International Journal of Qualitative Methods: ARCHIVE
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Bridging Conceptions of Quality in Moments of Qualitative Research
No full textQuality assessment in qualitative research has been, and remains, a contentious issue. The qualitative literature contains a diversity of opinions on definitions of and criteria for quality. This article attempts to organize this diversity, drawing on several examples of existing quality criteria, into four main approaches: qualitative as quantitative criteria, paradigm-specific criteria, individualized assessment, and bridging criteria. These different approaches can be mapped onto the historical transitions, or moments, in qualitative research presented by Denzin and Lincoln and, as such, they are presented alongside the various criteria reviewed. Socio-political conditions that have led us to a fractured future, where the value and significance of qualitative work may be marginalized, support the adoption of bridging criteria. These broadly applicable criteria provide means to assess quality and can be flexibly applied among the diversity of qualitative approaches used by researchers. Five categories that summarize the language used within bridging criteria are presented as a means to move forward in developing an approach to quality assessment that fosters communication and connections within the diversity of qualitative research, while simultaneously respecting and valuing paradigmatic and methodological diversity
Changing Our Methods and Disrupting the Power Dynamics: National Tests in Third-Grade Classrooms
No full textThis article reports on a research project relating to the newly implemented mandatory Swedish national mathematics tests for third-grade students (nine and ten years old). The project’s main research concerns the students’ ideas about and reactions toward these tests and how the specific test situation affects their perception of their own mathematical proficiency. Drawing on theories that suggest identities are more fluid than static, we want to understand how students with special needs are “created.” The specific aim of this article is to discuss how our research methods have been refined during the various phases of data collection and report on the resulting implications. It discusses issues surrounding child research and how methods involving video recording and video stimulated recall dialogue (VSRD) can contribute to research on children’s experiences. Particular attention is given to methodological and ethical issues and how to disrupt power relations. In this article, we argue that the context of the test situation not only impacted upon the students but also affected how we changed, developed, and adapted our approaches as the project evolved
Use of Participant-Generated Photographs Versus Time Use Diaries as a Method of Qualitative Data Collection
No full textA small qualitative research study was chosen as a time efficient way to allow students to participate in and complete a research project during a 16-week long semester course. In the first year of the research contribution course, student researchers asked participants with diabetes to complete time use diaries as a part of their initial data collection. The time use diaries were found to be an ineffective way to collect data on self-management of diabetes and were not useful as a basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A review of the literature suggested reasons for this lack of effectiveness; in particular, participants tend not to record frequently done daily activities. Further review of the literature pointed toward the use of participant-generated photography as an alternative. Subsequent participants were asked to take photographs of their daily self-management of their diabetes for initial data collection. These photographs provided a strong basis for subsequent interviews with the participants. A comparison of the data collected and the emergent themes from the two different methods of initial data collection demonstrated the improved ability to answer the original research question when using participant-generated photography as a basis for participant interviews. The student researchers found the use of participant-generated photographs to elicit interviews with participants in the context of a research contribution course to be effective and enjoyable
Altered Inquiry: Discovering Arts-Based Research Through an Altered Book
No full textI present altered book making and poetry as a process of imaginative inquiry into arts-based research. Through a personal narrative and a consideration of the literature on arts-based research, I reconstruct the artistic inquiry that traces my learning journey. Current issues in arts-based research are sketched through words and mixed media artwork, including issues of terminology, philosophy, ethics, and purpose in arts-based research practice. The beginnings of a transformation-through-the-arts paradigm, powered by an aesthetic epistemology, are referenced as part of a multimedia learning journey. As a strategy for pedagogical inquiry, the altered book construction and narrative writing served to express some of the transformative learning, beauty, energy, and complexities related to this topic
Exploring the Discursive Positioning of a Schizophrenic Inpatient Via Method Triangulation
No full textThe article examines the contribution of method triangulation to the study of the self- construction of a schizophrenic inpatient in several encounters with a psychiatrist. We used institutional conversation analysis to probe the data for interactional sequence organization, while a positioning analysis enabled us to explore different levels of interpersonal positioning. Positioning is defined as a process whereby interlocutors locate one or several dimensions of their self in relation to others. Using these analyses, we identified, described, and interpreted the inpatient’s discursive attempts, successes, and failures to construct who she was in the psychiatrist-inpatient encounters. The theoretical, methodological, and method frameworks are presented in the first, second, third, and fourth sections. Then, illustrative data are presented and analyzed in the fifth and sixth sections. Finally, the insights gained from the analyses, as well as the contribution of method triangulation, are elaborated on in the discussion
Conceptualizing Autoethnography as Assemblage: Accounts of Occupational Therapy Practice
No full textDrawing on theoretical work within ethnography and poststructuralism, this article discusses a conceptualization of autoethnography as assemblage. The concept of assemblage includes but goes beyond the literal bringing together of a range of heterogeneous elements in different modalities to offer different perspectives on a phenomenon. It challenges and displaces boundaries between the individual and the social through a focus on practice, which offers a new ontology of the social. These ideas are illustrated through excerpts from an autoethnographic study of an occupational therapist working with young people in a Sydney children’s hospital in the mid-1980s. The article makes visible a material, relational, and affective landscape of remembered practice. Through successive displacements of the self as the primary site of experience and meaning, we seek to contribute new understandings about the potential for autoethnography to engage with professional practice as a space of multiplicity
“It was Fun”: An Evaluation of Sand Tray Pictures, an Innovative Visually Expressive Method for Researching Children’s Experiences with Nature
No full textIn order to study children’s subjective experiences, researchers need to employ methods that are interesting and engaging but at the same time can produce data that answers research questions. This article critically reflects on the use of an innovative visually expressive method, sand tray pictures, which allows children to communicate their multi-dimensional subjective experiences with nature. In this study, sand tray pictures were compared with photographs taken and pictures drawn by the children as approaches for understanding children’s experiences in a public botanic garden during a five-day summer camp. Sand trays were identified as a highly effective tool in eliciting insights about children’s subjective and socio-cultural experiences in nature
Hermeneutics and Human Interplay: A Clinical Caring Science Research Method
No full textThe aim of this article was to explore, exemplify, and discuss how a participatory hermeneutic method designed for children with special needs can be developed in a caring context. Examples from a clinical study are presented to illustrate how play, as both a methodological concept in hermeneutics and the substance of caring, was applied in research by means of the perioperative dialogue. In participatory research, an ethical approach based on subtle human interplay can be triggered by means of dialogue with parents. Thus, truth can emerge via continuity of care, while the substance of caring can be directed toward the child. Such a clinical method is worth adding to the child research repertoire
Towards a Critical Occupational Approach to Research
No full textCritical approaches to research are becoming increasingly more prevalent but occupational science and critical approaches have not been explicitly combined into one approach despite the potential to enrich the understanding of the assumptions and ideologies underlying human activity. In this article we outline an approach to research that is mutually informed by occupational and critical social science perspectives. The critical occupational approach we describe can be used to explore the ways in which knowledge is produced through engagement in occupation, who controls knowledge production, the mechanisms of how occupations are taken up, and who stands to gain or lose. We discuss the implications and considerations for generating research purposes and methods and conducting analyses. We then illustrate the use of the approach through a case study. We conclude this article with consideration of the wider uses and implications of a critical occupational approach within health and social research