International Journal of Qualitative Methods: ARCHIVE
Not a member yet
403 research outputs found
Sort by
Studying ‘Mixed Race’: Reflections on Methodological Practice
No full textIn this article, I reflexively consider how three experiences from conducting an interview project with Canadian young adults of mixed race can lead to questions about methodological practice in “mixed race” research. These three experiences also have implications for theorizing mixed race identity. First, in the study, respondents complicated their hailing (Althusser, 2000) as mixed race through responding to a recruitment ad that used that term, but revealed in the interview that they did not actually self-identify as mixed race. Second, the space of the interview enabled me to ask respondents probing questions to “think through” the operation of race in their everyday lives. Third, the complex dynamic of “insider/outsider” between the respondents and myself (through my own identity as mixed race) was foregrounded throughout the research process, signaling complex commonalities between the researcher and research participants
Let’s Play It Safe: Ethical Considerations from Participants in a Photovoice Research Project
No full textThe use of images and other visual data in qualitative research projects poses new ethical challenges, particularly in the context of participatory research projects that engage research participants in conducting fieldwork. Little is known about how research participants deal with the ethical challenges involved in conducting fieldwork, or whether they succeed in making balanced ethical judgments in collecting images of identifiable people and places. This study aims to increase our understanding of these ethical challenges. From an inductive analysis of interview data generated from nine participants recently involved in a photovoice research project we conclude that raising awareness about ethical aspects of conducting visual research increases research participants’ sensitivity toward ethical issues related to privacy, anonymity, and confidentiality of research subjects. However, personal reasons (e.g., cultural, emotional) and cautions about potential ethical dilemmas also prompt avoidance behavior. While ethics sessions may empower participants by equipping them with the knowledge of research ethics, ethics sessions may also have an unintentional impact on research
Qualitative Health Research Conference 2014, Gold Nugget Abstracts
No full textListed alphabetically by last name of presenting author
Qualitative Health Research Conference 2014, Poster Abstracts
No full textListed alphabetically by last name of presenting author
Using Qualitative Methods to Assess the Measurement Property of a New HIV Disability Questionnaire
No full textThe purpose of this article is to describe our experience using a qualitative team approach and predetermined theoretical framework to assess sensibility of a newly developed HIV disability questionnaire. Two interviewers conducted structured qualitative interviews with 22 adults living with HIV, asking participants how well the questionnaire characterized the disability they experienced living with HIV. Data collection and analysis occurred over six stages with four analysts who met throughout. Strengths of our approach included the ability to assess the sensibility of the questionnaire from the perspective of adults living with HIV, collect and analyze data across multiple sites, establish a systematic team analytical process, and enhance rigour through multiple coding, team reflexivity, and interviewer and analyst triangulation. Challenges included increased resources required to coordinate and implement this approach, differential recruitment rates, initial divergent analytical styles, and the potential to miss emerging codes given the structured nature of the analysis. This article offers a methodological process for researchers to use a qualitative team approach with directed content analysis to assess the sensibility of a new health status questionnaire
Collage Portraits as a Method of Analysis in Qualitative Research
No full textThis article explores the use of collage portraits in qualitative research and analysis. Collage portraiture, an area of arts-based research (ABR), is gaining stature as a method of analysis and documentation in many disciplines. This article presents a method of creating collage portraits to support a narrative thematic analysis that explored the impact of participation in an art installation construction. Collage portraits provide the opportunity to include marginalized voices and encourage a range of linguistic and non-linguistic representations to articulate authentic lived experiences. Other potential benefits to qualitative research are cross-disciplinary study and collaboration, innovative ways to engage and facilitate dialogue, and the building and dissemination of knowledge
Object-Interviews: Folding, Unfolding, and Refolding Perceptions of Objects
No full textThis article describes the object-interview as a Deleuzian space in which subjects and objects, living and nonliving, entangle together. I developed the object-interview to understand the connections that 11 Midwestern family history genealogists made between objects (e.g., documents, photographs, and other artifacts) and their ancestors. The object-interview suggests an alternative way to think and do qualitative interviews informed by poststructural theories. The method draws on French philosopher Deleuze’s concepts of the fold, events, and a life, as well as conventional qualitative interview literature. Deleuze’s concepts offer a way to rethink objects and subjects as fibrous, connective, and folding entities in qualitative interviews. Such a rethinking offers an alternative to subject-centered conventional qualitative interviews in which subjects are teased apart from objects and subjects primarily produce knowledge. The object-interview, then, is a Deleuzian space in which the supposed distinctions between subjects and objects, as well as other binary divisions, become indistinct, or entangled, as both subjects and objects produce knowledge. That space enabled me to create the concept ensemble of life—a constantly shifting group of objects associated with a person’s life. In this article, I describe the theoretical entanglement of the object-interview, the object-interview itself, the data it produced in my dissertation study, and the significance of the method to the field of qualitative research methods
Employing Questionnaires in terms of a Constructivist Epistemological Stance: Reconsidering Researchers’ Involvement in the Unfolding of Social Life
No full textIn this article, I delve into what it might mean to employ questionnaires without regarding them simply as a way of attempting to discern relationships of correlation or causality between defined variables (as in positivist and post-positivist conceptions of questionnaires). I shall consider the implications of researchers using questionnaires on the basis of alternative paradigmatic orientations. I shall discuss, in particular, interpretivist stances and more constructively-oriented stances (as qualitatively-oriented paradigmatic positions) with reference to different understandings of questionnaire use. I shall also reflect on how qualitative positions that embrace a constructivist epistemological stance can lead to a redirection of questionnaires in relation to more “usual” (post-positivist-directed) usages. In the course of the discussion I make a case, drawing on a version of constructivism, for researchers taking responsibility for their involvement—no matter what methods are used—in the unfolding of the social worlds of which research is a part. Taking into account the constructivist epistemological understanding that questionnaires—as well as other research methods—contribute to the construction of responses rather than merely “finding” responses from research participants, I suggest that some responsibility needs to be taken by those employing questionnaires for the potential social impact of these on research participants as well as wider audiences
