Qualitative Research Glossary Student Name: Annette Saldana Course: EDU 7010 Spring 2016
[All terms and descriptions were found within literature readings. Direct quotes are used throughout this qualitative research glossary.]
THEORIES
THEORIES… Constructivism: “The constructivist paradigm assumes a relativist ontology (there are multiple realities), subjectivist epistemology (knower and respondent co-create understandings), and a naturalistic (in the natural world) set of methodological procedures. Findings are usually presented in terms of the criteria of grounded theory or pattern theories.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 27 Critical Race Theory: “We do not think critical realism will keep the social science ship afloat. The social sciences are normative disciplines, always already embedded in issues of value, ideology, power, desire, sexism, racism, domination, repression, and control. We want a social science committed up front to issues of social justice, equity, nonviolence, peace, and universal human rights.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 23 Critical Race Theory: “Focuses on ways in which racism is so embedded in society that it appears “normal” for many, and portrays race as a socially constructed means to identify and classify people.” Glesne, 2011, Pg. 10 Critical Theory: “In the blurred genre phase, the humanities became central resources for critical, interpretive theory and the qualitative research project broadly conceived.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 6 Critical Theory: “Giroux’s critical social theory (Giroux, 1983a, 1983b) which calls for schools to be examined as social sites that structure the experience for subordinate groups…” Bennett, 1991, Pg. 28 Critical Theory: “Giroux’s theory calls for an examination of the linguistic and cultural knowledge of students and the extent to which this knowledge is congruent with the dominant culture of schooling.” Bennett, 1991, Pgs. 28-29 Critical Theory: “Critical theory also emphasizes the transformative aspects of the schooling process in the power of human agency to ameliorate the oppressive aspects of schools for children who are not part of white, middle-class society. In other words, critical theorists argue that classroom teachers can resist merely reproducing the class structure of the dominant society and can structure the schooling process so that students from oppressed groups are able to successfully attain the education they need to empower themselves.” Bennett, 1991, Pg. 29
Critical Theory: “Critical theory researchers often make use of (and make others aware of) standpoint epistemologies. Standpoint epistemologies are positioned in the experiences, values, and interests of a group that has traditionally been oppressed or excluded (women, gays, lesbians, people of color, colonized, etc.).” Glesne, 2011, Pg. 10 Critical Theory: “The socio-politico-economic features of reality are taken as objectively real, and not dependent on the perspective of the observer. For critical theory, then, the power structure is “out there” and “found.” Sipe & Constable, 1996, Pg. 158 Critical Theory/Inquiry: “Again, while critical inquiry will certainly be linked to action research, we can also draw an arrow from critical inquiry to ethnography….It is critical ethnography, a methodology that strives to unmask hegemony and address oppressive forces.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 12 Cultural Studies: “A complex, interdisciplinary field that merges with critical theory, feminism, and poststructuralism.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33 Deconstructivism: “For deconstructivists, reality is not “out there,” but is actually constituted by the system of signs/symbols we use to perceive it; and this system o signs is an imperfect medium, like a distorting lens.” Sipe & Constable, 1996, Pg. 158 Ethnomethodology: “Ethnomethodologists, for example, employ their approach as method, whereas others selectively borrow that method-as-technique for their own applications.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 34 Feminism: “At the most general level, four major interpretive paradigms structure qualitative research: positivist and postpositivist, constructivist-interpretive, critical (Marxist, emancipatory), and feminist-postructural. These four abstract paradigms become more complicated at the level of concrete specific interpretive communities. At this level, it is possible to identify not only the constructivist but also multiple versions of feminism (Afrocentric and poststructural), as well as specific ethnic, feminist, endarkened, social justice, Marxist, cultural studies, disability, and non-Western-Asian paradigms.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pgs. 2627
