How-To Interview

Interview is one of my limited experiences in qualitative research methodology. Compared to surveys, inverviewing has been always more exciting process. However, I have never thought it as one critical research methodology and only treated it as a normal and informal information gathering behavior. From chaper 8 of Gorman and Clayton, I learned more about interview and how it should be conducted (formally).

I tried to understand interview by answering some wh-questions.

Who to interview?
a purposive sample is tend to be selected for interview by researcher to include representatives from within the population being studied.

Where to interview?
It is desirable to conduct interview in a quiet and comfortable place(e.g. office of a senior staff) where 'strong bystander interference' does not exist.

What to ask?
Ask questions that are clear and simple. Questions should not be too general and include that the researcher need to know. It is good idea to carry out a pilot interview not only to test draft questions, but also proposed recording arragnements.
Giving interviewe some space with open-ended questions, ensuring understanding by refletive listening, and keeping it relevant are significant points in controlling interviews.

How to interview?
Depend on how interview was conducted, it can influence that reliability and validity of interview study. In the chapter cites Brenner saying "questioning must always be non-directive; that is never suggest a 'right' answer or direction of answering; heshe must take care that the accouts obtained are adequate;....he/she must also enact a facilitator role by being nonjudgmental and supportive, among other things" (page 130, G&C).
The process of interview is explained as follows: introductions; completion of ethics paperworkd and obtaining permission to record...; establishing rapport and putting the interviewee at his or her ease; prepared questions...; then more open-ended questions; an opportunity for the interviewee to raise any matters which may have been overlooked (page 134, G&C).

How to record?
Tape recording is mostly used as a recording method along with note-taking in interview even though there are some drawback in using tape recording. However as quoted in the chapter too, Bernner has pointed out that tape recording removes a source of potential distraction, and frees the interviewer to guide the interview, check that answers are complete and consistent, and plan future questions (page 136, G&C). It is also important to note that tape recording should not be obtrusive and back-up supplies must be prepared for tape recording.
To build up Yin's 'chain of evidence', it is significant to keep records on both tapes and transcripts. A record at a minimun should include information such as who(names of interviewees and their positions), when(dates and time of interview), and where(start and end points of interview).

PhotoVoice

A new type of methodology introduced by the guest speaker, Katie Fitzgerald, today was PhotoVoice. This was really interesting way of gathering data. From Dr. Carolyn Wang's website on Photovoice, photovoice is difined as "a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique. It entrusts cameras to the hands of people to enable them to act as recorders, and potential catalysts for social action and change, in their own communities. It uses the immediacy of the visual image and accompanying stories to furnish evidence and to promote an effective, participatory means of sharing expertise to create healthful public policy".

I think this methodology is facinating since photo reflects participants thinking and also bring their though out better in words too. As we discussed in class, I also think that it will be a better methodology when the topic of the research is sensitive. It is easier to make participants begin to talk and also easier to understand what they think or feel inside richer. Using photos are great, because it is like a mirror of people's mind. It can mean and tell a lot of stories. It is interesting to see how people express themselves by photo from the example photos from Dr. Wang's website. There introduce a lot of projects and galleries which are very interesting to take a look.

Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

In the explanation on group discussion techniques from Gorman and Clayton, they spent a lot of the chapter introducing the normal group technique (NGT). This is my first time hearing about this technique, and it was interesting to find a new qualitative data colleting technique. It seems useful with the advantages they mentioned such as identifying the problems, aiding in establishing priorities, no need to homogeneous group, fast in gathering data, pulling out participants ideas and knowledge, generateing a numeric priorities, and etc. Some advantages overlap with focus group and some are identical. However, I am not sure this is a dominant technique compared to the focus group technique. NGT seems very similar to focus group, but only that it has more control over participants therefore let researcher gather more formatted information. However the point of focus group is to let participants discuss in more open and comfortable environment so that better ideas or expressions are to speak out easily. Controlling over participants means reducing the advantage of focus group technique. In short, I am not sure or positive that NGT will be a better technique compared to focus group. (It may be helpful, as authors mentioned in the book, when it is used for a pre-research to establish a questionnare.)

