Qualitative Research- Silverman, David.

Interpreting qualitative data / David Silverman Week 2

1. electing a topic
 scan the topics they chose and see if that gives you any ideas (if you can, try and find out the grades
achieved by the reports which interest you)
 sensible topic
 follow up a piece of published research that interests you and get advice on how you might adapt it as a
student project
 Make data collection as easy as possible and beware of complexity
(keep data gathering simple)
2. formulating a researchable question
 narrow down your topic
 give focus to your research
 gualitative research is often most effective when it studies how
people behave in everyday situations
 types of sensitivity:
• historical
• political
• contextual.
3. fitting your research question into an appropriate theory
 thinking theoretically
 under-theorised topics:
 problematic to justify research in terms of its 'authentic' representation of 'experience'
when what is 'authentic' is culturally defined
 when a researcher follows an approach to different cultures which is uncritically 'touristic'
 danger 'touristic' researchers may focus on cultural and 'sub-cultural' (or group) differences
that they fail to recognise similarities between the culture to which they belong and the
cultures which they study
 over-theorised topics
 obscure philosophical positions such as phenomenology or hermeneutics
 flirting with an inappropriate theoretical approach
4. choosing an effective research design
 considering the range of methods of data collection you can use
 observation
 analysing texts and documents
 interviews and focus groups
 audio and video recording (and other visual material).

 making sure that your method is appropriate

5. deciding whether mixed methods are appropriate
1. using mixed methologies (only use this path if you seriously want to complicate your life
)
2. by having a cumulative view of data drawn from different contexts, we may, as in
trigonometry, be able to triangulate the 'true' state of affairs by examining where the
different data intersect. In this way, some qualitative researchers believe that
triangulation may improve the reliability of a single method. BUT
a. leads to scrappy research based on under-analysed data and an imprecise or
theoretically indigestible research prob-lem
b. may tempt novice researchers to move to another dataset when they are
having difficulties in analysing one set of material.
 c. certain kinds of social research, particularly that based on a constructionist
model, it is simply not useful to con-ceive of an overarching reality to which
data, gathered in different contexts, approximate
ii. avoiding too many data-collection methods
iii. making sure you don't collect too much data.

6. reviewing the literature effectively

 good research frames its aims in the context of earlier work
 without reading the literature you are in danger of trying to answer questions about research design that
have already been answered for you (so you will be trying 'to rein-vent the wheel')
 when you write your conclusions, it is important to relate your findings to other studies.