Reading Journal #2: Not All Qualitative Research Looks Alike

9/21/2020

Overview. Unit two of Bhattacharya covers the many ways you can approach qualitative research. And you are perhaps thinking that there seems to be a lot of different ways to do qualitative research. In this post, please do the following:

1) Identify two different types of qualitative research that are particularly appealing to you. Provide a good summary from Bhattacharya as part of your response. In what ways are these types very similar? In what ways do they differ?

2) What is appealing to you about these particular modes? Why these modes and not others (here is an opportunity to show me that you read the entire unit)?

3) Considering the reading from last week, what are the benefits of these kinds of research? What are some things you need to watch out for.

Specifics. Your post should be between 250 and 300 words and should demonstrate to me that you've read the entire assigned reading.

HOW TO POST
Click on either the "comments" button at the top right of this post or the bottom left. Either one. Fill out the name and email portions of the dialogue box when prompted to do so, and then post your 200-250 words I that space. Click "submit" and you are done.

You can "reply" to a specific post from your colleague by clicking on "reply" rather than "comments." Don't worry if you accidentally post something in not exactly the right place.

4 Comments

Derek Krysko

9/22/2020 03:24:57 pm

I find both ethnography and autoethnography to be quite interesting. Ethnography generally refers to the study of people within a particular culture, and researchers usually opt to spend long periods of time immersed in the culture they are studying. During this time, they will experience and document events as well as conduct interviews. Autoethnography is a bit different, in that the researcher instead immerses themselves in their own culture and past life experiences and analyzes them within the cultural context that they occurred. So rather than putting themselves into a different culture and analyzing other people, autoethnographic researchers will reflect inward upon their own life and culture to gather info.

One thing that stood out to me about autoethnography is its usage with social justice causes, as those causes are so very prevalent in today's society. I think it is a fascinating concept to try and use personal cultural experiences in order to extrapolate information about the effects of discrimination or oppression, and I imagine researchers in this field are more likely to develop a strong connection with the work they are conducting. Along the same lines, ethnography appealed to me because it requires a researcher to put themselves in someone else's shoes and learn more about a culture they may not have previously known about. This approach also feels very timely, as so often major societal issues are caused by ignorance. I believe the best way to truly learn about another culture is to be fully immersed in that environment, and experiencing things that may seem strange at first is the most effective way to gain a greater appreciation for the lives of others. These stood out to me over some of the other methods because they felt like they could be the most relevant approaches to studying some of the causes and effects of modern day racism or discrimination, issues that loom large in our current climate. I prefer these over an interview study because interviews can often be skewed by leading or poorly worded questions. I also did not find the grounded theory to be appealing because it seems as if the two schools of thought within that approach could cause conflicts with one another, and it may be difficult to know if the objectivist method or the constructivist method is more applicable.

The benefits of these forms of research is that the researcher can develop a strong connection with the work they are performing, either by becoming one with a certain culture, or by learning more about themselves through looking at their own culture. If the goal is to understand someone's experiences, these methods will be very useful. Some issues with these methods could revolve around sample size, as using ethnography may make it difficult to narrow down a concise sample size, and autoethnography may not always be reliable if the researcher's own experiences differ greatly from other people within that cultural context.

Amanda Guindon

9/23/2020 03:54:11 pm

The first type of qualitative research that was interesting to me was Oral History, which is a study that focuses on telling the story of a person, or group of people. These can be very powerful depending on the meaning made from the storytelling. These stories can often focus on exploring social justice issues, and focus on immersing others in inequalities that the person has experienced. I also found Autoethnography, which is when a person reflects on their own experiences and analyzes those experiences based on the cultural context of where the experiences occurred.
I found each of these particularly interesting because they focused a lot about telling the story of a person, similar to Narrative Inquiry. Oral History involves telling the story of others, which opens your experiences up to new things you may never have had access to, and Autoethnography forces you to reflect on your own experiences and what they mean in relation to how you experienced them. Ethnography was the next most interesting to me, as it focused on immersing oneself in a particular culture to study that culture, and it was similar to Critical Ethnography, which I found slightly confusing before reading through the section a few more times. I wasn’t as interested in the few types of research that focused on the interviewing of people or studying of people because they felt much less personal than the few that I favored, and I would rather learn about a person’s experiences and learn their story, as well as consider my own experiences, than lead an impersonal case study or interview as was my first impression of a few of the types of research.
I suppose the benefits of these types of research are that people can gain a better understanding of one another, and learn to appreciate the experiences of one another. I was fond of the idea of learning the story of another, and was intrigued that someone else could learn something from my own experiences as well. In regards to the Oral History research, you would have to ensure that you are representing someone respectively in terms of telling their story, and not to make assumptions based on what they have said. It would also be important when focusing on analyzing your own experiences to be careful not to embellish your experiences to make it seem like it was something that it was not.