Thoughts on Focus Group Research

Wilkinson in chaper 10 of Silverman describes focus group as a way of collecting qualitative data, which involves engaging a small nuber of people in an informal group discussion (or discussions), 'focused' around a particular topic or set if issues (page 177).

She also compares focus group with interview, and introduces ways of analyzing data - content and ethnographi analysis. In these introduction, focus group seems to have a lot of advantages in terms of data collection. It can gather ideas/opinions from multiple people in one study set whereas interviews have to be conducted serveral times. Moreover, as Wilkinson stressed in page 184, focus group gives opportunities to study interactions among participants or between researcher and participants. Another significant aspect of focus group is that it does not require researcher to play a central role in discussion. Interviews are conducted in a way that researchers mainly ask the participant questions and he/she answers the questions, which might lead participant to be inactive in conversation. However, in focus group research, researchers can throw a topic or question and participants can discuss on the topic not minding what researcher reacts on their comments. This characteristic also adds flexibility to focus group in designing study.

In data analysis, content analysis seems to be more familiar to me. However from the example given in the chaper (from page 189 to page194), gives superising amount of information from the conversation. I think this is more than what you can get from interview even though interviews can also gather some data on participant's behavior, cogonitive aspects, etc. Certainly to catch these information from the conversation, researcher should be trained in interviews and focus group. In German and Clayton, they mentioned that "if the faciloitator is inexperienced or harbours any doubts about the apporach, and assuming there is sufficient time, it is normal to then undertake a trial run or pilot discussion with a comparable group not included in the actual research", which describes the significance of the role of researcher and also planning of the focus group study (page 144).

One of interesting questions occurred from the lines in page 145-146 of G&C was about video taping whole discussion. For me video taping would be one of the effective way to gather data from the conversation since it will record participants behavior, reaction, and atomosphere. In addition, being a non-experienced researcher myself, if I video tape the setting I would feel comfortable in terms of not missing anything during discussion and getting every information I want. However, as was mentioned in the lines, ethical problem will occur. So if video taping after informing the fact to the participants will affect the quality of discussion? If not, will video taping be one of the best method to record data?

Text Analysis Tools

From the discussion in class last week, I became interested in some of the tools/softwares for text analysis. Here are some of the sources that I found interesting and useful.

Text Analysis Info
this web site has some information on text analysis along with communication and mailing lists. it also have some classification for text analysis software which might be helpful.

ATLAS.ti online community
this web community has help tips, forums, news, etc. a lot of information on ATLAS.ti.

Psychology Software Distribution
this web site provides information on softwares and hardwares for psychology researches. but since they do a lot of qualitative research, some information seems useful.

In terms of coding text, as I mentioned during discussion in class, some annotating software might be helpful. I am only aware of softwares that are for information retrieving purpose. As Dr. Shulman commented there might be some softwares that are aimed for qualitative researches. I am introducing the GATE annotator which is one of well-known annotating software in IR domain. I would like to know if there are any other annotating software for qualitative research purpost and give a try to compare with softwares like GATE and understand the difference.

Regarding using text analysis softwares, it is worth quoting the Carvajal's comments on using computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software. He stressed that anyone using computer-assited programs to analyze data should incorporate "critical thinking instead of mechanical thinking". "To kow a software is to know about the methodological implications its use has for qualitative methodology". (page 112, Silverman)

The Internet As A Tool For Qualitative Research

From the last week reading, especially chap. 6 of Silverman, data from the Internet cought my interest. Some of the notions and impressions were not even occurred to me before.

So I searched through the definitions of Internet from different sources.

