U6D1-U5S1-2 - State the Research Question, Methodology & Select a Research Design and Justify your Research. - See Outline Attached.

PANEL DISCUSSION ON QUANTITATIVE VS. QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Dr. Bruce Francis: Excellent. Let me now move on to another question that gets also into the issue of data gathering and data analysis. And it's a confusing distinction sometimes between quantitative and qualitative research, the distinctions that are made in the literature. And both of you spend a good deal of time trying to clarify those two, so I'd like to ask you if you would talk about them. Some authors tend to see them as different research philosophies or even different world views, whereas others see the distinction in terms of data type. Where quantitative research uses data in the forms of numbers and qualitative research uses data in the form of words or in themes. Then we have the broader more difficult issue of what happens to the research if you take essentially qualitative data and then code it into categories which you analyze as percentages. Does it then become quantitative. And, of course, if we could lead then on into an area which is you folks are becoming very well known about, and that's the whole mixed method form of research. If you could talk about that general issue, of the controversy between quantitative and qualitative leading into mixed methods. How should our learners be thinking about that whole question.

Dr. Ronald Shope: That's a real good question. And actually it's one that we often get as we do workshops and seminars, because of the different research philosophies. John and I kind of refer to ourselves as really applied methodologists. And so we look at things from a methodological perspective. So that's how we sort of view research. And you're right in saying that there are different kinds of world views that are fit qualitative and there are world views that fit quantitative research. And especially when you're getting into the area of mixed methods research, you know, what do you do. And as we think about this whole issue, we look at it from the aspect of the research problem. We take a pragmatic approach and say all right, so what kind of methodology or methodologies do we need to use in order to address a particular research problem. Many times, for example, we'll have a research problem that requires a mixed methods approach, which means that you'll have a quantitative phase and a qualitative phase, and depending on what the problem is, we'll begin to determine what kind of a design that we need to use. But what we look at then is we say well, then you need both kinds of methodologies here to address the problem, it's more of a pragmatic, it becomes more of a pragmatic type of approach. Rather than looking at you know one particular world view in isolation. And there are different types of as we get into mixed methods research, and and John will address this in just a little bit I think that there are issues and ways that people do transform data and the transformation techniques into where you transform them for example, qualitative data into quantitative. But I think looking at it from the perspective of a methodologist, you know, what do we need in order to address the problem.

Dr. John Creswell: Let me build on that for just a minute. And I think a little history might help us out on this one. Basically the people that are talking about research as a philosophy come out of the qualitative camp more than he quantitative. You know, in qualitative research, it became popular in the 1980s, the way the qualitative researchers argued for the value of qualitative research was to argue it on philosophical grounds. That

it's a different philosophy than doing quantitative research. So what we have over the years are people that are teaching and talking about qualitative research that run the the range from being very philosophically oriented to very methods oriented/data oriented people. Now Ron and I would probably put ourselves into the more data oriented category. For example, when we conduct a mixed methods workshop, we first have people talk about their research question and then we simply ask them what kind of data, qualitative and quantitative data, are you going to gather. We bring in philosophical arguments later in the presentation. That's not where we start. And so, there is some confusion about whether qualitative research is more of a philosophy or a method, and actually it's both. But people are going to have different positions on that, and they're going to, some are going to be more philosophically oriented and some are gonna be more methods oriented. Because we're applied research methodologists, we tend to start with the very con-and I think it's helpful for beginning researchers to start from a very concrete level of what kind of data am I going to collect – qualitative data or quantitative or perhaps both – to answer my research question.

Dr. Bruce Francis: Sometimes in working with learners that early on they tend to make a decision, I'm a quantitative person, I'm a qualitative person. And I generally encourage them not to make that decision too early, to try to explore both realms within the world of research. Do you agree that's a good approach or do you feel that they should be encouraged to run with where their strengths seem to be?

Dr. Ronald Shope: Sometimes that depends on the person, but I tend to early on encourage students to look at both. Because one of the things that happens I think that as a researcher, I don't want to cut myself off from different kinds of problems that I might want to address. You know, for example, if I just say well I'm a quantitative researcher, and I don't do qualitative, there's a lot of things that really need to be addressed qualitatively that can't be assessed quantitatively. And if you sort of cut yourself off and say I'm not going to do that and narrow yourself. Now I think it obviously too is you know there are gonna be people that are more comfortable dealing with numbers, and that's fine. There are going to people that are more comfortable dealing with text. Actually in my own doctoral experience, I started out as a quantitative researcher. And had gone through all of my doctoral program, because I knew the problem that I wanted to deal with in the dissertation and took a class that was qualitative and decided this is really what I want to deal with. And as a result though I had the training in the quantitative, while my love was more qualitative, but I feel like especially as we approach mixed methods, I now have a balanced skill set that I could deal with a problem that required more of a mixed methods approach. So some of it's individual, where a person's feeling a little more comfortable with one or the other, but I would encourage students to explore both. But they're ultimately going to find out I'm more comfortable with one or the other.

