International Journal of Qualitative Methods: ARCHIVE
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403 research outputs found
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Cultural and Ethical Challenges in Cross-National Research: Reflections on a European Union Study on Child & Youth Migration
No full textThe increasing development of pan-national and supra-national institutions and ‘states’ such as the European Union implies that comparative cross-national research will become both a more frequent and fruitful research exercise. After all, there is the assumption that data will be consistent and easily available, thought policy contexts are increasingly shared and co-terminous. However, this may not always be the case. Reflecting on a European Union and Nuffield Foundation project, which considered the experience of migrant children and, conducted in Greece, Portugal, Sweden and the UK, the author highlights that, as with any study concerning childhood and youth, qualitative and quantitative methodologies remain ‘culture-bound’. Tracing examples from the developing sociology of childhood, this article suggests that in as much as we recognise the cultural specificity of childhood, so too must we acknowledge that research methodologies are a product of, and embedded within, particular national/cultural contexts. It concludes that, even at the fundamental level of analysing data, culture, ethics and research methodology are closely interconnected and cannot easily be separated into discrete universally understood categories
The Nature of "Evidence" in Qualitative Research Methods
No full textThe article is an attempt to show that a continuing issue in qualitative research methods is describing and justifying how qualitative data become "evidence" for a claim. Several models from the field of Confirmation Theory are developed and described within the context of a qualitative research example. It is argued that for the qualitative research case, the meaning and application of what constitutes evidence is best viewed in terms of a primary logical distinction
Translation as an Ecological Tool for Instrument Development
No full textIn this paper the authors outline the translation process involved in Macro International’s evaluation of the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. IVLP is a long-running program in which professionals and prospective leaders from around the world participate in funded short-term visits to the United States to learn first-hand professional practices and values of American society and democracy. The authors highlight the importance of attending to the theoretical issues in, discuss contextual factors inherent in, and outline specific phases of the translation process, and present the modified decentering translation technique adapted for the project. They describe the types of translation equivalencies that were addressed and present findings that attest to the quality of the translation. They underscore the importance of the translation process as a qualitative tool for the instrument development that maps the contexts of people’s lives, documents emic-etic aspects of cross-cultural research, and fosters collaborations with all stakeholders of the research project
A Talmud Page as a Metaphor of a Scientific Text Michal Rozenberg, Miri Munk, and Anat Kainan
No full textThe authors’ aim in this article is to deal with a new option of writing a hermeneutical text by using the metaphor of a Talmud page. They present this through the multiplicity in which three researchers contemplate a single set text. This case concerns the life story of Zoheira, a Bedouin student at a teacher’s college. The use of the Talmudic layout as a metaphor of a scientific text presents a preference of a polyphony of voices, rather than one voice, when dealing with ambiguous texts. It also changes the places of both the reader and the researcher
How Can the Intersections between Gender, Class, and Sexuality Be Translated to an Empirical Agenda?
No full textThe social categories of gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity, and their relation to subjectivities have received theoretical attention, but their empirical interrelationships remain underexplored. In this article, the authors consider how class, gender, and sexuality interrelate in practice by drawing and reflecting on (a) an empirical study of women in the wine industry that they have undertaken and (b) a selection of contemporary works that links multiple social categories. In conclusion, they argue that to investigate power and tension within and across multiple social categories meaningfully, a useful approach is to combine life histories with theories of embodiment
The Evolution of Theory: A Case Study
No full textInternational attention is currently focused on alleviating health disparities through the adoption of new paradigms of research and the development of culturally relevant theories of health and illness. Yet, in spite of consistent calls to inform these deficiencies, the methodological trajectory from problem identification to theoretical development has remained relatively elusive. In this article, the authors present a case study of a systematic research methodology that resulted in a refined theory of social capital with practical relevance for health disparities research. Their purpose is to demonstrate how the stages and strategies of the hybrid model of concept development were extended as a research trajectory
Pursuing Both Breadth and Depth in Qualitative Research: Illustrated by a Study of the Experience of Intimate Caring for a Loved One with Alzheimer’s Disease
No full textIn this article, the authors explore the methodological and epistemological tensions between breadth and depth with reference to a study into the experience of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease. They consider the benefits and limitations of each of two phases of the study: a generic qualitative study of narrative breadth and a descriptive phenomenological study of lifeworld depth into selected phenomena. The article concludes with a reflection on the kinds of distinctive knowledge generated by each of these two phases and the benefits of their complementary relationship with one another
Searching for the Unknowable: A Process of Detection — Abductive Research Generated by Projective Techniques
No full textThis article looks at the process of doing research ‘from scratch\u27. The author began a project investigating children of Ethiopian origin living in Israel to see how ones who attended a kindergartern program years earlier differed from those who had not attended. However, the problem from the outset was that there may not be a difference to find. In this article, the author compares inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning, and argues that abductive reasoning is the proper technique when nothing is known about the research at the outset
Internet Ethnography: Online and Offline
No full textThis article proposes a new methodology for qualitative research on the Internet, based on the integration of qualitative data-gathering methodologies both online and offline. This combination enables the creation of rich ethnography or, as Geertz (1973) has called it, “thick description,” not limited to the Internet alone. The importance of this article lies in its contribution to a better understanding of the research potential of the Internet and its implementation in qualitative research methodologies
Using Event Structure Analysis to Understand Planned Social Change
No full textIn this article, the authors explore the application of Event Structure Analysis in understanding the linkages between events in planned social change. An illustrative example from the Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders is used to highlight the key features of Event Structure Analysis