D8-What You Have Learned

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2025).  Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (5th ed.). Sage Publications.

11 “TURNING THE STORY” AND CONCLUSION

How might the story be different if it were turned into a case study, a narrative project, a phenomenology, a grounded theory study, or an ethnography? Would the final report of some approaches appear more similar than others and if so, in what ways? In this final chapter, we demonstrate how the “story becomes turned” across the five approaches to qualitative inquiry discussed in this book. By “turning” we mean that the same problem is addressed by constructing a study using each of the five approaches.

Our illustrative example represents how we would think about and structure a qualitative study across the five approaches. In our experience, this chapter helps researchers choose among the five approaches by seeing the differences in the end results of a study. Throughout this book, we have developed understandings to help researchers be cognizant of their own positioning, the procedures of qualitative research, and the differences across five approaches of qualitative inquiry: a case study, a narrative project, a phenomenology, a grounded theory, and an ethnography. With increased interest in qualitative research, it is important that studies being conducted go forward with rigor and attention to the defining features (see Chapters 4, 5, and 6), theoretical frames and researcher worldviews (see Chapter 2), data procedures (see Chapters 7 and 8), writing structures (see Chapter 9), and quality standards (see Chapter 10) developed within approaches of inquiry.

We recognize the approaches to qualitative inquiry as many and inclusive of those beyond the scope of this book focused on five. The research procedures for some approaches are well documented within books and articles whereas for others only minimal guidance exists. A few writers classify the approaches, and some authors mention their favorites. Unquestionably, qualitative research cannot be characterized as of one type, attested to by the multivocal discourse surrounding qualitative research today. Adding to this discourse are diverse perspectives about philosophical, theoretical, and ideological stances.

In this chapter, prior to offering some final guidance to conclude this book, we again sharpen the distinctions among the approaches of inquiry, but we depart from our side-by-side approach used in prior chapters. We focus the lens in a new direction and “turn the story” of a case study—a campus response to a student gunman (Asmussen & Creswell, 1995)—into a narrative study, a phenomenology, a grounded theory, and an ethnography.

TURNING THE STORY ACROSS THE FIVE APPROACHES

Turning the story through different approaches of inquiry raises the issue of whether one should match a particular problem to an approach to inquiry. Much emphasis is placed on this relationship in social and human science research. We agree this needs to be done. But for the purposes of this book, our way around this issue is to pose a general problem—“How did the campus react?” in the illustrative case study—and then construct scenarios that address this specific problem. For instance, the specific problem of studying a single individual’s reaction to the gun incident is different from the specific problem of how several students as a culture-sharing group reacted, but both scenarios are reactions to the general issue of a campus response to the incident. The general problem that we address is that we know little about how campuses respond to violence and even less about how different constituent groups on campus respond to a potentially violent incident. Knowing this information would help us devise better plans for reacting to this type of problem as well as add to the literature on violence in educational settings. This was the central problem in the gunman case study that is presented next in its complete, original form (Asmussen & Creswell, 1995), and then we briefly review the major dimensions of this case study before we begin “turning the story” across the remaining four approaches to inquiry discussed in this book.

The Original Story: “Campus Response to a Student Gunman”

To be able to turn the story across the five approaches to inquiry we must have an original story as a starting place. We note that the original story could be any of the approaches. For this chapter, we use the case study by Asmussen and Creswell (1995) but we could have begun with any of the approaches. To familiarize you with the original story, the complete, original form of Asmussen & Creswell (1995) precedes the discussion of how a case study can be turned into a narrative study, a phenomenology, a grounded theory study, and an ethnography. Figure 11.1 appears after the original story and its turnings with a summary of the story turning across the five approaches.

Figure 11.1 Turning the Story Across the Five Approaches With Case Study as the Original Study

A Case Study

This qualitative case study (Asmussen & Creswell, 1995), as our original study (see also Figure 11.1), presented a campus reaction to a gunman incident in which a student attempted to fire a gun at his classmates. In so doing, the report addressed questions relating to the case bounded by those on campus at the time of the gunman incident, the 2 weeks following the incident when the researchers began data collection, and the 8-month period following the incident for completing the report. The authors based the composition of this case study on the “substantive case report” format of Lincoln and Guba (1985) and Stake (1995). These formats called for an explication of the problem; a thorough description of the context or setting and the processes observed; a discussion of important themes; and, finally, “lessons to be learned” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 362). After introducing the case study with the problem of violence on college campuses, the authors turned to a detailed description of the setting and a chronology of events immediately following the incident and events during the following 2 weeks. Then they presented the important themes related to denial, fear, safety, retriggering, and campus planning. In a process of layering of themes, the authors combined the more specific themes into two overarching themes: an organizational theme and a psychological or social–psychological theme. Asmussen and Creswell (1995) gathered data through interviews with participants, observations, documents, and audiovisual materials. From the case emerges a proposed plan for campuses, and the case ends with an implied lesson for the specific Midwestern campus and a specific set of questions this campus or other campuses might use to design a plan for handling future campus terrorist incidents.