Dr. Bruce Francis: How would you advise learners who seem to want to choose qualitative because they have anxiety about the quantitative? Typically based on not knowing it very well, they will often say I really am afraid of statistics, so I want to do quantitative. How do you advice folks like that?

Dr. John Creswell: Well, I would basically say to go ahead and use qualitative. And I would then also emphasize that it's not easier. In fact, it might even be more difficult, because it doesn't have as much structure to it. And then, at least for my graduate students here, I suggest that they have a core background in statistics, they take some statistics courses. They might find as they take a few, one or two, that they would become more familiar with crunching numbers. But, you know, basically for me I think we're back to the research question. I have them write down their research question, and then I look at it and say you know this sounds more like a quantitative or more like a qualitative. And then if they have some skill training in

both quantitative and qualitative, then I might point out, look, so many of our issues today like the hurricane disaster in New Orleans, it has a quantitative and a qualitative component to it. You know, we collected the statistics about the people that were homeless, and then also we heard on TV the voices of these individuals giving impassioned pleas for relief to help them rebuild their houses. Now this is an example, a real life example, of how we're using both quantitative and qualitative data. And then they may ask well, I don't have time to do both forms of data, because you're asking me to collect two different types and analyze two different types. And then I say well, I wonder if one type could be a secondary data source, a smaller data source, and the other be a larger. And so that you're not collecting two full data sets; you're collecting a major data set. Let's say a major survey to start out, and then a few focus groups to follow up to really learn the detail of why people responded they might have in the survey. So, I begin posing that mixed methods as a possibility. Kind of like the checkbook situation I mentioned earlier. Most of our life is based upon collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. They see the value of learning this approach.

Dr. Bruce Francis: One of the techniques I have found useful is taking a large scale survey in which you ask potentially quantitative questions, but then offer people the opportunity to provide open ended answers, which gives you some qualitative work. I often also add a sentence or add an item inviting people who want to to be telephoned, so that a telephone interview could be held with them afterwards. And from that telephone interview, you can find even a few case studies who are willing to be probed even further to get their views in a much more qualitative way. And in that way, the quantitative leads to the qualitative, which leads essentially to the mixed kind of approach.

Dr. Ronald Shope: …call that a sequential design, actually explanatory sequential design. And so there are now specific names for those particular designs.

Dr. John Creswell: When the person collects, analyzes, and integrates or mixes both quantitative and qualitative data. And in your example of first doing this survey, and then following it up with some invited interviews, they are collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, analyzing it, and they're connecting the two. One helps lead to the next phase. The first survey phase leads to the interview, the second phase.

Dr. Bruce Francis: And that's a little bit different from the approach in which you have three essentially different data sets and you try to triangulate with those different forms of data. So I think that a mixed approach has various forms, but the underlying philosophy of it is that there are more different ways of looking at any kind of research question than just the single one.

Dr. John Creswell: In my new mixed methods book, we talk about ten different design possibilities. But there's really kind of four core examples of variations as to how you might design the mixed methods study. And we, as Ron said, we associate names of those different designs. But I think that's the way of the future. I think people are thinking, first of all, people are getting training in both quantitative and qualitative. They see the complexity of the problems that exist that can't just be answered by quantitative survey, nor can they just be answered by a qualitative interview. And so they're beginning to gather both forms of data and put them together in a single study.

Dr. Bruce Francis: Well I I think we have actually arrived at the end of our major questions. I'd like to ask if there are any final comments.