Feminism: “Feminist models privilege a materialist-realist ontology: that is, the real world makes a material difference in terms of race, class, and gender.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 27 Feminism: “Postructural feminist theories emphasize problems with the social text, its logic, and its inability to ever represent the world of lived experience fully.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 27 Feminism: “Feminism is considered ‘empowerment pedagogy’.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 32 Feminism: “Feminist theory can guide research in each of the paradigms, but feminist research is often allied with critical theory research.” Glesne, 2011, Pg. 11 Grounded Theory: “Qualitative theory has an inherent openness and flexibility that allows you to modify your design and focus during the research to pursue new discoveries and relationships.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 30 Grounded Theory: “This theory is “grounded” in the actual data collected, in contrast to theory that is developed conceptually and then simply tested against empirical data.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 49 Grounded Theory: “‘Our questions change during the process of research to reflect an increased understanding of the problem,’ a point also addressed by Charmaz (2006) as a central part of using grounded theory.” Agee, 2009, Pg. 432 Hermeneutics: “An approach to the analysis of texts that stresses how prior understandings and prejudices shape the interpretive process.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33 Hermeneutics: “Renowned critical theorist Jurgen Habermas carried on a debate with hermeneuticist Hans-Georg Gadamer over many years and out of that interplay there developed for Habermas a ‘critical hermeneutics’. Here we have critical theory coming to inform hermeneutics.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 14 Interpretivism: “He (Blaikie) tells us that interpretivism ‘entails an ontology in which social reality is regarded the product of processes by which social actors together negotiate the meanings for actions and situations.’ (p. 96).” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 11
Interpretivism: Bigler mentions that “recurring themes were taken to be indicative of content areas significant to the speakers to reveal the semiotic building blocks of the conceptual framework through which they make sense of their worlds (Agar 1983; Woolard 1989). She goes on to add that participants were used to construct ‘interpretive frameworks’.” Bigler, 1996, Pg. 187 Interpretivism: “In a qualitative study, you are interested not only in the physical events and behavior that is taking place, but also how the participants in your study make sense of these, and how their understanding influences their behavior.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 30 Interpretivism: “The ontological belief that tends to accompany interpretivist traditions portrays a world in which reality is socially constructed, complex, and ever changing. What is of importance to know, then, is how people interpret and make meaning of some object, event, action, perception, etc.” Glesne, 2011, pg. 8 Interpretivism: “Each knower/observer constructs their own reality based on “subjective principles peculiar to that person.” Sipe & Constable, 1996, Pg. 158 Positivism: “Proponents of the positivist version contend that there is a reality out there to be studied, captured, and understood, whereas the postpositivists argue that reality can never be fully apprehended, only approximated. (Guba, 1990a, p. 22).” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 17 Positivism: “Positivists further allege that the so-called new experimental qualitative researchers write fiction, not science, and have no way of verifying their truth statements.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 4 Positivism: “The positivists and postpositivist paradigms were discussed above. They work from within a realist and critical realist ontology and objective epistemologies, and they rely on experimental, quasi-experimental, survey, and rigorously defined qualitative methodologies.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 27 Positivism: “Objective accounts of the real world can be given.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 32 Positivism: “Referred to as logical positivism, this paradigm held that knowledge was limited to what could be logically deduced from theory, operationally measured, and empirically replicated. (Patton 2002, 92).” Glesne, 2011, pg. 5
Positivism: “The term positivism came from Auguste Comte, a nineteenth-century French philosopher, as he advocated “an approach to social science…that would emulate the natural science and would be positive in its attempts to achieve reliable, concrete knowledge on which we could act to change the social world for the better. (O’Reilly 2005, 45).” Glesne, 2011, Pg. 6 Positivism: “Ontologically, positivists believe that we do not make the world; the world is a given, and we find the meanings which are already inherent in reality.” Sipe & Constable, 1996, Pg. 154 Positivism: “Blaikie tells us that positivism ‘entails an ontology of an ordered universe made up of atomistic, discrete and observable events’ (pg. 94).” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 11 Positivism: “We need to rule out drawing an arrow from constructionism or subjectivism to positivism (or, therefore, post-positivism), since positivism is objectivist by definition. Without a thoroughly objectivist epistemology, positivism would not be positivism as we understand it today.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 12 Postpositivism: “Postpositivism relies on multiple methods as a way of capturing as much of reality as possible. At the same time, emphasis is placed on the discovery and verification of theories.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 17 Postpositivism: “Only partially objective accounts of the world can be produced, for all methods are flawed.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 32 Postpositivism: “By the 1930’s and 1940’s, however, the ontology on which logical positivism was built – that a fixed reality existed that could be measured and known – received much criticism. Most who work within this paradigm today would agree that the world is not knowable with certainty, but they continue to use and value procedures and language associated with the scientific method and to assert that research can reveal “good enough” objective facts that can assist in making generalization and predictions regarding social behavior. This modification of positivism is referred to as logical empiricism and, sometimes, as postpositivism.” Glesne, 2011, Pg. 6 Postmodernism: “A contemporary sensibility, developing since World War II, which privileges no single authority, method, or paradigm.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33