Turning to specific research questions in this case, the authors asked the following questions: What happened? Who was involved in response to the incident? What themes of response emerged during an 8-month period? What theoretical constructs helped us understand the campus response, and what constructs developed that were unique to this case? Asmussen and Creswell (1995) entered the field 2 days after the incident and did not use any a priori theoretical lens to guide our questions or the results. The narrative first described the incident, analyzed it through levels of abstraction, and provided some interpretation by relating the context to larger theoretical frameworks. The authors validated the case analysis by using multiple data sources for the themes and by checking the final account with select participants, or member checking.

A Narrative Study

How might we have approached this same general problem (“how did the campus react” to the incident) as an interpretive biographical study with a narrative approach? Rather than identifying responses from multiple campus constituents, we would have focused on one individual (see Figure 11.1), such as the instructor of the class involved in the incident. We would have tentatively titled the project, “Campus Confrontation: An Interpretive Biography of an African American Professor.” This instructor, like the gunman, was African American, and his response to such an incident might be situated within racial and cultural contexts. Hence, as an interpretive biographer, we might have asked the following research question: What are the life experiences of the African American instructor of the class, and how do these experiences form and shape his reaction to the incident? This biographical approach would have relied on studying a single individual and situating this individual within his lived experiences. We would have examined life events or “epiphanies” culled from stories he told. Our approach would have been to “restory the stories” into an account of his experiences of the gunman that followed a chronology of events. We might have relied on the Clandinin and Connelly (2000) and Clandinin (2023) three-dimensional space model to organize the story into the personal, social, and interactional components. Alternatively, the story might have had a plot to tie it together, such as the theoretical perspective as described by Daiute (2014). This plot might have spoken to cultural aspects highlighted by the instructor and how the particular aspects played out both within the African American culture and other cultures. These perspectives may have shaped how the instructor viewed and experienced the student gunman incident. We also might have composed this report by discussing our own situated beliefs followed by those of the instructor and the changes he brought about as a result of his experiences. For instance, did he continue teaching? Did he share his experiences with others? Our narrative story about this instructor would be expected to contain a detailed description of the context to reveal the historical and interactional features of the experience (Chase, 2018; Denzin, 2001). We also would have acknowledged that any interpretation of the instructor’s reaction would be incomplete, unfinished, and a rendering from our own perspectives and lived experiences as White researchers.

A Phenomenology

Rather than study a single individual as in a biography, we would have studied several individual students and examined a psychological concept in the tradition of psychological phenomenology (Moustakas, 1994). Our working title might have been, “The Meaning of Fear for Students Caught in a Near Tragedy on Campus.” Our assumption would have been that students expressed this concept of fear during the incident, immediately after it, and several weeks later. To develop our understanding of the essence of their shared experience (see Figure 11.1), we might have posed the following questions: What fear did the students experience, and how did they experience it? What meanings did they ascribe to this experience? As a phenomenologist, we assume that human experience makes sense to those who live it and that human experience can be consciously expressed (Dukes, 1984). Thus, we would bring to the study a phenomenon to explore (fear) and a philosophical orientation to use (we want to study the meaning of the students’ experiences). We would have engaged in extensive interviews with up to 10 students, and we would have analyzed the interviews using the steps described by Moustakas (1994). We would have begun with a description of our own fears and experiences (epoché) to position ourselves, recognizing that we could not completely remove ourselves from the situation. Then, after reading through all the students’ statements, we would have located significant statements or quotes about their meanings of fear. These significant statements would then be clustered into broader themes. Our final step would have been to write a long paragraph providing a narrative description of what they experienced (textural description) and how they experienced it (structural description) and combine these two descriptions into a longer description that conveys the essence of their experiences. This would be the endpoint for the discussion. Our phenomenology procedures would be expected to reflect prolonged engagement to permit an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon under study (Beck, 2020).

