QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

 Narrative research
 Case study research
Submitted by: Ankitha.S

Submitted to : Dr.Santhosh.M

INTRODUCTION

 Qualitative research is a variety of analytic procedures designed to systematically

collect and describe authentic ,contextualized social phenomena with the goal of
interpretive adequacy.(Damico and Simmons-Mackie 2003)
 By collecting information on what others say and do, the qualitative researchers hope
to share the view points of those individuals; to see the word as they understand it.
 It helps us to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions and insights into
the problems.
 This helps us to develop ideas or hypotheses for quantitative research.

TYPES OF QUALITTIVE RESEARCH

 Multiple techniques are available to qualitative researchers among which following

four are considered and most commonly encountered in the communication disorder
literature.
 They are
o Observation
o Interview
o Narration
o Case study research

 NARRATIVE RESEARCH:-
The term “narrative” comes from the Greek word “narros”, which means to know
(Emihovich, 1995).

Narrative inquiry is the process of gathering information for the purpose of research through
storytelling (Plummer, 1995).

Narratives typically integrate in depth information from multiple sourced to provide an

authentic and thorough understanding of an event or situation ,including what people say, do,
think and feel in the setting.

Narrative is a set of words ,derived from stories, interviews, written journals and other
documents, which forms the data set in the naturalistic inquiry( DePoy and Gitlin,2011)
Narrative methods can be considered “Real world measures” that are appropriate when “real
life problems” are investigated (Lieblich et al., 1998).

It focuses on the:

 Studying a single person

 Gathering data through the collection of stories
 Reporting individual experiences and
 Discussing the meaning of those experiences for the individual.
Mainly it includes the:

 Narrative- Any report or imaginary of the personal experiences of the individual,

presented in a sequence of written or spoken words or images.
 Narrator- Individual who narrates about his/her life experiences.
 Informants- Individuals present to provide additional information on the life events of
the individual being assessed.

Narrative designs are of multiple forms. They are:

1. Biography Vs. Autobiography:

a. Writing and recording about an individual’s experiences is Biography.
b. When an individual who is writing, is the subject of the study, it is an
Autobiography.

2. Life History Vs. Personal Experiences:

a. Writing about an individual’s entire life is Life History, which is done by an
anthropologist.
b. When writing is focused on a single event or an episode in the individual’s life,
it is known as Personal experience.
3. Informants:
a. Narrative designs vary based on who is providing the information to the
investigator. Informants may be children, teachers, administrator or even other
educational personnel.

Characteristics of Narrative research:

Narrative researchers seek to understand the experiences of an individual. The investigator

studies the individual through field texts that is documented by the individual in his/her own
words. After the data is collected and analyzed, the researcher collaborates with the participant
to check the story and fill in the missed out information to make the final report.

 Individual experiences: Understanding an individual’s history or past experiences

will help explain the impact on their present and future experiences.
 Chronology of the experiences: A time sequence or chronology of events helps
readers to understand and follow the research.
  Collecting individual stories: Stories can be acquired through various means
including interview, informal observations, conversations, journals and letters or
through memory boxes which are examples of different field texts.
 Re-Storying: It is also known as retelling or remapping. It is the process of gathering
stories, reviewing them for cues (such as time, place, plot and scene) and rewriting the
story in a chronological sequence. The factors also include setting, characters, actions,
problems and resolution, which provide the reader the background information about
the individual.
 Coding for themes: The data gathered can be coded into different themes or categories
for easy analysis.
 Context or setting: The description of context in which the event took place suggests
the impact of it on the individual.
 Collaborating with the participants: This process should occur throughout the
research process to reduce the gap or differences between the narrative reported and the
narrative gathered.

Steps in Conducting Narrative Research:

1. Identify a problem or phenomenon to explore: Identifying an issue of concern

provides the purpose of study and enable the researcher to understand personal or social
experiences of the individual.
2. Select one or more participants to study: Select one or more volunteer individuals
who can provide a better understanding of the phenomenon.
3. Collect the story form that individual: Several ways to collect information (field
texts) from the individuals:
a. Personal conversations or interviews
b. Record the events in his/her own diaries or journals
c. Collect letters
d. Observing and recording field notes
e. Assemble stories from the individual’s family members
f. Photographs or artifacts
4. Re-story or retell the individual’s story: Examine the raw data, organize and
sequence the facts and present the story of the individual.
5. Collaborate with the participant and the informants: To make ensure the facts are
true.
6. Write story about the participant’s experiences: Highlights the individual’s life
experience with themes and emphasizes the narrative research.
7. Validate the report’s accuracy: Validation is done to preserve the story and to
improve its credibility, which is done by collaboration, member checking and
triangulation.

Advantage:

 Extremely flexible
  Collaboration is possible
 Helps to understand topics in a detailed manner

Disadvantage:

 Faking of data by the participants

 The performance and evaluation of the document varies with each researcher
 Not structured
 Subjective procedure

 CASE STUDY RESEARCH:

It lead to an intensive description and analysis of a single individual.

It uses qualitative data, with variables identified and tested .case study strategy has several
advantages for in depth qualitative investigations.

According to Best and Kahn (2006) qualitative case studies probes deeply and analyses
interaction between the factor that explain present status or that influence change or growth
.

Case study is a systematic inquiry into an event or a set of related events which aims to
describe and explain the phenomenon of interest (Bromley, 1990).

