One thing that I didn't mention is that a lot of my experience doing
longitudinal qualitative research involved doing a three year
participant-observer field study at a single field site. I certainly
thought of this as "longitudinal" and I certainly did observe some
(sometimes unexpected) changes in my field site over time. And my field
notes certainly had longitudinal names both in terms of being chronological
and in trying to make connections between events that happened at different
times. After the field study, I have done some supplementary interviewing
of people who work at offices similar to the one that I studied. These
interviews have helped me to elaborate and perhaps generalize a bit on what
I discovered at my original field site. At the same time, I have found that
I often ask "process" oriented questions that ask interviewees to draw on
their memories and speculate on the future as well as "describe the
present." And often times I supplement these interviews with archival data
and sometimes quantitative studies (when they are available). I think that
this may be a little different than what Linda had in mind but I'd say that
both fit the definition of "longitudinal qualitative research."
Bill Kaghan
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Nottingham <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Monday, April 09, 2001 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: Longitudinal studies
Maybe a really simple way to understand longitudinal research is to use an
illustration....
Suppose you interview a person or people once, about whatever is your topic
of interest. Their responses tell you what they think about your topic at
that time. That is an illustration of cross-sectional or single-time
research. Your data tell you what this person or people thought about your
topic at this specific time.
Then suppose you return at a later time, say weeks, months, or years later,
to the same person or people and ask them again about your SAME topic of
interest. Their responses may be the same, or they may be different....
depending on any number of influences in the intervening time (people
differences, circumstance differences, and so on). Now you have new research
data on your topic of interest, and the data now have been collected at two
different time periods. That is longitudinal research.
As others have mentioned in previous messages, the value here, in
longitudinal research, is to learn about changes within the person or people
you have studied, in regard to your one topic of interest. Then the fun
begins: You get to theorize and speculate about WHY these changes are
evident!
That's a very simple, elementary type of explanation; but maybe it will help
clear up some confusion.
Linda Nottingham
>>> [log in to unmask] 04/09/01 08:42AM >>>
>I'd agree that the key element is change over time, Nick, but I seriously
do
>wonder whether we should restrict the use of the term to its very sharp and
>specific meaning, as you and Harald reported.
.... I am
>increasingly convinced that qualitative research requires study of process,
>and once-off data like single interviews are very challenging to analyse
>qualitatively for this reason. Is anyone writing a book on "Longitudinal
>Qualitative Research"?
>
I think that Lyn raises an important issue. I agree that "longitudinal
qualitative research" focuses on "process" rather than simply "change over
time." But I also think that if you elaborate on this idea a bit, you can
get a better sense of both the similarities and differences between
longitudinal quantitative research and longitudinal qualitative research.
Both sorts of methods deal with "change over time." However, for
longitudinal quantitative research, "change over time" usually boils down to
"variation over time." The basic variables are stable. Only the values of
the variables change over time. The methods support testing models in which
time is an important element. In my opinion, for longitudinal qualitative
research, "change over time" really refers to "transformation (or lack of
transformation) over time." From this perspective, the basic variables
(institutions, rules?) themselves may change and the purpose of research is
to understand how process either facilitates or constrains these changes.
Both are valid/useful forms of longitudinal research. They are just have
somewhat different objectives (and I suspect are associated with somewhat
different epistemic stances about the nature of "social reality.")
Bill Kaghan
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