A Grounded Theory Study

If a theory needed to be developed (or modified) to explain the campus reaction to this incident, we would have used a grounded theory approach (see Figure 11.1). For example, we might have developed a theory around a process—the “surreal” experiences of several students immediately following the incident, experiences resulting in actions and reactions by students. The draft title of our study might have been, “A Grounded Theory Explanation of the Surreal Experiences for Students in a Campus Gunman Incident.” We might have introduced the study with a specific quote about the surreal experiences:

Our research questions might have been as follows: What theory explains the phenomenon of the “surreal” experiences of the students immediately following the incident? What were these experiences? What caused them? What strategies did the students use to cope with them? What were the consequences of their strategies? What specific interaction issues and larger conditions influenced their strategies? Consistent with a structured approach to grounded theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2015), we would not bring into the data collection and analysis a specific theoretical orientation other than to see how the students interact and respond to the incident. Instead, our intent would be to develop or generate a theory. In the results section of this study, we would have first identified the open coding categories that we found. Then, we would have described how we narrowed the study to a central category (e.g., the dream element of the process) and made that category the major feature of a theory of the process. This theory would have been presented as a visual model, and in the model we would have included causal conditions that influenced the central category, intervening and context factors surrounding it, and specific strategies and consequences (axial coding) as a result of it occurring. We would have advanced theoretical propositions or hypotheses that explained the dream element of the surreal experiences of the students (selective coding). We would have validated our account by judging the thoroughness of the research process and whether the findings are empirically grounded, two factors mentioned by Corbin and Strauss (1990, 2015). Our grounded theory procedures would be expected to include memoing as part of the process of theory development (Birks & Mills, 2023).

An Ethnography

In grounded theory, our focus was on generating a theory grounded in the data. In ethnography, we would turn the focus away from theory development to a description and understanding of the workings of the campus community as a culture-sharing group (see Figure 11.1). To keep the study manageable, we might have begun by looking at how the incident, although unpredictable, triggered quite predictable responses among members of the campus community. These community members might have responded according to their roles, and thus we could have looked at some recognized campus microcultures. Students constituted one such microculture, and they, in turn, comprised several further microcultures or subcultures. Because the students in this class were together for 16 weeks during the semester, they had enough time to develop some shared patterns of behavior and could have been seen as a culture-sharing group. Alternatively, we might have studied the entire campus community, comprising a constellation of groups each reacting differently.

Assuming that the entire campus comprised the culture-sharing group, the title of the study might have been, “Getting Back to Normal: An Ethnography of a Campus Response to a Gunman Incident.” Notice how this title immediately invites a contrary perspective into the study. We would have asked the following questions: How did this incident produce predictable role performance within affected groups? Using the entire campus as a cultural system or culture-sharing group, in what roles did the individuals and groups participate? One possibility would be that they wanted to get the campus back to normal after the incident by engaging in predictable patterns of behavior. Although no one anticipated the exact moment or nature of the incident itself, its occurrence set in motion rather predictable role performances throughout the campus community. Administrators did not close the campus and start warning, “The sky is falling.” Campus police did not offer counseling sessions, although the Counseling Center did. However, the Counseling Center served the student population, not others (who were marginalized), such as the police or groundskeepers, who also felt unsafe on the campus. In short, predictable performances by campus constituencies followed in the wake of this incident.

Indeed, campus administrators routinely held a news conference following the incident. Also, predictably, police carried out their investigation, and students ultimately and reluctantly contacted their parents. The campus slowly returned to normal—an attempt to return to day-to-day business, to a steady state, or to homeostasis, as the systems thinkers say. In these predictable role behaviors, one saw culture at work.