The Internet, or simply the Net, is the publicly accessible worldwide system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP). It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic, and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web. (Wikipedia)

The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). (Whatis.com)

The Internet is a worldwide interconnection of individual networks a) with an agreement on how to talk to each other, and b) operated by government, industry, academia, and private parties. (ATIS Telecom Glossary 2000)

They all seem to stress that it connects users thereby makes it easier to transfer data/documents/ideas. As it was emphasized in the chaper of Silverman's book, with characteristics and strength in helping communicate will be useful for qualitative researchers in terms of connecting with participants and gathering data.

Here are some pros and cons of the Internet as a tool for qualitative research I could think of.

Pros	Cons
easy in gathering participants and therefore data no time and location limitations different media for data collection privacy therefore better reactions from participants	no control of participants' attention in study participants' technical issues matter quality of data content only text-type data can be gathered

Since there are advantages and disadvantages in using the Internet as a method of gathering data and conducting the research, as it was mentioned in page 109 in the Silverman, it is important to understand which media is/are proper for the participants and good for the research topic.

Conducting Field Study

From the chapters in G&C book related to field study, the most impressive issue was the role of researcher as data collection instrument. Authors in chapter 5 mentioned that "fieldwork is the interface between researcher and in the case study approach charcteristic of qualitative research; it involves collecting data 'in the field', being out among the subjects of one's research, becoming immersed in their milieu and seeing events and activities as they see them"(page 66, G&C). This explanation of fieldwork represents how important it is that researcher playing a role in the site and how much researcher is involved in the study.

All related issues in the chapters, including the experience-near and experience-distant concepts, getting permission to the access to the site, planning and expanding the research, and collecting data with any neccessary methods, are all depending on researcher's decision, behavior, and perception. It seems really difficult to deal with different people and at the same time also recognize everything going on in the environments. It was also mentioned that "it is the role of the qualitative researcher to scrutinize commonplace occurrences because when observed from prlonged periods, common phenomena can reveal remarkable levels of complexity"(page 182, G&C).

Also it was stressed that scheduling the whole research plan is significant. Gantt chart was introduced as a tool to manage research schedule in the textbook. I found it interesting and useful to used such a tool for managing whole research otherwise it will be difficult to deal with everything that is going on at the same time period.

Am I Understanding Qualitative Research Right?

Among all desicussions from last week, discussion on generalization was the most interesting issue to me. My initial impression of qualitative research has been far from generlization since most of methodologies used in qualitative research seemed to be focusing on specific cases or circumstances. Thus it was very interesting to find out how people in class think about generalization of the qulitative research results. After all the discussion, to me, it still seems that for every methodology for qualitative research, generalization will be positioned in weakness of the methodology as it was for the case study. Will it?

Another interesting observation was that hypothesis is actually significant for the qualitative research too. My understanding on qualitative research was to have a least hypothesis and based on that openness it is possible to find more on the issue. As from the comparison of strength and weakness of case study done in class, it seems to make more sense to think that qualitative research results are good for generating hypothesis for follow-up or further study. I am still not sure how hypothesis are made in qualitative research. It would be interesting for find an example study.

I feel like I am being too novice at qualitative research with lack of understanding what it is, what are needed and what are considered as weakness of the qualitative research. However, because of that, I feel more interested in every topic we discuss and I can enjoy finding something new to me. With the light discussion on generalization from last week, and after reading the books for this week, this week's topic seems very interseting. I can't wait finding out more about validity and generalization related issues on qualitative research.

Starting Qualitative Research Fluency Blog

So I created a Qualitative Research Fluency Blog.
This is my first course for qualitative research methodology...and my first blog.
I am excited!!

I have learned how qualitative researches are conducted, but never have done it before.
During the class last week, for me, qualitative research seems much more complicated than I imagined.
With the experience of having difficulty in dealing with qualitative data, I am so eager to learn more about it.
It was also nice to have people with different qualitative research backgroud in class.
Hope I can understand qualitative methods after this term for my coming researches.