Sasha Rockwell

9/25/2020 11:27:43 am

I'm mostly interested in Ethnography and Autoethnography. I'm interested in Ethnography because I find learning about other cultures very interesting. I also like the process of being immersed in the culture and actually experiencing it hands-on, versus gathering information in another way like through surveys. If I was a researcher I would want to interact with people, see how they live and thrive, and gather my information from that. I think I would know the culture and people better. I'm also interested in autoethnography because I would already have the information from the experiences I had being immersed in other cultures, but I would also have the chance to retell my experiences and what I learned through my own words. I think the work and research would feel much more personal to me because the research was done through my own experiences.

These modes are particularly interesting to me because it's more hands-on and interactive than other forms of research like interview study, where you give a group of people an interview. You don't see how people live their lives and their cultures. The kind of information you get from this kind of research can be much more limiting because there is no interacting. It's also different than say phenomenological study because of this kind of research studies the experiences people have and what that means for them. The kind of interaction in ethnography still isn't there, and you only get experiences and reflections on them, so not as broad of information on a group of people, and it's also rather on how individuals think.

Ethnography would be really good for learning about a group of people and observing similarities or differences within a culture or group of cultures. You could see the way that people live and how they live. Though this comes with challenges because when conducting this research there is a fair amount of interference within the culture, and there is no blending in. The locals may feel uncomfortable and act differently, which might change the results. Being in another culture may also lead to culture shock, and it would be difficult to stay in a culture that is vastly different from the one someone is comfortable in. With Autoethnography, the challenge would be recounting the details of the experiences from being in the culture, especially if the trip was very short or very long. It would be difficult to remember every detail of every day.

Sam Isom

9/29/2020 03:36:22 pm

I'm particularly interested in the phenomenological study method of qualitative research, and the narrative inquiry method. Phenomenological studies analyze the ways different people understand or experience the same thing. Narrative inquiries also rely heavily on participants' stories, but rather than analyze the content so much, these studies focus on how the content is laid out. This method interests me the most. Psychoanalysis of a subject based on not only their experiences, but how they go about talking about their experiences is in-depth and raw. Narrative inquiries and phenomenological studies relate to each other in the sense that they both push people out of their comfort zones by allowing them to be in their comfort zones. Talking about past experiences is pretty tame, it's the added twist of taking what they say and using it as research and study material that really makes it interesting.

Every mode of qualitative research can be used for different things and in different ways, all with their own benefits when utilized in the appropriate situation. It'd be more appropriate to do an interview study rather than a narrative inquiry for a newspaper article about someone. But for a study on childhood trauma, a narrative inquiry would give the benefits of the interview study and even more. It takes research to do research. A strong research goes into a situation with knowledge, experience, and the emotional intellect to understand what exactly is appropriate to say to and about a participant.

Given the previous example, something to avoid in a narrative inquiry would be sharing overly private information with someone besides yourself as the researcher and the participant. Unless they've consented to what they say being shared with anyone, it is best not to forget that the participants are human, not just empty test subjects. The same goes for phenomenological studies. Do not make too many bold assumptions. Don't stray too far from the research you've gathered. Like we learned in writing our peer profiles, it's harder to write about someone who will actually see what you said than it is to write about a historical figure or celebrity.

Reading Journal #2: Not All Qualitative Research Looks Alike

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