerged in the natural course of living and working and interacting with people that captures and provides insights into you and your life? As an illustration of emergent design flexibility, what interactions and/or events occurred during the week that would provide opportunities for interviews with people you encountered whom you would not have anticipated being key informants at the start of the week. For example, an old friend called, and you got together. That friend would now be a potential key informant to be interviewed to get insight into your week. Likewise, an event or problem that you

experienced that was unanticipated could become a mini case study of how your life unfolds. Describing that unanticipated event or problem in some depth would be an example of emergent design flexibility.

2. Qualitative data: Pick a topic that interests you, and search the web for qualitative studies on that topic. For example, let’s say that you’re interested in how college students perceive “hooking up.” A web search of “hooking up qualitative study” at the time of this writing yielded several interesting examples, including the following:

• “Hooking Up and Sexual Risk Taking Among College Students: A Health Belief Model Perspective” Hooking up with friends, strangers, and acquaintances is a popular way for college students to experience sexual intimacy without investing in relationships. Because hooking up often occurs in situations in which prophylactics against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are not available or in which students’ judgment is impaired, it can involve risky behaviors that compromise student health. . . . Based on semistructured interviews with 71 college students about their hooking-up experiences . . . , results demonstrate why students’ assessments of their own and their peers’ susceptibility to STIs are often misinformed. (Downing-Matibag & Geisinger, 2009, p. 1)

• “A Plan to Reboot Dating”: This article cites a qualitative study by “the feminist sociologist” Lisa Wade of Occidental College, who interviewed 44 of her freshman students (33 of them women) and reported that most of them were “overwhelmingly disappointed with the sex they were having in hook ups. This was true of both men and women, but was felt more intensely by women” (Smith, 2012).

• “Hooking Up”: An ecological psychology perspective on the sexual behaviors of women and the potential effects on sexually transmitted infections. Four females were interviewed, having been recruited through networking and word-of-mouth strategies at the Boston University undergraduate main campus (Power, 2012).

Through your Internet search, identify three qualitative studies on your topic of interest. What kinds of qualitative data were collected? What kind of purposeful sample was studied? What was the core finding of each study? To what extent and in what ways do the three studies provide consistent findings that illuminate your topic of interest? To what extent are the three studies quite different windows into your topic of interest? What do these studies tell you about the possibilities for qualitative inquiry on your topic of interest?

3. Contextual sensitivity: Describe an event or experience in your life without context. Now, add at least two layers of context: (1) the local context within which the event or experience occurred and (2) the larger societal/cultural context. What difference does adding context make to understanding the event or experience?

4. On page 81 is a cartoon titled “The Box.” Using the format in Exhibit 2.7 (pp. 78–80 ), describe how you would address the 12 strategic principles if you were to study the box qualitatively. (1) How would you engage in naturalistic inquiry of the box? (2) What would constitute emergent design flexibility in studying the box? (3) How would you select a purposeful sample? (4) What qualitative data would you collect? (5) What personal experience and engagement would be part of your inquiry? (6) How would empathic neutrality come into play? (7) How would you adopt a dynamic systems perspective? (8) What would constitute unique case orientation? (9) How would you engage in inductive analysis and creative synthesis? How would you be (10) holistic and (11) contextually sensitive? (12) How would you convey your own voice, perspective, and reflexivity?

5. Exhibit 2.6 (p. 75) depicts the 12 core strategies of qualitative inquiry as interdependent and interactive. What’s the message in that graphic? Express the graphic—and its implications for qualitative inquiry—in words. Tell what the graphic means and why it’s important.