Case study research method becomes a success when carefully planned.

Components of Case study:

Yin (1994) suggested five paradigms for a good case study. They are:

 A study’s question
 Its propositions
 Its units of analysis
 The logic linking the data to the phenomenon and
 The criteria for interpreting the findings

Types of Case study research:

Yin (1993) provided four types:

1. Exploratory or Pilot Case study: Condensed form of case studies performed before
implementing large scale investigation. The basic function of this study is to help
identify question and select types of measurement prior to the main investigation.
a. The drawback is that initial findings may be convincing to dropout.
2. Descriptive or Illustrative Case studies: It just describes about the situation. It typically
utilizes few instances of an event to show what a situation is going to be.
 a. It serves primarily to make unknown things familiar and give the readers a gist
of the study.
3. Critical Instance or Explanatory Case studies: It examines one or more sites for either
the purpose of examining a situation of unique interest for generalizing.
a. This method is useful for answering cause and effect questions.
4. Cumulative Case studies: These serve to aggregate information from several factors
collected at different times. The idea behind this is the collection of past studies that
allows for greater generalization without additional cost or time being expended on
new, possible repetitive studies.

a. Stake (1995) included three other types:

5. Intrinsic Case studies: Researcher’s interest lies in understanding the particulars of the
case.
6. Collective Case studies: More number of cases are studied together in order to
understand the phenomenon, population or a general condition. It is often referred to
as multiple case studies.
7. Instrumental Case studies: Study of case to provide insight into a particular issue,
redraw generalizations or build theory.

Merits :

 Simplifies complex concepts

 Natural and real life situations
 Content rich and in depth information
 Scientific experiments could be conducted
 Introduction new hypotheses and help adapting new ideas
Demerits:
 Lack of systemic handling of data
 Difficult in generalizing for wider population
 Time consuming and results in massive ,unreadable documents
 Does not directly impose causal relationship
 Difficult in validation since patient bias is present .

REFERENCES:

 Schiavetti, N, Metz, D.E. & Orlikoff, R.F. (1997). Evaluating research in

communication disorders. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
 Orlikoff, R. F., Schiavetti, N., & Metz, D. E. (2015). Evaluating Research in
Communication Disorders. New York: Pearon.
  Ventry, I. M. & Schiavetti, N. (1980). Evaluating research in speech pathology and
Audiology. London: Addison Wesley.

Articles:
1.A preliminary study on the neural oscillatory characteristics of
motor preparation prior to dysfluent and fluent utterances in adults who
stutter
Anna Mersova,⁎, Douglas Cheynea,b,c, Cecilia Jobstb, Luc De Nila

Purpose: Recent literature on speech production in adults who stutter (AWS) has begun to
investigate the neural mechanisms characterizing speech-motor preparation prior to speech
onset. Compelling evidence has suggested that stuttering is associated with atypical
processing within cortical and sub-cortical motor networks, particularly in the beta frequency
range, that is effective before speech production even begins. Due to low stuttering frequency
in experimental settings, however, the literature has so far predominantly reported on fluent
speech production in AWS. Consequently, we have limited understanding of the way in
which fluent speech processing in AWS is disturbed leading to a dysfluency. This preliminary
study aims to characterize neural motor preparation prior to stuttered utterances in AWS.

Methods: Eight AWS participated in the study. A total of 336 stuttered utterances were
compared to the participants’ own fluent utterance productions. Beta oscillatory activity was
analyzed with magnetoencephalography (MEG) and localized using minimum-variance
beamforming.

Results: Preparation for speech production induced beta suppression in the bilateral premotor
and motor cortex prior to speech onset. Although the data revealed some interesting trends,
no significant differences between fluent and stuttered utterances were present. This may be
due to a relatively low and variable number of stuttered trials analyzed in individual subjects.

Conclusion: While the lack of significant differences may have resulted from the relatively
low numbers of stuttered utterances across subjects, the observed trends demonstrated that
the proposed methodology and experimental paradigm is a promising approach for future
studies aiming to characterize differences between stuttered and fluent speech.

2. The social and communication impact of stuttering onadolescents and

their families

Shane Erickson∗, Susan BlockSchool of Human Communication Sciences, La Trobe

University, Bundoora, Victoria 3088, Australiaa
Purpose: Stuttering can cause wide ranging psychosocial impact. This is particularly thecase
for adolescents who may face additional physical, emotional and personality changesas they
become adults. This study reports the findings of an investigation into the socialand
communication impacts of stuttering on Australian adolescents seeking treatment
forstuttering and their families.

Method: A cross-sectional design utilising questionnaires assessed the self-perceived com-

munication competence and apprehension, stigma and disclosure, and experiences ofteasing
and bullying of 36 adolescents who stutter. Additionally, the impact of stutteringon the
families of these adolescents was investigated.

Results: Adolescents who stutter have below average self-perceived communication com-
petence, heightened communication apprehension, are teased and bullied more often
thanfluent peers, and they try to keep their stuttering secret. The families of the adolescents
inthe study reported high levels of emotional strain, family conflict and difficulty
managingtheir child’s frustrations.

Conclusion: The findings from this study emphasise the wide-ranging impact of stutter-ing
beyond the surface level behaviours. Clinicians working with adolescents who stuttershould
take note of both the outcomes of this study and the suggestions for more effectivelycoping
with the condition in this population.