Postmodernism: “And postmodernism well and truly jettisons any vestiges of an objectivist view of knowledge and meaning.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 12 Poststructuralism: “Language is an unstable system of referents, making it impossible to ever completely capture the meaning or an action, text, or intention.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33 Postmodernism: “A contemporary sensibility, developing since World War II, which privileges no single authority, method, or paradigm.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33 Postmodernism: “And postmodernism well and truly jettisons any vestiges of an objectivist view of knowledge and meaning.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 12 Phenomenology: “A complex system of ideas associated with the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alfred Schutz.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 33 Phenomenology: “Nor would we want to draw an arrow from objectivism or subjectivism to phenomenology. Constructionism and phenomenology are so intertwined that one could hardly be phenomenological while espousing either an objectivist or a subjectivist epistemology.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 12 Symbolic interactionism: “Symbolic interactionism, for its part, is a theoretical perspective that informs a range of methodologies, including some forms of ethnography.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 3 Symbolic interactionism: “As we have just noted, the epistemology generally found embedded in symbolic interactionism is thoroughly constructionist in character.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 4 Symbolic interactionism: “Ethnographic inquiry in the spirit of symbolic interactionism seeks to uncover meanings and perceptions on the part of the people participating in the research, viewing these understandings against the backdrop of the people’s overall worldview or ‘culture’.” Crotty, 1998, Pg. 7 Symbolic interactionism: “Deals directly with issues such as language, communication, interrelationships, and community.” Crotty, 1998, Pgs. 7-8
METHODOLOGY
METHODOLOGY… Anthropological ethnography: “Geertz added ‘Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of “construct a reading of”) a manuscript---foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but transient examples of shaped behavior’. (p. 10).” Freeman, 2007, Pg. 28 Ethnographic Study: “The postmodern and postexperimental moments were defined in part by a concern for literary and rhetorical tropes and the narrative turn, a concern for storytelling, for composing ethnographies in new ways.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 6 Ethnographic Study: Bigler discusses how she used an ethnographic study to “analyze stories.” Bigler, 1996, Pg. 186 Ethnographic Study: Bennett mentions that she used “interactive and noninteractive ethnographic methods.” Interactive methods consisted of observation and interviews, while noninteractive involved stream-of-behavior chronicles. (Bennett, 1991, Pgs. 30-31) Participatory action research: “Participants are sometimes invited to collaborate on the formulation of research questions, especially in action research. Stringer (2007, 11) argued that ‘All stakeholders – those whose lives are affected by the problem of study – should be engaged in the processes of investigation’.” Agee, 2009, Pg. 432
METHODS
METHODS… Bricolage: “Rejects the idea of following a preestablished plan or set of methods in favor of a more spontaneous and improvised use of the resources at hand.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 6 Bricolage: “The term “bricolage” was taken from the work of a French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1968), who used it to distinguish mythological from scientific thought. Levi-Strauss described the bricoleur as someone who uses whatever tools and materials are at hand to complete a project.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 42 Case study: “The researcher often selects the case and then states the questions in terms of the particular case selected.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 78 Case Study: “At best, case study, interview, and ethnographic methods offer descriptive materials that can be tested with experimental methods.” Denzin & Lincoln, 2012, Pg. 13 Coding: “To “fracture” (Strauss, 1989, p. 29) the data and rearrange them into categories that facilitates comparison between things in the same category and that aid in the development of theoretical concepts.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 107 Discourse analysis: Bigler explains that she used discourse analysis “to provide each group’s interpretive framework.” She goes on to add that “analysis of this public discourse reveals sharply differing constructions of group identity and explanations for the social and educational status of minorities.” Bigler, 1996, Pg. 186 Discourse analysis: “The researcher may decide to focus on questions about a particular aspect of a social context, such as social interactions. At this point, the theory might be narrowed to discourse analysis, and research questions about discourse and the positioning of individuals in a discourse would follow.” Agee, 2009, Pg. 437 Extended fieldwork: “When possible, qualitative researchers should collect data in the field over an extended period of time.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292