As we entered the field, we would seek to build rapport with the community participants, to not further marginalize them or disturb the environment more than necessary through our presence. It was a sensitive time on campus with people who had nerves on edge. We would have explored the cultural themes of the “organization of diversity” and “maintenance” activities of individuals and groups within the culture-sharing campus. Wallace (1970) defines the “organization of diversity” as “the actual diversity of habits, of motives, of personalities, of customs that do, in fact, coexist within the boundaries of any culturally organized society” (p. 23). Our data collection would have consisted of observations over time of predictable activities, behaviors, and roles in which people engaged that helped the campus return to normal. This data collection would depend heavily on interviews and observations of the classroom where the incident occurred and newspaper accounts. Our ultimate narrative of the culture-sharing campus would be consistent with Wolcott’s (1994) three parts: a detailed description of the campus, an analysis of the cultural themes of “organizational diversity” and maintenance (possibly with taxonomies or comparisons; Spradley, 1979, 1980), and interpretation. Our interpretation would be couched not in terms of a dispassionate, objective report of the facts, but rather within our own experiences of not feeling safe in a soup kitchen for the homeless (Miller et al., 1998) and our own personal life experiences of having grown up in “safe” small Midwestern towns. For an ending to the study, we might have used the “canoe into the sunset” approach (H. F. Wolcott, personal communication, November 15, 1996) or the more methodologically oriented ending of checking our account with participants. Here is the canoe into the sunset approach:

Here is the more methodological ending:

We would expect that our description of ethnographic fieldwork would include details about our work with people as “ethnographers do not work in a vacuum” (Fetterman, 2019, p. 141).

CONCLUSION: SEVEN KEY TAKEAWAYS

We now reflect on how we have addressed our “compelling” question raised at the outset of this book at the qualitative research workshop at Vail, Colorado: How does the approach to inquiry shape the design of a study? When designing a qualitative study, we recommend that the author design the study within one of the approaches of qualitative inquiry.

We find distinctions as well as overlap among the five approaches, but designing a study attuned to procedures found within one of the approaches suggested in this book will enhance the sophistication of the project and convey a level of methodological expertise for readers of qualitative research. This means that components of the design process (e.g., interpretive framework, research purpose and questions, data collection, data analysis, report writing, validation evidence) will reflect the procedures of the selected approach and will be composed with the encoding and features of that approach. This is not to rigidly suggest that one cannot mix approaches and employ, for example, a grounded theory analysis procedure within a case study design. “Purity” is not our aim. But in this book, we suggest that the reader sort out the approaches first before combining them and see each one as a rigorous procedure in its own right. We offer seven key takeaways from this book in the sections that follow.

Study Focus

One of the most pronounced ways to differentiate among the five approaches is to examine the focus of the study. As discussed in Chapter 4, a theory differs from the exploration of a phenomenon or concept, from an in-depth case, and from the creation of an individual or group portrait. Please examine again Table 4.1, which establishes differences among the five approaches, especially in terms of foci.

However, this is not as clear-cut as it appears. A single case study of an individual can be approached either as a narrative study or as a case study. A cultural system may be explored as an ethnography, whereas a smaller “bounded” system, such as an event, a program, or an activity, may be studied as a case study. Both are systems, and the problem arises when one undertakes a micro-ethnography, which might be approached either as a case study or as an ethnography. However, when one seeks to study cultural behavior, language, or artifacts, then the study of a system might be undertaken as an ethnography. When researchers can clearly articulate their study focus, it can greatly help them choose among the many approaches to qualitative inquiry.

Interpretive Orientation

An interpretive orientation flows throughout qualitative research. As discussed in Chapter 2, we cannot step aside and be “objective” about what we see and write. Our words flow from our own personal experiences, culture, history, and backgrounds. When we engage in fieldwork to collect data, we need to approach the task with care for the participants and sites and to be reflexive about our role, our “positioning” and how it shapes what we see, hear, and write.

Ultimately, our writing represents an interpretation of events, people, and activities. While we might share our interpretations and they may ultimately be influenced by others, it begins with our interpretation. We must recognize that participants, readers, and other individuals reading our accounts will have their own interpretations. Within this perspective, our writing can only be seen as a discourse, one with tentative conclusions, and one that will be constantly changing and evolving. Qualitative research truly has an interpretation element that flows throughout the process of research. When researchers engage in reflexive practice, they can greatly benefit from opportunities to reflect upon and make explicit the experiential and theoretical influences on their designs.

Language Use

The approach to inquiry shapes the language of the research design procedures in a study, especially the terms used in the introduction to a study, the data collection, and the analysis phases of design. The embedded “Chapter Key Terms” in Chapter 4 can be particularly helpful for introducing some of the unique terms across the five approaches. We also incorporated these terms into Chapter 6, as we discussed the wording of purpose statements and research questions for different approaches to qualitative research.

Our language theme continued in Chapter 9 as we talked about encoding the text within an approach to research. The glossary presents a useful list and definitions of terms within each tradition that researchers might incorporate into the language of their studies. When researchers are familiar with the language associated with different approaches, it can be easier to convey meanings to others.