Dr. Ronald Shope: I'll go ahead and respond first to that. Basically one of the things that you need to make sure when you interview is that your interview questions are very broad, open ended questions. Many times students tend to write questions that are more designed for survey that are very closed end. But you really wanna ask them to describe experiences, tell you about something. When I teach students that are in the counseling major, for example, they're very good at asking broad, open ended questions. In fact, I ask them if a client comes into your office for counseling, what's one of the first questions you ask them. And they say well what brought you here. And I ask them why they ask that. Well, we wanna get them talking. Well, that's exactly what you wanna do. You want the interview participant to talk, and you want to make sure also too, I always have my students as they propose their interview questions and put them down, that in their interview protocol, that they also begin to think about probes that they also may wanna follow up with. So like, for example, I have them list a couple of probes, things that if they don't answer this, what are some things that you wanna follow up that you make sure that you find out. Because if you just leave that to the time of the interview, you may forget about what you wanna ask them. A couple other things is we always record our interviews. I know there are authors who suggest not doing that. But one of the problems is that you really wanna focus your attention on listening to what that participant says. So now if you have a tape recording going, you have the possibility of getting a very accurate transcript of quotes. And as you are listening to that person talk, you are actually making some notes, many times I'll say oh, this is a great quote, I may look down at the recorder to see where that is on the counter, so that I can go back and I can find it later. I also make some just reflective notes on what that person is saying. And so there's a sense in which as I'm interviewing, I'm listening and I'm beginning to analyze what that person says. Another thing about interviewing that I have found out too, you wanna make sure that as you do your interview protocol, that you put an introduction so that you're introducing the person or your participants in about the same way. I also have students write in a paragraph just to thank them. So you sort of remember to do that. As you're there, the big thing I tell students about interviewing, this is not an interrogation. This is a conversation between you and that participant and it should be relaxed, friendly. The other thing that you should minimize is any kind of verbal or non-verbal feedback. In other words, you wanna make sure that you as the researcher are not influencing what that person is saying, but that you are, yes, you're acknowledging, but and that's hard to do. But I think the more that you can sort of listen and the more that you have structure how you want that interview to go, is very important. I think the interview questions – and let me say this too. Is the interview questions also are gonna vary depending on the qualitative research design that you are using. So if you are doing grounded theory, those questions are gonna center around the aspects of that grounded theory model. If you're doing a narrative, they're gonna be different. An ethnography, because the focus of your study is different, and so those interview questions will actually reflect the type of design you're using.

Dr. John Creswell: Let me build on that, And as Ron's been talking, I've been thinking about how I would teach qualitative interviewing to a beginning student. One thing that we always do is we do some role playing in our classes, where students might develop, first of all, their set of questions that they would ask. We call that an interview protocol. And we would talk with them about how to set up that protocol properly. Then we would have them actually conduct an interview, and one of the important parts, of course, is if you're going to audio tape, making sure your equipment works. As some of these little details that can really cause great frustration in doing qualitative interviews. And then to practice. And then we often have the audio taped practice interviews transcribed, and then turn around and use that in data analysis. Because now they've helped create a qualitative database, and it can be a vehicle for talking about how you go

about analyzing qualitative data. So getting them used to it. And as Ron said, some people are certainly more comfortable interviewing, because it's part of their real life job to do this on a regular basis. Others, it may be a very strange experience.

Dr. Graham: I know we're running out of time, and I just would like to have a summary comment. And then I'm sure that Dr. Francis would like to wrap up as well. But you gentlemen are doing very important work. We're in the midst of a knowledge explosion on planet Earth, as we're all aware. And the kind of work that you're doing is showing us how to create knowledge more effectively, to create knowledge that has greater validity. We've got an awful lot of challenges out there, and I personally wanna thank you for the work you're doing in terms of teaching scholars everywhere about how to do their work more systematically, more thoroughly, with better results, so that we can rise to the challenges that are out there. So, I'm very appreciative for this opportunity to talk to you, and I'm sure all the learners that listen to this will be as well. Thank you very much.

Dr. Bruce Francis: And I'd like to add my thanks and my congratulations to you both for the work that you are doing. Our use of your textbooks is just a minor sign of how important we think it is. And we anticipate that our learners will gain a great deal from this interview. I wanna thank you very much formally for Capella University and for Gordon and for myself.

Dr. John Creswell: Well we appreciate this opportunity. And we've been very impressed with what Capella has been doing. And all the Capella learners out there that are listening to this need to know that I'm a learner too. And so when you run across an idea, you don't understand or there's something that I need to explain better in my writing, be sure and drop me a note. I answer all the mail that comes in and try to give you as good a response as I can. And and often I go back and I'll make the change based on what you said. So thanks a lot.

Dr. Ronald Shope: I've appreciated being with you all today as well. I teach all of the online research methods at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Or I'm one of the main instructors I should say. And appreciate all of the work that you as online learners put into online courses. I know that this is not easy. And I enjoy working with online learners and hope that this interview series will be helpful to you as you go about your own research in your course work.

Dr. Bruce Francis: We are certain it will be, and thank you again.

CREDITS Subject Matter Experts: Interactive Design:

Project Managment:

Dr. Ronald J. Shope, Dr. John W. Creswell, Dr. Bruce Francis

Patrick Lapinski, Marc Ashmore

Julie Greunke

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