Interview studies: “Sometimes employ a “sampling” logic, selecting interviewees to generalize some population of interest. In addition, the larger the study, the more feasible and appropriate a sampling approach becomes: large multisite studies in which generalizability is important (such as those described in Miles & Huberman, 1994) must pay considerable attention to issues of sampling and representativeness.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 79 Interview Questions: “The development of good interview questions (and observational strategies) requires creativity and insight, rather than a mechanical conversion of the research questions into an interview guide or observation schedule, and depends fundamentally on your understanding of the context of the research (including your participants’ definitions of this) and how the interview questions and observational strategies will actually work in practice.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 101 Low inference descriptors: “The use of description phrased very close to the participants' accounts and researchers' field notes. Verbatims (i.e., direct quotations) are a commonly used type of low inference descriptors.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292 Mixed-methods Research: “The joint use of qualitative and quantitative methods in a single study (Green, 2007; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003, 2010).” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 102 Participant feedback: “The feedback and discussion of the researcher's interpretations and conclusions with the actual participants and other members of the participant community for verification and insight.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292 Personal Narratives: “The personal narratives we construct from the past events of our lives, and our reconstructions of the stories we hear growing up, are important mechanisms for revealing our “presentation of self” both to ourselves and other.” Bigler, 1996, Pg.187
Purposive Sampling: “Particular settings, persons, or activities are selected deliberately to provide information that is particularly relevant to your questions and goals, and that can’t be gotten as well from other choices.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 97 Researcher as "Detective": “A metaphor characterizing the qualitative researcher as he or she searches for evidence about causes and effects. The researcher develops an understanding of the data through careful consideration of potential causes and effects and by systematically eliminating "rival" explanations or hypotheses until the final "case" is made "beyond a reasonable doubt." The "detective" can utilize any of the strategies listed here.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292 Sample study: “The researcher states a general question about a broad population, and then selects a particular sample from this population to answer the question.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 78 Triangulation: “This involves using different methods as a check on one another, seeing if methods with different strengths and limitations all support a single conclusion. This strategy reduces the risk that your conclusions will reflect only the biases of a specific method, and allows you to gain a more secure understanding of the issues you are investigating.” Maxwell, 1996, Pg. 102 Triangulation: “Good research practice obligates the researcher to triangulate, that is, to use multiple methods, data sources, and researchers to enhance the validity of research findings.” Mathison, 1988, Pg. 13 Triangulation: “Convergence needs little explanation: data from different sources, methods, investigators, and so on will provide evidence that will result in a single proposition about some social phenomenon. Inconsistency is: a range of perspectives or data that do not confirm a single proposition about a single phenomenon. Rather, the evidence presents alternative propositions containing inconsistencies and ambiguities. Contradiction results in: opposing views of the social phenomenon being studied.” Mathison, 1998, Pg. 15 Triangulation: "Cross-checking" information and conclusions through the use of multiple procedures of sources. When the different procedures or sources are in agreement you have ‘corroboration’. ” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292
-Data triangulation: “The use of multiple data sources to help understand a phenomenon.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292 -Methods triangulation: “The use of multiple research methods to study a phenomenon.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292 -Investigator triangulation: “The use of multiple investigators (i.e., multiple researchers) in collecting and interpreting the data.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282292 -Theory triangulation: “The use of multiple theories and perspectives to help interpret and explain the data.” Johnson, R.B., 1997, Pgs. 282-292