Participant Samples

The approach to research includes identifying the participants who are studied, and as discussed in Chapter 7, describing sampling and recruitment strategies as well as data collection procedures that are appropriate for the participants and their communities. A study may consist of one or two individuals (i.e., narrative study), groups of people (i.e., phenomenology, grounded theory), or an entire culture (i.e., ethnography). A case study might fit into all three of these categories as one explores a single individual, an event, or a large social setting.

In Chapter 7, we also highlighted how the approaches vary in the extent of data collection, from the use of mainly single sources of information (i.e., narrative interviews, grounded theory interviews, phenomenological interviews) to those that involve multiple sources of information (i.e., ethnographies consisting of observations, interviews, and documents; case studies incorporating interviews, observations, documents, archival material, and audiovisual and social media). Although these forms of data collection are not fixed, we see a general pattern that differentiates the approaches.

Analysis Strategies

The distinctions among the approaches are most pronounced in the data analysis phase, as discussed in Chapter 8. Data analysis ranges from unstructured to structured approaches. Among the less structured approaches, we include ethnographies (with the exception of Spradley, 1979, 1980) and narratives (e.g., as suggested by Clandinin, 2023; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and interpretive forms advanced by Denzin (1989). The more structured approaches consist of grounded theory with a systematic procedure and phenomenology (see Colaizzi’s 1978 approach and those of Dukes, 1984, and Moustakas, 1994) and case studies (Stake, 1995; G. Thomas, 2021, Yin, 2017). These procedures provide direction for the overall structure of the data analysis in the qualitative report.

The approach also shapes the amount of relative weight given to description in the analysis of the data. In ethnographies, case studies, and biographies, researchers employ substantial description; in phenomenologies, investigators use less description; and in grounded theory, researchers seem not to use it at all, choosing to move directly into analysis of the data. We also point to the potential of computers and qualitative data analysis software for facilitating the ease and efficiency of data analysis and representations.

Report Writing

The approach to inquiry shapes the final written product as well as the embedded rhetorical structures used in the narrative. This explains why qualitative studies look so different and are composed so differently across the five approaches to inquiry, as discussed in Chapter 9. We see the writing structures (both overall and embedded) are highly related to data analysis procedures.

We are reminded again about the interrelatedness among different components of the research process. Take, for example, the presence of the researcher. Although reflexivity flows into all qualitative projects, the presence of the researcher is lessened in the more “objective” accounts provided in grounded theory. Alternatively, the researcher is center stage in ethnographies and possibly in case studies where “interpretation” plays a major role.

Research Quality

The criteria for assessing the quality of a study differ among the approaches, as discussed in Chapter 10. Although some overlap exists in the procedures for validation, the criteria for assessing the study quality of qualitative research relate to the defining features for each approach to inquiry. The features of a “good” qualitative study initially introduced in Chapter 3 can be seen in the quality criteria specific to qualitative research.

SUMMARY

In this final chapter, we demonstrate how an original study of a case study of a campus gunman by Asmussen and Creswell (1995) is turned first into a narrative study focused on the lived experience of an individual. Then the story is turned into a phenomenology focused on studying several individual students generating an understanding of the essence of the phenomenon experienced by the group. Next, the story becomes a grounded theory study focused on developing a theory explaining the surreal experiences of several students. Finally, the story becomes an ethnography focused on describing and understanding the workings of the campus community as a culture-sharing group. To conclude, we refer to specific book chapters in the description of our final guidance in the form of seven takeaways for qualitative researchers to attend to in their study design: study focus, interpretive orientation, language use, participant samples, analysis strategies, report writing, and research quality.

Descriptions of Images and Figures

In the center lies, “Case Study* What happened during the ‘bounded’ case? Select case to focus on.” On the right most with the help of an arrow directed towards right side “Select essence to focus on” leads to “Phenomenology What is the ‘essence’ of a group’s experience?”

On the left with the help of an arrow directed towards the left side, “Select group to focus on” leads to “Ethnography: What are the shared ‘patterns of culture’ of a group.”

On the top with the help of an arrow directed towards the upward side, “Select individual(s) to focus on” leads to “Narrative Study: What was the ‘lived experience’ of an individual?”

On the down with the help of an arrow directed towards the downward side, “Select process, eventor interaction to focus on” leads to “Grounded Theory Study: What ‘theory’ explains participants’ experience?”